The Role of Higher Education in Addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Dr. Ramu Damodaran

Chief, United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI)

Ramu Damodaran is Deputy Director for Partnerships and Public Engagement in the United Nations Department of Public Information's Outreach Division and is chief of the United Nations Academic Impact initiative, which aligns institutions of higher learning and research with the objectives of the United Nations and the States and peoples who constitute it. He is also the current secretary of the United Nations Committee on Information. His earlier posts with the Organization have included the Departments of Peacekeeping and special Political Questions, as well as the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.

Ramu has been a member of the Indian Foreign Service, where he was promoted to the rank of Ambassador, and where he served as Executive Assistant to the Prime Minister of India as well as in the diplomatic missions in Moscow and the United Nations, and in a range of national governmental ministries. He has been involved in mass media in India, including print, radio and television, and was a recipient of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union award for the best radio documentary.

Dr. Alex Awiti

Vice Provost, Aga Khan University, East Africa

Alex O. Awiti is Vice Provost at Aga Khan University. Before assuming the role of Vice Provost, Awiti was the Founding Director of the East Africa Institute of Aga Khan University.

Prior to joining the Aga Khan University, Awiti was a postdoctoral fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University in the City of New York. He was also an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Awiti worked as a scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi for 9 years where with colleagues he pioneered the application of infrared spectroscopy for diagnostic surveillance of soil quality at the farm and landscape scale. Awiti is an alumnus of the CSC Leaders program, a global leadership program for exceptional leaders from the Commonwealth. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of the Fraser Valley in BC, Canada. He is an Associate Professor and holds a PhD in Ecosystems Ecology.

Dr. Greg Moran

Executive Director, Academics Without Borders (AWB)

Dr. Greg Moran has been Executive Director of Academics Without Borders since October 2017.

Immediately prior to this, Dr. Moran was Director, Special Projects at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario for two years. He served as Provost and Chief Academic Officer of Aga Khan University (AKU) from 2011-2015 and was based in Nairobi, Kenya, for three of those years. AKU is an international institution of higher learning operating in eight countries on three continents, with campuses in Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, England, and Afghanistan.

Greg is Professor Emeritus and Provost Emeritus at Western University in London, Ontario, where he held the appointment from 1977 through 2015. At Western, he also served as Chair of the Department of Psychology and Dean of Graduate Studies. As a developmental/clinical psychologist and professor for over three decades, he pursued a better understanding of the nature, origins, and developmental consequences of the first relationship between infants and mothers.

Greg Moran co-authored a book on the state and future of higher education in Ontario, Academic Transformation: The Forces Reshaping Higher Education.

Dr. Andrea Baumann

Associate Vice President of Global Health, McMaster University, and Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Primary Care

Andrea Baumann RN, PhD, FAAN, C.M. is the Associate Vice-President of Global Health, Faculty of Health Sciences and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre in Primary Care and Nursing Health Human Resources. She has made substantial contributions as a health services researcher, writer and award-winning academic. She has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and has written and contributed to several books. A key area of focus is the employment integration of international nurses, the largest predominantly female group of highly skilled newcomers to Canada. She has received numerous awards, including the Order of Canada in July 2018.

Dr. Peter Mascher

Vice Provost, International Affairs, McMaster University

Peter Mascher obtained a PhD in Engineering Physics in 1984 from the Technische Universität Graz (TUG) in Austria and joined McMaster University in 1989. He is a professional engineer and a professor in the Department of Engineering Physics and since February 2014, he is overseeing McMaster’s International Portfolio as Vice-Provost, International Affairs. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Electrochemical Society.

Mascher holds the William Sinclair Chair in Optoelectronics and leads active research groups involved in the fabrication and characterization of thin films for optoelectronic applications, the development and application of silicon-based nanostructures, and the characterization of defects in solids by positron annihilation spectroscopy. He has supervised more than 85 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, has authored or coauthored close to 250 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings, and has presented many invited lectures at international conferences and workshops. He currently serves as Vice-Chair of Nano Ontario, Chair of the Dielectric Science and Technology Division of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), and as a Technical Editor for the ECS Journal of Solid-State Science and Technology.