World Academic Summit in Melbourne: more speakers announced

More speakers have been confirmed for the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit next month.

The summit, which takes place at the University of Melbourne between 30 September and 2 October 2015, brings together world leaders from universities, government and industry to explore the future of world-class institutions.

Dirk Van Damme, head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress (IMEP) division in the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, will be one of several high-profile keynote speakers at the event.

He will be joined by Doh-Yeon Kim, upcoming president of Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech) in South Korea, the world’s second highest ranked university under 50 years old, and Milkail Strikhanov, rector of the National Research Nuclear University in Russia, who will both discuss the role of industry collaboration in driving research excellence.

Jack Clegg, senior lecturer in inorganic chemistry at the University of Queensland, will join Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt in a panel debate on nurturing the next generation of Nobel prizewinners.

Derek Douglas, vice-president for civic engagement at the University of Chicago, and Shearer West, head of humanities at the University of Oxford, will also take part.

The summit will host the official worldwide launch of the 2015-16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings (21:00 BST 30 September) – the 12th in a series of THE’s annual world rankings, but the first to be developed by a new in-house team of data editors and analysts, and the first since 2009 to use academic journal citations data from Elsevier’s Scopus.

Phil Baty, editor of the THE’s portfolio of global rankings, will provide an in-depth masterclass on the rankings results and methodology.

Register for the THE World Academic Summit