Founded in 2007 in Iran’s ninth largest city of Kermanshah, a provincial capital in the mountainous west of the country, 325 miles from Tehran, Kermanshah University of technology is a public, co-educational institution.
In 2017 it was one of 10 Iranian universities defined as Local by the Ministry of Scientific Research and Technology. This was defined using a four-level classification for 120 institutions stretching from International through National and Regional to Local. TIf a university is defined as local is means that is it "concentrated on the fulfilment of local needs".
There is considerable collaboration on research and other projects with other institutions in the city such as the Islamic Azad and Medical Sciences Universities and Razi University.
The university is divided into three faculties. Energy offers courses in electrical, power, telecommunications, civil and mechanical engineering and describes its aims as "‘based on the standards of the world’s advanced universities and based upon the Sustainable University Framework".
The faculty of information technology offers courses including computer engineering and computer science, engineering, physics and engineering science and sees its goal as "to train the skilled staff needed in the country, especially in the western part of the country, and to respond to existing needs in related fields".
The faculty of engineering management’s offers include mechanical engineering and railway engineering, a multidisciplinary option involving several disciplines as preparation for work in the railway industry.
The local focus is reflected, following the serious earthquake in the region in 2017, by one KUT researcher’s construction of an earthquake simulator used to train civil engineering students. Another researcher designed an app which can diagnose bow-leggedness.
