Аfter the approval of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees Professor Raj Rajagopalan is appointed to serve as the Provost for the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, beginning on 25 March , 2014.
As the Provost, Raj will report to the President, and he will coordinate the functions of Education, Research, Faculty affairs, and Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In this role he will workclosely with the Dean of Education, Dean of the Faculty, Director for Student Affairs, the Vice President of Research Programs, the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the and others in the Office of Provost to enable the institution to rapidly develop and maintain a global reputation for academic axcellence. Raj will thereby assume, for the immediate future, the responsibilities previously invested in the Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation, including developing the research programs and infrastructure of Skoltech, overseeing the funding of CREIs and partners, creating the innovation and entrepreneurship programs, and developing international research collaborations
Raj will be responsible for ensuring that the standard and quality of the academic program of the institution is maintained and enhanced. He will be promoting academic initiatives across the Institution, working with the senior leadership responsible for education, research and innovation.
He will also be in charge of recruitment, retention, promotion and development of world-class faculty and ensure that faculty are constantly maintaining high quality standards in the delivery of the research, enterprise and education and that they are well supported by professional services. He will oversee the educational activities of the Institute and student affairs including the development and maintenance of a high quality student experience for all whom engage with Skoltech.
With others, as determined by the President, Raj will ensure the optimum distribution of resources in support of the institution’s objectives to the major constituent parts of the institution and serve as part of the President’s leadership team, and therefore contribute fully to the corporate leadership of Skoltech.
Raj joined Skoltech as Founding Faculty Fellow in May 2012. Later, in November 2012 Raj was appointed as Dean of Faculty at Skoltech. In this role he managed the faculty searches and hiring process in collaboration with MIT; developed faculty policies and procedures; guided faculty fellows hiring and employment processes. He was monitoring academic programs administration with faculty needs and schedules as well as managed the process of establishing faculty professional development procedures.
Prior joining Skoltech, Raj, a chemical engineer by background, was Program Chair of Chemical & Pharmaceutical Engineering at the Singapore-MIT Alliance at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in addition to other academic leadership positions such as Deputy Director of the NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Head of the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, and Head of the Environmental Sciences and Engineering Program at NUS. He was also the Director of Middle East Affairs for NUS, overseeing NUS’s research interactions with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE. He 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 conceived and led the efforts to set up Biomolecular Engineering, Environmental Science and Engineering and Chemical & Pharmaceutical Engineering programs at NUS and directed some of the joint Master’s and Ph.D. programs with international partners such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MIT, the Indial Institutes of Science at Chennai, Mumbai, and Kanpur in India.
Before he moved to Singapore in 2003, he spent over 25 years as a faculty member in New York, Texas, and Florida, and was briefly a Program Director at the US National Science Foundation.
Raj’s research activities focus on colloid physics and coplex fluids, liquid-state physics, and biomolecular science, and he is a co-author of a leading textbook on colloid and surface chemistry. His research and contribution to education has been recognized through awards and appointments to advisory boards and journal editorial boards by a number of professional societies and government agencies from the US, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Kazakhstan, among others.