University of Tehran Kish International Campus offers the following research-based PhD programs to foreign students and Iranian students who are currently studying abroad.

PhD programs at UT-KIC:

Business Management
Business Management is a program designed for qualified and motivated students who wish to acquire top research and analytical skills. It is designed for students having jobs willing to extend and deep their knowledge and experience, it also provides know-how that could be used to work at multinational companies, government agencies, financial institutions, consulting firms and international agencies. This PhD program offers world-class forefront research under the supervision of an academic staff.

Government management
Government Management involves the study of how different government divisions and employees interact with each other to accomplish their goals. This program provides researchers with specialized knowledge to be effective in government bodies and teach them when positioned in power and leadership can handle managing the economic, social, and environmental needs of the people.

Human Resource Management
Human resource management explore the global and multidisciplinary aspects of human resource management and enhance the student ability to develop solutions for strategic human resource, initiatives are dedicated to a better understanding of how work organizations can perform more effectively by better management of their people, application of new technologies in the workplace, and the impact of the dynamic work environment on human resource management practices.

Manufacturing and Operations Management
PhD in Manufacturing and Operations Management deals with developing quantitative models and analysis to address issues dealing with real-life problems in industry and service organizations. The underlying concepts of the production and operations function of an organization as well as understanding and effectively dealing with designers and engineers and how they perform in a company.

Operation Management Research
Ph.D. in Operations Management Research involves the study of management concerns related to the design, decision-making, and implementation of operating systems, development of quantitative modeling to empirical studies using tools from Operation Research, stochastic processes and statistics, to train researchers and to develop scientific solutions to the problems currently being faced by operations managers.

Financial Management
Ph.D. in Financial Management, will explore research and development analyses used to manage and allocate financial resources, and develop effective strategic planning for projection and ROI issues. you can develop and use financial models and theoretical tools to help gain an understanding of some of the most challenging national and international financial problems by learning advanced finance skills, including financial statement analysis, advanced financial business decision models, investment selection techniques and how financial institutions generate earnings and manage risks.

Media Management
The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Media Management will provide the framework, the focus and the discipline necessary to conduct a speculative inquiry in the field of media and communication. This program is ideal for anyone who is excited by the possibility of working in the rapidly expanding media and entertainment industries. Media Management degree gives a solid foundation in the latest concepts and practices for managing traditional and emergent media platforms. New media technologies continuously result in extensive product development and thus new offers, new distribution channels, more effective tools for marketing management, more opportunities for market and marketing communications, increased customer involvement in these activities, and new customer buying and consumption behaviors.
Through research, critical analysis, students learn the best practices for responsible and innovative leadership in all areas of media management: production, media economics and finance, marketing, distribution, and new technology development.

Entrepreneurship
The Ph.D. program of Entrepreneurship at UTKIC focuses on training the students to be able to create the social and economic value by developing core capabilities of idea generation, opportunity recognition, resource acquisition, and entrepreneurial management. In UTKIC both predictive and creative approaches to all aspects of launching, growing and expanding businesses and organizations are taught, providing a broad skill-set for business and also providing highly customized paths for a variety of business contexts, including new ventures, franchises, corporate ventures, local and international companies. The program also teaches the students how to decompose complex situations, identify critical choices confronting the enterprise, and make high-risk/high reward decisions with limited data.
Objectives of the Entrepreneurship Ph.D. program
Facilitating entrepreneurial knowledge through research, teaching, and practice.
To provide necessary training in writing and presentation skills that enable students to communicate with business partners, consumers, clients, and employers effectively.
To nurture a sense of ethics and social responsibility that prepares students to be visionary local and global business leaders.

Accounting
The Ph.D. in accounting provide a thorough understanding of current accounting theory, practice and research within the framework of modern finance theories as applied to the behavior of today's financial markets
Accounting research spans a broad range of inquiry into the production, use, nature and impact of accounting information. Research questions arise from problems in financial and managerial accounting, auditing, taxation, and information systems, as well as from research findings in disciplines that are relevant to accounting.

