The HAND Foundation has announced the names of the 2010 recipients of its scholarship programs. Seyed Jalil Kazemitabar and Amirreza Khosroshahi have been awarded HAND Research Foundation Scholarships for their first year of doctoral studies in economics at the the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University, respectively, where they plan to enroll in the fall of 2010. Both Seyed Jalil and Amir are graduates of Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran and are currently enrolled in the graduate program in economics at Sharif University.

Seyed Jalil, who has a bachelors degree in mathematics, has won numerous national and international mathematics competitions. His economic areas of interest include industrial organization, econometrics and microeconomics.

Amirreza, who ranked 25th in the on the Iranian National University Entrance Exam (concours) in 2003, is also the co-editor of the Persian economic blog cafeconomics.wordpress.com

Amir has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and his areas of interest include economic policy in Iran, economic theory and behavioral economics. Says Amirreza, "I am honored to be awarded the HAND Research Foundation scholarship and admire the HAND Foundation's commitment to advancing research on Iran's economy by, among other things, enabling Iranian students to attend the best graduate programs of economics in the world. I hope I can make a contribution, however small it might be, to keep this movement going toward a fruitful future of a new generation of great Iranian economists."

We are pleased to continue to see the rise in the number of Iranian applicants who have admissions from world's top 10 economics schools. They exemplify the next generation of economists who have a strong background in engineering and mathematics and will have a global perspective with which to inform their economic discipline.