Reza Farajidana

Reza Farajidana is an Iranian electrical engineer and reformist politician, who was the minister of Science, Research and Technology under President Hassan Rouhani. He served as president of University of Tehran, and as the former president of the Iranian branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Biography

Reza Farajidana was born in 1960 in Qom and received his math diploma from Hakim Nezami high school in 1978. In the same year, he was admitted to the Shiraz University in electrical engineering.
He studied electrical engineering at the University of Tehran, and at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He graduated with a Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo in 1993. He works as the professor of electrical engineering at the University of Tehran.

Dismissal

Iranian parliament dismissed him as Minister of Science on 20 August 2014. The principlist MPs accused him of permitting students involved in 2009–10 Iranian election protests to continue their education in public universities. He was also accused of appointing senior department heads from people involved in the mass protests of 2009. Some of the PMs who voted for the dismissal of Farajidana were allegedly benefiting from unlawful scholarships in the previous government and the list of those who granted unlawful scholarships has been revealed during the ministration of Farajidana. He was removed from office through impeachment in August 2014.