Economics- Econometrics
Economics- Econometrics is an inter-disciplinary science aimed to understand economic and financial behavior through the use of data, economic theory, mathematics, statistical methods, and other quantitative techniques to forecast the effects of changes in economic or financial factors under various scenarios. All aspects of business require using the real-world information to make good business decisions. Econometrics provides a broad set of quantitative tools that extract information from observable data in order to test our beliefs about the real world and make the economic decisions even better. Econometrics was pioneered by Lawrence Klein, Ragnar Frisch and Simon Kuznets, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for their contributions. Much of economic activity in the world like interest rates, wages, prices, rents, and changes in those things can be measured. Econometrics will help verify theories about how consumers behave, what governments will do, and when things will change. It can also answer the questions: what is the default rate on a security? Does the default rate change over time? What is the price impact of an earnings announcement? What will the GDP be next quarter? What variables determine the demand for a product? The Ph.D. program of Economics- Econometrics at UTKIC is addressed to students of high promise who wish to prepare themselves in teaching and research in academia or for responsible positions in government, research organizations, or business enterprises.

Sports Science and Physical Education- Sports Management
The Ph.D. degree in sports management gather a combination of skills related to planning, organizing, directing, controlling, budgeting and evaluating within the context of an organization related to sport or physical activity. Graduates are prepared for careers as faculty or administrators in higher education, private organizations, public agencies, and/or other research-based institutions. Sport managers carry out these skills in a variety of organizational settings such as college sports; professional sports; amateur sports (Olympic/Paralympic); sport marketing and management firms; sport communication and news media firms; corporate sponsorship and advertising firms; sporting goods firms; arenas, stadiums, and civic centers; community recreation sports programs; private club sports programs.
 

Exercise Physiology ( Biochemistry and sports metabolism)
The Ph.D. degree in Exercise Physiology (Biochemistry and sports metabolism) is an interdisciplinary degree program. This program uses a unique interdisciplinary approach to address the role of energy transportation under varying metabolic and pathological states by focuses on metabolic, hormonal, and cardiovascular responses to acute and chronic physical activity. Students address research questions that range from the whole body to the gene level as they investigate the mechanisms by which physically active lifestyles influence disease processes, prevention, and treatment. The curriculum prepares students for careers in health-related fields, as well as for graduate studies in exercise physiology, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and biomedical research.

Movement Behavior (Motor Development)
The Ph.D. program in movement Behavior (movement development) is to develop research and teaching scholars who are capable of producing and disseminating new knowledge in the field of human movement science and prepare students for professions concerned with the learning and performance of motor skills; and engage in research investigating the neural and behavioral processes underlying the performance of motor skills of people of all ages. The goal of the program is to prepare professionals with research knowledge, critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities required to be successful leaders, scholars, and educators.

Movement Behavior (Motor Learning)
The PhD program with a specialization in Movement behavior( motor learning) focused on the learning and performance of coordinated movement, preparing the students for professions concerned with the learning or re-learning of motor skills; and engage in research investigating the processes underlying the learning of motor skills and intervention strategies to facilitate the learning or re-learning of motor skills.
Exercise Physiology (Neuromuscular Physiology)
The Ph.D. program in Exercise Physiology (Neuromuscular Physiology) is designed to increase the student's knowledge and understanding about human physiology and the adaptations that occur during exercise focusing on neuromuscular responses to the physical stress of exercise. The neural control of the body movement; mechanism of muscle contraction and its regulation; adaptations of skeletal muscle to weight training, disuse, aging and injury. Within the dynamic field of neuromuscular exercise physiology, ideas of how nerves and muscles collaborate during acute and chronic exercise are of research concern. The application of research finding to the exercise rehabilitation of individuals with compromised nervous system function, such as spinal cord injury and neuromuscular diseases is another concern of the program.

