By Stephen Asante
Accra, May 14, GNA – The Governing Council of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has appointed Professor Christian Agyare as Vice Chancellor effective August 1, 2026.
He succeeds Professor Rita Akosua Dickson, the first female Vice Chancellor of the University, whose tenure ends on July 31, 2026.
A statement issued by the University and signed by Mr Benjamin Owusu, Registrar, said Professor Agyare’s four-year term would run from August 1, 2026 to July 31, 2030.
Prof. Agyare, currently Provost of the College of Health Sciences, has more than 25 years’ experience in academia, research and university administration.
The statement said he obtained Bachelor of Pharmacy and Master of Pharmacy degrees from KNUST and later earned a Doctor rerum naturalium degree from the University of Münster, Germany.
It said he undertook postdoctoral and research appointments at Novartis/Seeding Labs in Boston and the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked in parasitic diseases and pharmaceutical research.
According to the profile copied to the Ghana News Agency, Prof. Agyare has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and recorded an H-index of 36, an i10-index of 84 and over 5,000 citations.
The statement said his research focuses on natural products pharmacology, antimicrobial resistance, wound healing, ethnopharmacology, parasitology and anticancer drug discovery.
It said he had secured more than US$11 million in competitive research funding from organisations including the German Research Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Mastercard Foundation and the World Bank.
Prof. Agyare is the first African member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research and also serves on the editorial boards of more than 30 international journals.
He is a Fellow of the Ghana College of Pharmacists and the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana.
The statement said Prof. Agyare had served on several strategic committees of the University, including the Executive Committee, Academic Board, Planning and Resources Committee, Budgetary Committee, and the Appointments and Promotions Committee.
As Head of the Quality Assurance and Planning Unit from 2016 to 2020, he led institutional reforms, including the introduction of online staff appraisal and research supervision systems, and coordinated the University’s first five-year cyclical accreditation review.
Since assuming office as Provost in 2020, he has overseen the introduction of 16 postgraduate and eight undergraduate programmes, increased postgraduate enrolment and graduation rates, and supervised major infrastructure projects at the College of Health Sciences.
The statement said Prof. Agyare had also contributed to higher education quality assurance systems in Africa, including serving as an international quality assurance expert for the Namibia Council for Higher Education.
It said his vision for KNUST focused on advancing science, technology, research, innovation, sustainability, entrepreneurship and student-centred training to support national and global development.
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Sackey
Reporter: Stephen Asante