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Professor Nishan Canagarajah

Professor Nishan Canagarajah
Job Title:
President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Leicester

Nishan was born and educated in Sri Lanka, before moving to the UK where he received his BA (Hons) and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge in 1989 and 1993. He joined the University of Leicester, as President and Vice-Chancellor, from the University of Bristol where he was Pro Vice-Chancellor with responsibility for research and enterprise.

He had been a member of staff at Bristol throughout his academic career since taking up a post as a research assistant in 1993. Nishan worked his way through the academic ranks, serving as the Faculty of Engineering Research Director, Head of Department of Computer Science, Head of Merchant Venturers School of Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering.

He became Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise in August 2014, establishing two cross disciplinary research institutes to address societal issues and worked to establish a key partnership with the Alan Turing Institute.

Nishan is internationally recognised for his engineering research on signal processing and texture classification. He served on national and international research funding, governance and postgraduate education panels as well as acting as a technical consultant for Sony, BT, BBC, Orange, Thales, Toshiba and the Met Police.

As University of Bristol lead for equality, diversity and inclusion, Nishan championed a diverse and welcoming University community that reflected his role as one of the Bristol Race Equality Commissioners and position on the Governing Board of the Bristol City Funds.

President and Vice-Chancellor
,
University of Leicester
Professor Nishan Canagarajah
Professor Nishan Canagarajah is President & Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, ranked as a top 25 UK university in the 2020 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.