Arvind Gupta will succeed Stephen Toope as the 13th president and vice chancellor of the University of B.C., July 1.
Gupta is chief executive officer and scientific director of Mitacs, a not-for-profit national organization that’s headquartered in Vancouver and recognized internationally for nurturing the next generation of research and business-savvy innovators.
Gupta will become president for a five-year-term while retaining his position as a computer science professor at UBC.
Gupta has led Mitacs since 2000 and been a professor of computer science at UBC since 2009. He’s been a member of the federal government’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council, an advisory body that provides policy advice on science and technology and produces national reports measuring Canada’s science and technology performance against international standards of excellence, since 2012. In 2010, Gupta was appointed to a six-member panel to review federal government support to industrial research and development. The recommendations in the panel’s report, Innovation Canada: A Call to Action, continue to impact government policy.
The UBC Board of Governors appointed Gupta following an international search by a 22-member committee comprising faculty, staff, students, alumni, senate and board members from UBC’s Vancouver and Okanagan campuses, and chaired by UBC chancellor Sarah Morgan-Silvester.
twitter.com/Cheryl_Rossi
