On the morning of May 26th, 2021, Professor Shahbaz Khan, Director of the UNESCO Beijing Cluster Office (hereinafter referred to as Beijing Office), paid an official visit to the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI). This was his first official visit since arriving in China as the Director of Beijing Office. Professor LU Chun, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of SUSTech, Professor HAN Wei, Executive Deputy Director of UNESCO-ICHEI, and Professor WANG Guobin, Deputy Director of UNESCO-ICHEI received and held meetings with him.Professor LU started by introducing the history of SUSTech and its fruitful achievements in recent years. Professor Khan was impressed by the rapid development of SUSTech and proposed that UNESCO could set up a UNESCO chair at SUSTech, and collaborate to integrate concepts as global citizenship education, sustainable development, and open science into its model of talent cultivation. Together, these endeavors would help further accelerate SUSTech's International development and train STEM talents with international vision.

Photo of Professor LU presenting a gift to Professor Khan

Afterwards, Professor Khan visited UNESCO-ICHEI and held a meeting. The team at UNESCO-ICHEI elaborated its higher education cooperation projects in the Asia-Pacific, West Asia, and Africa regions and exchanged ideas on the implementation of the International Institute of Online Education (IIOE) project. Professor Khan praised the achievements of UNESCO-ICHEI in supporting UNESCO to fulfill its mission in education and spoke highly of the project outcomes. He suggested UNESCO-ICHEI further expand its cooperation in Asia and Africa at the national level to increase its project scale and visibility. He added that, Beijing Office would very much look forward to cooperating with UNESCO-ICHEI in both higher education and Artificial Intelligence through IIOE. He also invited UNESCO-ICHEI in due course to visit Beijing Office for further discussion on cooperation.

UNESCO-ICHEI presented Professor Khan with a souvenir

Group photo of Professor Khan with staff representatives of UNESCO-ICHEI

Professor Khan's message for UNESCO-ICHEI

Professor Shahbaz at the Gallery of UNESCO-ICHEI

Introduction of Professor Khan

Professor Khan officially assumed office on March 9th, 2021 as the Director of Beijing Office, responsible for UNESCO's projects and work in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Japan, Mongolia, the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea.He has been devoted to research in the fields of civil engineering, water resources technology and management, international environmental law, environmental economics, and international environmental science for the past 31 years. He served as the Director of UNESCO Regional Science Bureau for Asia and the Pacific and as the Representative to Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste from 2005 before he took his new office. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Civil Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore in Pakistan (1990), a Master of Science in Water Resources Technology and Management (1992), and a Doctorate in Civil Engineering (1995) from the University of Birmingham, in Britain, a Master's Degree in International Environmental Law (2005) from Macquarie University in Australia, a Master of Science in Applied Environmental Economics (2007) from Imperial College London and other degrees.