Mohamed Abousalem, MBA, P.Eng
Dr. Mohamed Abousalem (/æ-bu-SÆL-əm/) is the third Keck Graduate Institute president and began his leadership on July 1, 2024.
Dr. Abousalem’s distinguished career spans executive positions at non-profit organizations, private industry, and academia, focused on catalyzing technology solutions and advancing research and innovation. His deep experience in California includes serving most recently as the inaugural Vice President for Research and Innovation at San Jose State University (SJSU) and as President of the Board of Directors of the SJSU Research Foundation. At SJSU, he led the strategic growth of student-engaged research as he grew the SJSU research enterprise from $47M to $84M in five years. He also established the innovation strategic plan to serve as the blueprint for supporting student, faculty, and alumni entrepreneurs through technology transfer, a startup incubator, and several industry partnerships.
Prior to SJSU, Dr. Abousalem led the University of California Santa Cruz’s (UCSC) technology transfer, commercialization, and entrepreneurship enterprise. There, he doubled the annual number of invention disclosures, generated substantial state funding, and established a wet-lab incubator and a Silicon Valley startup accelerator. In 2022, Governor Newsom appointed Dr. Abousalem to the Board of Directors of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Dr. Abousalem also served on several other community and corporate boards, including technology startup companies,
Under his leadership as founding chief executive officer of TECTERRA, a Canadian not-for-profit organization supporting technology commercialization, the organization invested over $40 million to nurture 200 startup companies and 25 applied research projects, generating over $325 million in economic impact. Prior to TECTERRA, he led several large-scale, multi-national technology and business operations and developed several partnerships.
Dr. Abousalem succeeds Dr. Sheldon M. Schuster, who led KGI for 21 years, leading it from one program and 50 students to more than 600 students enrolled across more than a dozen programs.
President Abousalem’s scholarship and technical expertise focused on satellite positioning and navigation using the global positioning system (GPS) technology. He holds a BS in civil engineering from Alexandria University, Egypt; an MS and PhD in geomatics engineering from the University of Calgary, Canada; and an MBA from Santa Clara University.