Professor Raj Rajagopalan announced yesterday to the Board of Trustees of Skoltech that he would step down from his position as Provost by the end of July 2015 for family reasons.
“Prof. Rajagopalan’s decision to step down is a big loss for Skoltech, said Edward Crawley, Skoltech’s President. “Raj led the academic operation of Skoltech through its formative and most challenging years, putting together academic programs, hiring faculty, developing and executing Institute’s long term strategy”, Crawley said in a statement to Skoltech community.
Raj stated that his service as Provost has been one of the most rewarding and challenging tasks in his professional career. “It is a very rare opportunity to be among the founders and leaders of a new type of a university. I am grateful to my colleagues and my family for supporting this service and allowing me the privilege of getting to know yet another academic and social culture”, – he said in an address to the Skoltech community.
Raj will stay on at Skoltech as a Distinguished Professor and will continue to assist the project.
Raj joined Skoltech in 2012 as Founding Faculty Fellow. Prior to Skoltech Raj was closely involved in the establishment of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) from 2007 to 2012 and directed the NUS-KAUST Special Academic Partnership. He also helped set up and led a special graduate college at the National University of Singapore designed to promote research and PhD programs cutting across disciplinary boundaries by bringing life sciences, physical, chemical and mathematical sciences and engineering. He also initiated and directed some of the joint Master’s and PhD programs with international partners such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MIT, the Indian Institutes of Science at Madras, Mumbai, and Kanpur in India.
President Crawley appointed Professor Keith Stevenson, Director of Skoltech’s Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage to the position of the interim Provost. Professor Stevenson came to Skoltech from the University of Texas at Austin where his research focused on the areas of analytical chemistry, electrochemistry, and surface chemistry. Keith is a seasoned scholar and leader, holding numerous achievement awards, including NSF CAREER Award (2002) and Kavli Fellowship (2012)
The search for the new Provost will be underway imminently, led by the standing committee of the Board of Trustees of Skoltech.
About Skoltech Institute of Science and Technology:
The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) is a private graduate research university in Skolkovo, Russia, a suburb of Moscow. Established in 2011 in collaboration with The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Skoltech will educate global leaders in innovation, advance scientific knowledge, and foster new technologies to address critical issues facing Russia and the world. Applying international research and educational models, the university integrates the best Russian scientific traditions with twenty-first century entrepreneurship and innovation.
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