Professor Mesbahi has more than 26 years’ experience in the higher education sectors in Europe and Asia, with the last 10 of those spent in senior and executive roles. Much of his academic career has been at Newcastle University—a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities in the United Kingdom and one of the original ‘red brick’ universities with a long history of civic engagement and social purpose.
He was the founding Chief Executive Officer at Newcastle University’s Science, Agriculture and Engineering campus in Singapore, where he led the campus through a period of exponential growth in student numbers and research activities.
His current role is Vice Principal and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the University of West Scotland in Glasgow, where he has gained valuable experience in a young and teaching-oriented university.
Wellington University Vice-Chancellor Professor Grant Guilford says Professor Mesbahi’s established track record of strategic, academic and administrative leadership will be of enormous value to the University and its high performing teams in the faculties of Science, Engineering and Architecture and Design.
“Just as important is that our global-civic university vision aligns closely with Professor Mesbahi’s own views and experience,” says Professor Guilford.
Professor Mesbahi says he is looking forward to starting work at Wellington’s university.
“I am impressed with the very high quality of the academic activities in the faculties I will lead and see significant potential to rapidly intensify the faculties’ research impacts and national and global reputation while making a major contribution to solving globally challenging issues. I also see huge opportunities to contribute to the Wellington region’s communities, industries and businesses through the deep connections the University has already forged.”
Professor Mesbahi’s research interests are multi-disciplinary and applied and have expanded from modelling, control, design and optimisation of engineering systems early in his career to environmental management and, most recently, informatics and application of artificial intelligence in data-mining/clustering. During his academic career he has been the project lead (or co-lead) in over 25 national and international research projects generating research income of more than £10million and turnover of academic enterprise activities of more than £50million.
Professor Mesbahi will join the University in 2020.