Amit Chakma (born 25 April 1959) is a university administrator who was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia in July 2020. Previously he served as the 10th president and vice-chancellor of the University of Western Ontario from 2009 to 2019. Early life and education The Chakma people are an ethnic minority from the south-east region of Bangladesh and Northeast India. Chakma was born in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to Prabhat Chakma and Alo Chakma. He was the eldest among four siblings. He studied in Ispahani School in Comilla and completed his secondary education from Rangamati Government High School. He passed his HSC examination from Dhaka College in 1976. He received a scholarship from the Algerian government to study chemical engineering at the Algerian Petroleum Institute in Algeria. In 1982, he graduated at the top of his class. He then moved to Canada and earned a Master of Applied Science and PhD in chemical engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1984 and 1987 respectively. Career Academic From 1988 until 1996, Chakma taught chemical engineering at the University of Calgary. In 1996, he moved to the University of Regina as dean of engineering. He then served as Regina's vice president research from 1999 to 2001. During his time at the University of Regina, Chakma was named to Canada's Top 40 Under 40 list. He became vice president academic and provost at the University of Waterloo in 2001. His research interests are natural gas engineering and petroleum waste management. Executive leadership On July 1, 2009, Chakma succeeded Paul Davenport as the University of Western Ontario's president. Having left the University of Waterloo, he has been noted for his service to both the university and the academic and business community of Kitchener-Waterloo. At the University of Western Ontario, Chakma led a rebranding exercise in 2012 that resulted in rebranding the institution as Western University He was reappointed to serve a second five-year term the same year. In 2014, Western's Senate and Board of Governors approved the University's ambitious strategic plan titled "Achieving Excellence on the World Stage. Industry leadership Chakma served as the Chair of U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities from 2012-2014. Successful advocacy during this period led to the creation of the $1.2 billion "The Canada First Research Excellence Program" by the Government of Canada to support competitively selected Canadian post