Tarek Shawki is the Director of UNESCO's Regional Bureau for Science in Arab States since June 2008. Previously he served as the Chief of the Section for "ICTs in Education, Science and Culture" within the "Information Society Division" in UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France from 2005 - 2008 and as the Regional Advisor for Communications and Information at the UNESCO Cairo Office (UCO) between January 1999 and November 2005.

Dr. Shawki was the key architect behind the signing of the UNESCO-Microsoft Cooperation Agreement on November of 2004. In addition, Dr Shawki is the architect behind the emerging UNESCO framework for ICT Competencies of Teachers besides being directly responsible for a number of national, regional and global UNESCO projects in the fields of ICTs, Education, Science and Culture.

Prior to joining UNESCO, Dr Shawki has been a Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics for many years, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also served as a panelist on the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council. His leadership is considered paramount to the Arab region in modernizing university education in basic and engineering sciences.

Educational Background

Educated at Cairo University in Egypt and Brown University in Rhode Island, U.S., Tarek Shawki spent 13 years as a researcher and professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the top engineering schools in the world. Tarek Shawki has a Ph. D. and an M. Sc. in engineering, an M. Sc. in applied mathematics, and a B. Sc. in mechanical engineering.