Vassilios Tourassis

Professor Tourassis is an international higher education administrator and transformational leader with diverse experience in multi-cultural environments, in building academic programs and in enabling organizations to transition to the next level.

He has been with Nazarbayev University, serving continuously in various capacities, since 2012. He has been awarded a Presidential Letter of Gratitude from the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan for “personal contributions to the development of higher education” in the country.

His international career spans a range of institutions and roles. He was previously a Research Fellow at Carnegie-Mellon’s Robotics Institute, a tenured Professor at the University of Rochester in New York and the Vice Rector for Finance, Research and Development at Democritus University in Greece. He holds an MSc and a PhD degree from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Professor Tourassis has served in the past as an invited expert of the Council of Europe and of the Asia-Europe Foundation’s Education Hub; as a Governing Board Member of the OECD Program on Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE); and as a Senior Program Evaluator for the Hellenic Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency. He currently serves as the only foreign Governing Board Member of the national Science Fund of Kazakhstan.