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Following the recent trip of Professor Abass Alavi to Tabriz in last October and the ceremony which was held to confer the Honorary Doctorate degree upon him, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences decided to establish an institute for Aging Research in honor of Professor Alavi. Thereafter, a special committee consisted of Professor Abass Alavi, Professor Poul-Fleming Hojlund Carlsen, Dr. Manouchehr Seyyedi Vafaee, Dr. Kazem Shakouri, and Dr. Hassan Soleimanpour took the needed steps for the establishment of this center.

In this regard, the first meeting to organize Alavi International Institute of Aging Research (AIIA) was held at TUOMS from 21 to 23 January 2015 and the center was formally opened by Professor Alavi.

Professor Alavi was born in Tabriz in 1938. After his graduation from Tehran University, he went to the United States to continue his studies in internal medicine, hematology, diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine. He holds professorship of radiology and neurology in Pennsylvania University. He has carried out avant-garde investigations about PET imaging in the world. By his prescription of FDG, for the first time in the world, he was successful to apply this modality in grading primary tumors and diagnosing clinical consequences. Currently, he has been dubbed as the Father of PET and is the antagonist of implementation of new modality in global arena. This issue gains importance when we understand that PET imaging is highly positioned in aging studies. As a consequence, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences would like to name its new-born aging institute in honor of professor Alavi for the sake of his indefatigable and planned resolution to advance aging studies.