Media Release
Mung Chiang, President of Purdue University, Selected for 2024 Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award
San Francisco, CA – The Asian Pacific Fund and the Selection Committee of the Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award are proud to announce Mung Chiang, the 13th president of Purdue University, as the recipient of the 2024 Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award. This prestigious award also includes establishing a $10,000 Chang-Lin Tien Scholarship Fund for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) students at Purdue University, funded by the Asian Pacific Fund.
“It is a profound honor to receive this leadership award named after Chancellor Tien, a true pioneer in American higher education,” said Chiang. “Leadership is about ‘who’ more than ‘what,’ and this award recognizes the collective efforts of the entire Purdue team, with colleagues from diverse backgrounds contributing to the mission of public universities in our country.”
Dr. Chang-Lin Tien, a trailblazer in American higher education, made history in 1990 as the first AANHPI head of a major U.S. research university when he became Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. In 2006, Chancellor Tien’s family partnered with the Asian Pacific Fund to establish the annual Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award to address the underrepresentation of AANHPI academic leaders in higher education. As the only program of its kind in the nation, the award honors an AANHPI individual who has achieved significant academic accomplishments and demonstrates the potential to advance to the highest leadership levels in higher education.
“We are thrilled to honor President Mung Chiang with the 2024 Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award,” said Carolyn Wang Kong, President and Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Fund. “His exceptional achievements at a young age and dedication to advancing higher education exemplify the spirit of this award and Dr. Tien’s legacy.”
Chiang is the youngest president of a top-50 American university in recent history. He also serves as the Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He previously served as the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering and Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Purdue University and as the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University.
Chiang founded the Princeton EDGE Lab in 2009 and has launched several startup companies and industry consortia in edge computing. As the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State in 2020, he initiated tech diplomacy programs for the U.S. government. He
currently serves on the inaugural board of the U.S. Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation and several corporate and nonprofit boards.
Chiang received his BS (1999), MS (2000), and PhD (2003) from Stanford University and an honorary doctorate (2024) from Dartmouth College. For his research in communication networks, he has been recognized with the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award (2013), the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award (2012), the IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Award (2022), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class of Mathematical and Physical Sciences 2024), the National Academy of Inventors (2020), and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (2020).
The Asian Pacific Fund and the Selection Committee of the Chang-Lin Tien Leadership in Education Award congratulate President Chiang. We are excited about his continued achievements and look forward to his future contributions to higher education, the AANHPI community, and beyond.
* * * * *
About the Asian Pacific Fund
The Asian Pacific Fund, founded in 1993, is the only community foundation in the Bay Area dedicated to improving the lives of the underserved members of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a public research institution demonstrating excellence at scale. Ranked among the top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, including nearly 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row.