The great potentials in Kerman province, regarding such resources as industry, mining, agriculture, and service-sector, have all created favorable conditions to establish postgraduate education and research centers for further development of the area. Kerman Graduate University of Advanced Technology (GUAT) was thus founded in 2007 with the aim to partly fill this gap. With an area of 2000 hectares, Kerman Science Park is located in Mahan, 28km southeast of Kerman; the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology decided in 2007 to establish the GUAT within this science and technology park, with a mission to provide the required infrastructures for the highly sought-after relations between academia and industry. Currently, there are three faculties (i.e. Faculty of Science and Technology, Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geodesy) providing educational and research services in 39 M.Sc. and 15 Ph.D. programs, together with the facilities prepared in the same campus for commercializing the knowledge-based achievements of the GUAT post-graduate students and researchers.
A great amount of research activities of GUAT is being conducted in the Research Institute for Advanced Technologies and Environmental Sciences. This research Institute includes Research Centers for: 1) Environmental Sciences, 2) Photonics, 3) Materials, and 4) Energy; the Research Dept. of Information Technology is another subdivision of the ICST. All these sections are working in the areas of research and education, including executing the basic and applied research projects, establishing scientific ties with domestic and foreign universities and research centers, holding seminars and educational workshops, and admitting post-graduate students in MSc and PhD programs. Activities relating to technology are being carried out within the GUATs Science and Technology Park with the main aim to assist in commercialization of the academic research results.