Contact information
1 rue Miollis 75732 Paris France
Tel.: +33 (0)1 45 684078
Fax: +33 (0)1 45 68 4077
E-mail: g.kalonji(at)unesco.org

Gretchen Kalonji, the first woman to hold the position of Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences in UNESCO, took up office on 1 July 2010.

An American materials scientist, she has developed strong international links in science, in particular in China, India and the Pacific Region. She is strongly committed to promoting science in Africa and has worked with several African universities. Her work in educational transformation has taken her to university positions in France, Japan and China. In 2006, she was appointed a distinguished honorary professor at Sichuan University, Chengdu, and a visiting professor at Beijing's Qinghua University.

Prior to 2005, Professor Kalonji was the first women to hold an endowed chair – the Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Washington (UW) Seattle, where she developed creative approaches to internationalization and to the transformation of science and engineering education. At UW, she led a campus-wide effort to integrate collaborative international research activities into the academic curriculum, across disciplines and from freshmen to doctoral level. This initiative, entitled UW Worldwide has been honored with multiple grants and awards, both in the United States and in partner regions.

Prior to 1990, when she joined the University of Washington, Gretchen Kalonji served as Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In recent years Ms Kalonji’s work has focused on two main themes:

• transformation of engineering education, with a particular focus on women and underrepresented minority groups;
• new models for the more effective internationalization of universities.

Professor Kalonji’s work, both in materials science and in educational transformation, has been recognized by numerous awards and honors, including: the Presidential Young Investigator Award; the George E. Westinghouse Award from the American Society for Engineering Education; the Leadership Award from the International Network for Engineering Education and Research; and the National Science Foundation’s Director’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars, the highest honor offered by the NSF. Professor Kalonji has held visiting faculty appointments at numerous universities and institutes around the world, including the Max Planck Institute (Germany), the University of Paris (France), Tohoku University (Japan), and Sichuan University and Tsinghua University (China). She serves on numerous national and international advisory boards and committees, particularly for projects and organizations focusing on innovations in education, equity and access in higher education, and international science and engineering. Professor Kalonji has been called upon to give more than 115 invited lectures in institutions around the world.