Iran University of Science and Technology

Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST; Dāneshgāh-e Elm va San'at-e Irān) is a public research university located in Narmak, eastern Tehran. Founded in 1929, it is one of Iran's leading technical universities, specializing in engineering and applied sciences.

IUST is politically significant as the institution where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad studied civil and transportation engineering from 1976 through his PhD (awarded 1997), then joined the faculty as an associate professor. It was also where he met Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi in the late 1970s — a relationship that became the nucleus of the Ahmadinejad political network. Ahmadinejad's IUST connections provided him with a technical-nationalist peer group that formed the inner circle of his administration.