The University of Kurdistan (UOK) commenced its activities as the Higher College of Sanandaj, an affiliate of Tarbiat Moallem (Teacher Training Institute), Tehran in the academic year 1974–1975.

By expanding its pedagogical activities and conducting research in a wide variety of fields, this teacher training unit was granted university status by the Ministry of Higher Education and Culture in 1991.

University of Kurdistan has an autonomous college (Pardis), 8 faculties and 45 departments offering 170 undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Both training and research are undertaken at the highest professional level and a wide range of agriculture based scientific courses are offered to graduate and postgraduate students.

It has approximately 2500 students who are on 9 programmes leading to an undergraduate degree, 18 programmes leading to master's degree and 4 programmes leading to a PhD: This faculty has two student computer centers, an advanced computer teaching, a sport sciences laboratory and research centre, two other laboratories for counseling and psychology departments, Hazhar Library, and conference and seminar facilities including Ferdowsi, Mastoureh Ardalan and Mawlawi Halls.

The faculty has 34 full-time and more than 24 part-time academic staff that offer teaching and research services to over 1000 students.

Departments: Following the remarkable success of University of Kurdistan's educational and research activities, the Council of Higher Education in July 2013 agreed to the establishment of an Autonomous College citing the existence of adequate infrastructure such as adequate physical space, sufficient human resources including faculty members and experienced administrative staff, workshops, laboratories, computer sites, library resources, study halls, sports facilities, as well as performance and management of the university campus.

The SMGRC provides a rich source of training, testing, and experimental laboratorial facilities for various smart grid and microgrid (MG) academic/industrial projects, specifically in the area of advanced robust and intelligent control synthesis and analysis methodologies.

In addition to the modeling and simulation environment for training and educational purposes, a wide range of distributed generators (e.g., PV panel, wind turbine, diesel generator), energy capacitor systems, grid components, modules, and sub-systems are available for different classes of testing and validation capabilities.

The central core of the existing platform is a real-time simulator that can be connected to hardware equipment through power amplifiers.

The University of Kurdistan and West Regional Electric Co. (WREC) are the main domestic supporters of the SMGRC.

This center's mission is to enhance the security of cyberspace products through traffic monitoring, malware analysis, penetration testing, and intrusion detection.

It also conducts workshops and short educational programs in the field of ICT security for students and IT professionals.

The main goal of the institute is to undertake research in the fields of Kurdish language, literature and culture and to represent their richness to the full extent.

In addition, regular training workshops are held by the institute and a valuable reference library with more than 7500 books in the field of Kurdish studies is open to interested researchers.