Sports Science and Physical Education (corrective Exercise and sports Injuries)
The Ph.D. in Sports Science and Physical Education (corrective Exercise and sports Injuries) is designed to provide experts capable of improving the physical and mental health as well as motor activities of people through teaching, research, planning, and supervising. Also conduct a diverse range of musculoskeletal screening methods and derive corrective exercise prescription; investigate common injuries that occur in sport and with physical activity, and conceptually map the initial and ongoing management of injuries; find the evidence, and contextualize the best practice, of recovery strategies for physical activity-acquired injury management and prevention. Prevention and management of a diverse range of sport- and physical activity-acquired injuries

Meteorology (Climatology)
The Ph.D. in Meteorology (Climatology) concerns the study of the climate system of the earth with emphasis on the physical, dynamical, and chemical interactions of the atmosphere, ocean, land, ice, and the terrestrial and marine biospheres. The science of the atmosphere is a fundamental science, exciting, challenging with open questions. Climate Sciences encompasses changes on seasonal to interannual time scales and those induced by human activities, as well as paleoclimatic changes on time scales from centuries to millions of years. • The climate has strong socio-economic drivers: climate change and high impact weather and the effect on population life.

Geopolitics
The Ph.D. program in Geopolitics explore geopolitical and political geographic analysis. The emergence of increasingly complex geopolitical trends and evolving strategic dynamics and probable global challenges are the concern of program. The world is undergoing significant strategic and geopolitical redefinition. The program focuses on the geostrategic stakes that shape the ever-shifting international environment.  It seeks to make geopolitics and international affairs more operational fields of research favoring the emergence of new methodologies.

Geography and Urban Planning
The PhD in Geography and Urban Planning concerns about the human geographic and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding/ responding to the challenges of an era of rapid urbanization and urban redevelopment with focuses on the themes of globalization, social justice, and sustainability as lenses through which to examine the development of urban regions, providing advanced knowledge of the principles and conceptual foundations of human geographic and urban social science. The methodological tools to understand the complex nature of reciprocating interactions between humans and the environment is also concerned.    
 

Geography and Rural Planning
The Ph.D. in Geography and Rural Planning will cover theoretical concepts and policies of rural resources utilization for development of the rural area and provide an overview of rural problems and their inter-related nature and the rationale of rural development. It will also look at rural resources and development defined, the resource base for rural development and policy planning and implementation methodologies. The ways to improve the quality of life and economy of the rural inhabitants to grow the area is of concern.

Geomorphology
 The Ph.D. in Geomorphology study endogenic, exogenic and Planetary geomorphology. Mass movement and weathering processes. Fluvial, littoral, eolian and periglacial landforms and processes. Landform development in different climates and time perspectives.  processes that have shaped, and continue to shape, the landscape around us. Resulting landforms and the forces involved are explored using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Considering issues such as damming rivers, slope stability, and the ongoing interaction between human activity and geomophic processes in the local region


HUMANITIES

Private Law
The Ph.D. program in Private Law is designed to prepare the students for careers as legal scholars on the private area which regulates the legal relations between individuals like contract law, laws on compensation, inheritance, employment, family law, etc. This program offers students an opportunity to contribute to the development of law as an academic field, and it provides an alternate pathway into law teaching alongside. The program is intensive, selective, and challenging, ideal for those students intent on deepening and broadening their critical understanding of the law, as well as their original engagement with it.

Public Law
The program in Ph.D. Public Law is concerned with legal matters that have a bearing on the political and sovereign capacity of the government, notably the legal relations between the government and its citizens like constitutional law, administrative law, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law. This program provides a foundational course for students interested in government lawyering, constitutional litigation, administrative regulation and adjudication, public policy, and other public law fields.

International Law
The PhD in International Law offers high-level specialization and training in international law by research. The program offers students experiential training in various international law. The research could be directed in: international law, human rights, international arbitration, international trade and WTO law and International Business Law. This program is aimed at those who intend to expand their knowledge and abilities in the subject matters covered by the program, in order to pursue a career in academia or at research institutions and international organizations.
 
Criminology
The Ph.D. program in Criminology focuses on the causes, manifestations and consequences of crime; the impacts of crime on society; crime prevention; social regulation; the civil justice system; the social and cultural contexts of law; and the interactive effects of law and society. Criminology is the scientific study of the measurement, etilogy, consequences, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and deliquency. Criminology has also been referred to as the study of "making law, breaking of the law, and society's reaction to the breaking of the law. This program emphasizes criminal research, and policy. The program is designed to produce highly skilled criminology and criminal justice faculty and agency researchers and administrators.

TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language)
Ph.D. program in TEFL is designed for those students who are willing to advance their Pedagogical Knowledge in English Language Teaching, research methodologies, intercultural communication and educational foundations. The Ph.D. program offers professional development to students and prepares them to be a researcher and leader in Teaching English. The Ph.D. students gain experience and understanding in areas such as; second language acquisition, second language reading and writing, language socialization, language and identity, second language assessment, discourse analysis, critical applied linguistics, and research methods. The program offers a unique supervised teaching practicum in an intensive English program. This experience equips graduates to analyze language, meet the English language learning needs of the learners, and enter the field as a professional.

English Literature
The Ph.D. program in English Literature trains students to be successful scholars and teachers of literature and of writing and rhetoric. The PhD curriculum offers opportunities for advanced study in a variety of literary and language fields, including literary and cultural history; aesthetic, critical, and cultural theory; digital and media studies; humanistic engagement with the sciences; and language, rhetoric, and composition. You'll investigate the cultural categories of literature and the media, in both historical and contemporary contexts. The curriculum addresses a series of broad questions relevant to such studies: What are the histories, genealogies, and futures of literary, cultural, and rhetorical studies?  What are the relationship of such work to society, politics, and history?  To the media of representation and communication?  To reading and writing practices?  To disciplinarily and institutional contexts?  How do we conceptualize, teach, and apprehend aesthetics through literary and other modes of cultural expression? The program will be of special interest to those doctoral students with the desire and skills necessary to work across discourses, media, or literary languages and/or traditions.

Pscychology
The PhD program in Psychology gives you the opportunity to develop a broad base of knowledge, strong research and critical thinking skills, and an appreciation for diversity by applying principles of psychology and conducting research related to your area of interest. This program can help you examine the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive issues impacting human behavior and acquire the foundation necessary to plan and conduct relevant psychological research.

Educational Psychology
The Ph.D. program in Educational Psychology encompasses an integrated degree that calls for knowledge of teaching, learning, development, motivation; and measurement, statistics, evaluation, and research design. Students are expected to acquire a balanced knowledge of both scholarly and applied aspects of the field of educational psychology. Contribute to the field of education through independent, professional research. Deepen your understanding of key psychological theories affecting issues related to the learning experiences of both high achievers and individuals whose needs are more specialized. Explore how to apply these theories to teaching learners across their lifespan and researching student cognition, motivation, and development.

Engineering

Industrial Engineering
The Ph.D. program in Industrial engineering is dedicated to the design, integration, and optimization of systems of people and machines that produce and deliver high quality goods and services. Industrial engineers are trained to provide the best productivity and quality of such systems. Industrial Engineering concerns for innovative system design and problem solving in various research areas, including operations research and its applications, supply chain management, scheduling, quality control and reliability, Lean systems design, production planning and inventory control, revenue management, and product  design and development; allocating resources, and directing and controlling activities that have a technological component, thereby bridging the gap between engineering and management.

Petroleum Engineering (Reservoir)
Reservoir engineering is a subdivision of Petroleum engineering that deals with modeling the reservoir fluid movement and maximizing oil and gas recovery. The main topics of study in reservoir engineering are: phase behavior of fluids in a reservoir, reservoir rock properties, fluid flow in porous media, reservoir simulation, rock-fluid interactions, well testing, well performance, material balance, natural reservoir drive mechanisms, and various methods of improved and enhanced oil recovery.
The tasks of the reservoir engineer are centered on answering the following questions: How much oil and gas is originally in place? What are the drive mechanisms for the reservoir? What are the trapping mechanisms for the reservoir? What will be the recovery factor for the reservoir by primary depletion? What will be the future production rates from the reservoir? How can the recovery be increased economically?


Polymer Engineering
The Ph.D. in polymer engineering offer interdisciplinary, applied and industry oriented program and provides a broad foundation in the synthesis, characterization, processing and design of polymers. Compounding and preparation of polymer blends and composites, polymer rheology and connection to structures, multiphase polymeric systems and polymers with nano-scale structures, polymer processing including numerical modelling of injection moulding, extrusion, thermoforming and film blowing are among the program concerns.

