In 2010, the Council of Soran University officially approved the opening of “Department of Petroleum Geosciences” within the Faculty of Science to become the fourth academic department alongside Mathematics, Computer Sciences, and Biology. The Department received its first year students in 2011-2012 academic year.
The Department of Petroleum Geosciences at Soran University has a unique role derived from and set by its envisaged position as a pioneer establishment that is set to perform and lead by example an internationally recognized level of scientific education and research in Kurdistan. The goals of this highly set ambition will be reflected by Petroleum Geosciences which are to be the core of the applied sciences program within the faculty of Sciences not because of their high interdisciplinary character that actively and in-depth employs the disciplines of Geology, biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics but also because is rightly justified by its enormous scientific and economic necessity to Kurdistan, to fill an existent gap in Kurdistan’s young and growing petroleum industry. To complete the picture, this interdisciplinary education and research target is not limited to Petroleum Geosciences but rightly extends to include research and education fields such as Environment and Paleoclimatology. These latter are hot research topics in almost all leading world universities.