Prof. Dr. Hans Hoyer
Co-Chair, WBELF / Executive Director, GEDC
Hans Jürgen Hoyer serves as the Executive Director of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) and the Secretary General of the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES). Hans is also a Resident Scholar in Global Engineering at the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University, Global Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland BC, and co-founder of the Indo-Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE). Hans is co-founder and advisor of the African, Asian and Latin American Engineering Deans Councils, and works closely with the OAS and UNESCO, where he serves on their Advisory Council. Hans is also the co-founder of SPEED, a global engineering student organization that conducts engineering student capacity building worldwide.
Prior to 2006, Hans was CEO of World Links, a spin-off of the World Bank. Hans has led several international development programmes, including CARE, Plan International, and Heifer International. In these latter roles, Hans was responsible for raising financial resources from a multitude of donors including government agencies, the World Bank, IAB, several foundations, corporations and private donors. Hans has served with Nelson Mandela on the board of directors of El Taller, a global civil society network headquartered in Tunisia and was also on the staff of the Inter American Foundation, created by the U.S. Congress to support socio-economic development throughout Latin America/Caribbean.
Hans was on Hewlett Packard’s e-Inclusion Global advisory board related to their scientific and engineering work in South Africa and founding member of the Board of the Engineering for the Americas (EftA) initiative under the umbrella of the OAS.
Hans earned his Ph.D. at American University in Washington, D.C. As a post-doctoral fellow with the Organization of American States (OAS), Hans carried out research in the Rio de la Plata region of South America. Hans has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Studies at MIT, a Fellow at Harvard’s School of Education and visitor at the Kennedy School of Government. Hans was dean of the graduate program at the School for International Training, World Learning and Executive Director of the Executive Training Program for global governmental and NGO leaders in Brattleboro, Vermont. Presently, Hans is an Honorary Professor at universities in Hungary, India, Kazakhstan and Peru. Hans currently serves on the Governing Board of the International Center for Engineering Education/UNESCO/ Tsinghua University; Strategic Advisory Board of UNESCO’s second Ten Year Report on Global Engineering; as co-founder and Advisory Board member of the Indo-Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and Information Technology in Higher Education and Training (ITHET); and Global Advisor to SUSTech, Shenzhen, China and Beihang University School of Engineering, China.