Dr. Savaş Alpay, Director General of SESRIC, received a delegation from the Center for Innovation and Technology Cooperation (CITC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran in his Office on 28 January 2010. The delegation comprised of Mr. Hamid Reza Amirinia, Chairman of the CITC of the Islamic Republic of Iran, two CITC advisors and one representative from the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Ankara, Turkey.

At the outset, Mr. Hakan Eryetli, Director of the Publication and IT Department of the SESRIC delivered a presentation on the initiatives undertaken by SESRIC. After the presentation, Dr. Savaş Alpay, Director General of the SESRIC, expressed his thanks and welcome to the delegates and briefed them on the activities of the Centre in the three areas of mandate: research, statistics and training. In particular, he highlighted the technical cooperation activities of SESRIC in statistics, vocational education and training.

On his part, the Head of the CITC delegation Mr. Amirinia expressed his thanks for the Director General of the Centre for his warm receiving of the delegation and informed him that the CITC is ready to cooperate with the Centre in the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology and e-government through exchanging technical expertise in research and development as well as in technical training for the benefit of the OIC Member Countries. He also expressed that the CITC and Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology (SCICT) of the Islamic Republic of Iran welcomed the Resolution No. 68 of the 25th Session of the COMCEC and took the initial steps with respect to the aforementioned COMCEC Resolution.

During the meeting, the two parties discussed on areas of possible cooperation between SESRIC and CITC. These included the possibility of setting up working groups on issues related to nanotechnology and e-government implementations in OIC Member Countries.