The US’s Cornell University and real estate-retail-technology giant Vingroup agreed to dispatch Professor Rohit Verma to VinUni University (VinUni) with the goal of building an excellent University in Việt Nam. Professor Rohit Verma will be the first principal of VinUni after the Prime Minister's decision on the establishment of the school. This is the next step in a strategic cooperation agreement between Vingroup and two of the Top 20 universities in the world, Cornell and Pennsylvania (United States).

The first Principal of VinUni is Professor Dr. Rohit Verma – a leading professor of Business Administration that Cornell is sending to Việt Nam, to work with the VinUni University project and establish the foundations for an excellent university.

Professor Rohit Verma is currently the Director of External Relations of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, possessing many outstanding professional achievements. He has more than 75 scientific works published in prestigious international magazines on service quality management and production management; he is an inspiring speaker of many academic forums around the world; and co-author of university curricula as well as profound scientific studies published at Cornell.

One year after signing the strategic partnership with Vingroup, Cornell has shown its strong commitment by sending a senior leader who is the current head of the system overseas for the first time, to lay the foundation for building an excellent university model.

Professor Rohit Verma

Professor Rohit Verma's outstanding career represents a modern intellectual model: Thinking differently – Acting differently; which is especially suitable for the development philosophy and this is the most suitable choice for the position of the first principal of VinUni.

Verma's point of view on higher education can be summarised in three words: creativity, collaboration and start-up. First of all, the university must be a place to encourage the development of innovative ideas. The "teaching" professors are not teaching knowledge but teaching students how to learn, detect problems and find solutions to solve them in a new way, thereby contributing to the development of society.

Throughout his career, Professor Verma always promotes multi-dimensional collaboration. At VinUni, he wishes to remove the partition of specialised faculties, promote interdisciplinary activities and projects that link business and technology, between technology and health, even combining all three areas to create breakthrough values for society and the community.

Professor Verma also deeply believes that academic thinking should be associated with empirical thinking, science should serve the development of businesses and society. Therefore, the school's association with businesses, the attraction of highly connected talent and strong entrepreneurial spirit is the key orientation when building an excellent university model at VinUni.

In collaboration with two elite universities in the Top 20 global universities: Cornell and Pennsylvania, VinUni will shape strategy, brand positioning and build a comprehensive university management system. Based on the outstanding strength in the field of business administration and technology, Cornell will support VinUni to evaluate facilities, recruit personnel, design educational programmes, research cooperation and check quality assessment and evaluation of the first bachelor's degree in Business - Technology Education department.

Meanwhile, with the system of leading practising hospitals in the US, Pennsylvania will support VinUni to recruit and develop faculty capacity, enrollment, training and professional development for Health Science students.

Rohit Verma said “I’m grateful for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help establish what we intend to be an internationally renowned university in a fast-growing region of the world,” Verma said. “Our goal is to create a university based on the highest international standards in research, teaching and training for students both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, serving as a magnet for the most talented faculty and students from all over the world.

“I am thankful for guidance provided by Cornell and University of Pennsylvania colleagues, generous support from Vingroup and the ongoing hard work by VinUni University project team members. I am confident that together we will enable VinUni to reach its enormous potential.”

VinUni University project was established by Vingroup in March 2018, with a desire to bring about a breakthrough in the quality of higher education and training in Việt Nam, towards outstanding value and world-class standards. To realise this aspiration, VinUni has cooperated closely with leading schools in the top elite universities in the world, in order to achieve the highest standards in research, teaching, employment and international prospects.

The school plans to enroll its first course in 2020.