Mechanical Engineering- Manufacturing Technology
The Ph.D. program in Mechanical Engineering- Manufacturing Technology relate to a wide spectrum of tool machines, robots and robotic systems, automatic assembly systems, measurement and control machines, flexible technological systems, working systems and other components and elements. Mechanical engineering – Manufacturing technology graduates have the necessary design, production and automation skills required in mechanical engineering. In addition, they are well-versed in materials technology, which is necessary for the selection of raw materials. They also have deep and up-to-date knowledge about either design of mechanical systems or production systems. They learn computer technologies for process simulation and process design CAD, CAM and CAE systems in the engineering design area of products and production, organization, planning and numeric control.

Environmental Engineering - Water and Wastewater
The Ph.D. degree program in Environmental Engineering-Water and Wastewater aims to develop water and wastewater treatment scientists, technologists and engineers with the skills to solve practical problems, communicate effectively and work successfully both in teams and individually, also high quality graduates trained and qualified to work in all areas of water and wastewater treatment and management enabling them to provide a valuable contribution to the global water sectors.

Environmental Engineering- Water Resources
The Ph.D. degree program in Environmental Engineering-Water Resources is a broad discipline dedicated to addressing environmental issues in water resources. Water is under increasing pressure from demographic and climatic changes. Treatment processes play a key role in delivering safe, reliable supplies of water to households, industry and agriculture, and in safeguarding the quality of water.
The program offers a broad-based curriculum with opportunities for concentrated study in environmental chemistry, environmental fluid mechanics, hazardous substance treatment and control, subsurface fate and transport, pollution microbiology, resource development and management and water quality engineering.
Environmental water resources engineering at UT-KIC focuses on the following, but not limited, subjects
•    evaluate removal of water pollutants for direct potable reuse
•    model the impact of extreme events such as floods and droughts
•    quantify the impact of the flow of water and its contaminants in rivers and coastal systems
•    design storm water control facilities to improve surface water quality
•    remediate ground waters impacted by unintended pollutant releases

Environmental Engineering- Air Pollution
The Ph.D. degree program in Environmental Engineering- Air Pollution is a multidisciplinary program that involves the applications of scientific knowledge and engineering solution to control pollution and to provide clean air for the workers in industries. Air pollutants are a complex mix of chemicals emitted by human and natural sources and formed in the atmosphere such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, heavy metal trace species, volatile organic compounds, and hydrocarbons. Air pollution engineering consists of two major components, air pollution control and air quality engineering. Air pollution control focuses on the fundamentals of air pollutant formation in process technologies and the identification of options for mitigating or preventing air pollutant emissions. Globally, air pollution is responsible for over four million premature deaths annually. Air quality engineering deals with large-scale, multi-source control strategies, with focus on the physics and chemistry of pollutant interactions in the atmosphere.

Environmental Engineering- Environmental Planning
The Ph.D. degree program in Environmental Engineering- Environmental Planning is the advanced degree in Environmental planning and is focused on training students for research and teaching in the areas of environmental planning. Environmental planning is the application of natural and social science to promote environmentally sound development and management of natural resources. It is a broad field, bridging the disciplines of geology, soils, hydrology, plant and wildlife ecology, law, and public policy. The environmental planner plays a pivotal role providing a bridge between specialists and the decision makers. Much better land-use decisions will result if the decision makers are better informed about the environmental effects of alternative actions. Thus, the environmental planner pulls information together from various disciplines and presents it in a form comprehensible to decision makers. This involves working closely with specialists in interactions that draw upon the planner's background in these specializations. At the regional planning scale, environmental planners analyze the landscape to identify constraints on land use. From these analyses, guidelines and regulations are developed to reduce losses from landslides, earthquakes, floods, forest fires, and other natural hazards. Environmental planners for the site planning review specific development proposals, acting as intermediaries between natural scientists and planning firms to inspire more creative and ecologically informed plans and to help mitigate the detrimental effects of development toward a sustainable one.

