KAUST Appoints New President
By Aoileann Ní Bhroin
Posted: 2 May, 2018
King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia (KAUST) has named Dr. Tony Chan as the third president of the university. Dr Chan, formerly President of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) will take up his position on September 1, 2018. The HEA is a partner with KAUST in a graduate studies scholarship offer that the University has made available to students from Irish universities.
In his time at HKUST, Dr Chan championed the use of new technology in education and the university was the first in Asia to offer MOOCs on both Coursera and EdX. The percentage of undergraduates who exchange overseas for at least one semester has increased from about 30 percent to over 50 percent and HKUST has the highest percentage of international undergraduates of all universities in HK (about 10 percent).
President Chan is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of KAUST, President’s Advisory Council of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Vienna, International Advisory Board of Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Board of Trustees of Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia, RIKEN Advisory Council of Japan, and the United States Committee of 100.
His professional field is computational mathematics, with interests including image processing and computer vision, physical circuit design and computational brain mapping. He has published over 200 refereed papers and was one of the most cited mathematicians in the world.
