Professor Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai
, Dean of School ofEngineering and Technology (SET) was appointed as the new Vice
President for Resource Development at AIT, after the meeting of the
Board of Trustees on 7 April 2009. The Board also approved the
administration’s proposal, to integrate and merge the current two
part-time positions of Vice President for External Relations and Vice
President for Development and Resources, into one full-time Vice
President position, with a proposed title of Vice President for
Resource Development.
In approving Professor Worsak for the position, the Board acknowledged
his strong academic and professional standing in his field, and the
extensive linkages and networks which he has among institutions and
society, especially in the host country Thailand.
The current appointments of the Vice Presidents are until 30 June
2009, concurrent with the end of AIT President’s first term in office.
Into the second term, starting from 1 July 2009, there will be three
Vice Presidents at AIT, namely, part-time Vice President for Academic
Affairs, Professor Peter Haddawy; part-time Vice
President for Research, Professor Sudip K. Rakshit;
and full-time Vice President for Resource Development,
Professor Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai.
According to AIT President Irandoust, both Vice
President (External Relations), Professor Vilas
Wuwongse; and Vice President (Development and Resources),
Dr. Khin Ni Ni Thein, who made excellent contributions
to the Institute, have indicated their unavailability to take on a
full-time Vice President position. They will continue serving in their
respective functions until 30 June 2009.
Prof. Worsak, an AIT alumnus (M.Eng. in Structural Engineering and
Construction 1973), received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering and
Structural Mechanics from the University of California at Berkeley in
1978 as a Fulbright Scholar. He joined AIT in 1978 and has been a
Professor since 1987. In administration, he has served as the Dean of
the School of Civil Engineering during 1998-2004.
Prof. Worsak has extensive research experiences and published widely
in Computational Mechanics for the last 25 years. In 1997 he was
admitted as a Royal Scholar as member of the Royal Institute of
Thailand. In 1999, he was honored as “National Distinguished Researcher
of the Year” by Thailand’s National Research Council and was cited as
Thailand’s National Researcher of the Year in 2002. Internationally, he
was awarded “Fellow of the International Association of Computational
Mechanics (IACM)” in 2006. In the same year, Prof. Worsak was
recognized by the AIT Alumni Association (Mother Chapter) as the
Outstanding AIT alumnus.