Energy Systems Engineering- Energy and Environment
Energy Systems in Environmental Engineering is a multidisciplinary program that aims to meet the current and growing challenge of dwindling fossil fuel resources and the critical demand for alternative, renewable energy sources as a global priority. As the energy industry undergoes transformative changes, a highly trained, diverse workforce is needed to innovate and drive the world's clean energy future.
The PhD degree program in Energy Systems - Environmental Engineering, integrates the technology of energy systems development in the light of environmental planning needs for more effective implementation of such technologies. The goal of the Energy Systems in Environmental Engineering is to create a high-level signature, an interdisciplinary graduate program for the engineers who are pursuing or expecting an industrial or public-planning-based career.
This program focuses primarily on the impact of industrial activities on the environment and the choice of cost-effective remediation strategies and means. All students gain a deeper understanding of both the impact of environmental degradation on society and the effects on the industrial activity of society's demands for protection of man and the environment.

Science

Nano-Chemistry
Nanochemistry and technology is the creation of functional materials, devices, and systems through control of matter on the nanometer (1 to 100 nm) length scale and the exploitation of novel properties and phenomena developed at that scale. Nanochemistry is an emerging subdiscipline of chemistry that emphasizes the synthesis rather than the engineering aspects of preparing little pieces of matter with nanometer sizes in one, two or three dimensions. The nanochemist can be considered to work towards this goal from the atom 'up', whereas the nanophysicist tends to operate from the bulk 'down'. Nanochemists develop new pharmaceutical products, structural materials, electronic device components, light-emitting materials, and many other products, many already available commercially.

Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary science at the interfaces of the biological, informational and computational sciences, uses computation to better understand biology. Bioinformatics involves the analysis of biological data, particularly DNA, RNA, and protein sequences. The field of bioinformatics experienced explosive growth starting in the mid-1990s, driven largely by the Human Genome Project and by rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology. Recent and novel technologies produce biological data sets of ever-increasing resolution that reveal not only genomic sequences but also RNA and protein abundances, their interactions with one another, their subcellular localization, and the identity and abundance of other biological molecules. This requires the development and application of sophisticated computational methods. Bioinformatics utilizes computational approaches to analyze patterns in biological data and to create complex models of biological activity, including attempts to elucidate the functions of genes and their interactions in genetic pathways. Widespread social benefits are expected from the exploitation of the wealth of new knowledge concerning the genetic mechanisms of life and related processes.

Cell and Molecular Biology
The Ph.D. program in Cell and Molecular Biology provide an intensive, innovative but broadly-based training in molecular and cell biology. The program focuses primarily on the mechanisms of a biological phenomenon that operate at the cellular scale and provides participants with the conceptual and technical background to investigate basic or applied problems at the molecular and cellular levels, in the life and biomedical sciences. Students are encouraged to utilize a broad spectrum of experimental rationales and methodologies in cutting-edge approaches that integrate diverse disciplines and often involve collaboration; advanced microscopy and genetic analysis in wide ranging model organisms are crosscutting themes.


Art  

Architecture
The Ph.D. degree program in Architecture is for the person who wishes to investigate architecture and the built environment in focused projects that unfold over a span of years. Students embarking on a doctorate conduct original research that yields new insights into past, current, and future developments of architecture and building practices. Doctoral Studies promotes independent critical thinkers and research specialists across a range of fields within the increasingly broad fields of architecture and the built environment.
The province of the PhD is the exploration of new territories of design research, contributions to the knowledge base of the discipline, and steps toward the redefinition of aspects of design. The program also develops advanced technical research skills to prepare students for a career in industry, academia and other settings in which systematic and critical analytical skills are required. Candidates are supported and engaged in communities of practice where learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon; where knowledge is integrated into the life of these communities that share interests, ideas, discourses, ways of doing things and exploring the boundaries of design thinking.

Art Research
The PhD in Art Research offers a rigorous, supportive and dynamic environment where the investigation of ideas and material practice pertinent to artistic research informs the production of art by the balance between studio practice and the conceptual and theoretical concerns that underpin artistic research. The core subject of this program is the specific productivity of artistic processes and strategies as research as well as the participants' critical reflection of their own artistic practice, which can be both method and subject matter of artistic research. The thesis consists of an artistic work, as well as a presentation in the meaning of a reflexive documentation of the insights gained.