Curtin Dubai

Professor Kaka before joining Curtin university, spent one year as the President of Applied Science University in Kingdom of Bahrain. Prior to this he served as the Provost and Vice Principal of Heriot Watt University Dubai, a position he has held since 2010. He led and grown the HWU Dubai campus to a student population of over 4000, 250 staff and a growing research culture.  Professor Kaka’s contribution to the transnational education in general and to the Dubai’s education landscape in particular has been immense.  Before this he spent 9 years at Heriot Watt Edinburgh campus and was involved in several senior roles including the Director of the MENA hub and the Director of Learning and Teaching. He was also the leader of the construction economics and management research group.

He started his academic career at the University of Liverpool where he spent 9 years there as a full time faculty member of the Liverpool school of Architecture and Building Engineering.

Professor Kaka is also a Professor of Construction Economics and Management and has an international reputation for research on the planning, management, and control of construction projects. Author of more than 150 publications, he has held numerous funded research grants with impact demonstrated by the extent of citation and direct industrial application. He is a fellow of the RICS and member of the editorial boards of a number of international academic journals. He has supervised more than 30 PhD students to completion, many of which have developed into senior roles in governments, industry and academia.

Dan joined Transnational Academic Group in 2009 as a faculty member in the schools of business and information technology and has led the organisation for the past 10 years.  He is currently responsible for overseeing the operations of international university branch campuses in Dubai in partnership with Curtin University.

His research focus has been on pedagogy, curriculum, and technological enablers of education.  Prior to joining the academy, Dan spent the first 20 years of his career working in the information technology industry providing management consulting services for companies including IBM, Dell, VISA, Hershey’s, Coke, Clorox, and Merck and held numerous management positions including CIO and CEO.  Among his numerous roles, he worked in the areas of business process reengineering, risk management, disaster recovery, and business continuity.

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Dr Bilal Siddiqi has experience in both academic and operational spheres. He has a PhD in literature from the University College of London, where he was recipient of a three-year scholarship. During his PhD, he edited a cluster of articles on Fyodor Dostoevsky entitled, ‘Rethinking Dostoevskii: Literature, Philosophy, Narrative’ with the renowned Slavonic journal, SEER. He also co-wrote the introduction for this cluster. He taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at UCL and supervised undergraduate theses in literature. He is also a qualified schoolteacher, with a Postgraduate Certificate in Education from Oxford University. He has taught at various secondary schools in London and Oxfordshire, teaching English Literature and Language to students in between the ages of 11 and 18.

On the administrative and operational side, Bilal has worked predominantly in the media and education sectors, serving as Executive Director for Samaa TV, one of the premier news channels in Pakistan, and as a Marketing and PR executive and later manager at Murdoch University Dubai.

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