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KAUST Inauguration Symposium Speaker

Choon Fong Shih

President KAUST

Professor Choon Fong Shih was named Founding President of KAUST in 2008. He is also a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at KAUST.

An internationally recognized researcher and academic leader, Professor Shih joined KAUST after nine years as President and Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he led the transformation of NUS as a highly regarded research university embracing an entrepreneurial dimension.

After receiving a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973, he joined the General Electric Corporate Research Lab in the United States, where he led the Fracture Research Group. In 1981, he joined Brown University’s Division of Engineering. Professor Shih has been a consultant to the NASA, the NRC and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, among others. He is a member of the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. After 30 years in the United States, Professor Shih returned to Singapore in 1996 as the founding director of Singapore's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. The following year, he took up the concurrent appointment of Deputy Vice-Chancellor at NUS before becoming President and Vice- Chancellor in 2000.

Professor Shih was a key driver for the formation of the International Alliance of Research Universities, an alliance of 10 of the world's leading research universities spanning four continents. He is chairman emeritus of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a consortium of 37 leading research universities modeled after the premier Association of American Universities. In addition, Professor Shih chaired the Governing Board of the APRU World Institute, an institute of advanced studies seeking to address scientific, social, and economic issues of global importance.

Professor Shih has made significant contributions in nonlinear fracture mechanics and computational methods for fracture analyses. With about 150 publications, Professor Shih is listed by the ISI as among the world's most highly cited engineering researchers. Among his honors are the George Irwin Medal and the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award.

Professor Shih is a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was the inaugural recipient from Asia Pacific for the 2007 Chief Executive Leadership Award presented by the Council for Advancement and Support for Education. He has been awarded the French decoration "Chevalier" in the Order of the "Legion d'Honneur" and has several honorary doctorates.

Professor Shih has also served on a number of national-level committees in Singapore. He was the founding president of the Materials Research Society of Singapore. He was the chairman of the Singapore-MIT Alliance Governing Board and a member of the Economic Development Board. He was a founding member of the Singapore International Foundation, and served a committee tasked to develop wide-ranging strategies for re-making Singapore. Professor Shih was also a board member of the National Research Foundation.