Board member
Dr Tarek Galal Shawki
Former Minister of Education & Technical Education, Egypt
Dr Tarek Shawki served as Egypt's Minister of Education and Technical Education from 2017 to 2022, where he led “Education 2.0” — one of the most ambitious technology-enabled national curriculum and assessment reforms ever attempted in the Arab region, reaching more than 25 million learners and over a million teachers.
Before his ministerial appointment, he was Dean of the School of Sciences and Engineering at the American University in Cairo (2012–2017). Between 1999 and 2012 he held senior posts at UNESCO, including Director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science in the Arab States and Chief of the Section for ICTs in Education, Science and Culture at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris — where he was a key architect of UNESCO's ICT Competency Framework for Teachers.
A theoretical and applied mechanics researcher by training, he spent 13 years on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He holds a PhD and MSc in Engineering and an MSc in Applied Mathematics from Brown University, and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Cairo University.
- Focus
- National-scale education reform & AI policy
- Region
- Middle East & North Africa
- Affiliation
- University Counselor, American University in Cairo