The 9th Rector of the University of Macau, in office since 9 January 2018. A power-systems engineer who earned his PhD from the China Electric Power Research Institute in 1989, Song spent two decades teaching and serving as a pro-vice-chancellor across British universities (Brunel, Bristol, Bath, Liverpool), was Assistant President of Tsinghua University from 2009, and from November 2012 to December 2017 served as Executive Vice President of Zhejiang University, founding its International Campus in Haining. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2004), an IEEE Fellow (2008), and a Member of Academia Europaea (2019); his research concerns the safe and efficient operation of low-carbon power systems. He received the Macao SAR Medal of Merit – Education in 2023.

From the mathematical models of Britain's power grid, through Tsinghua and Zhejiang, to the new University of Macau campus across the water from Hengqin — Yonghua Song is an engineering scientist who has threaded an entire academic-administrative career through two themes: low-carbon energy and the internationalisation of higher education.

Yonghua Song is the 9th Rector of the University of Macau, in office since 9 January 2018. He is one of relatively few ethnic-Chinese scholars to have held pro-vice-chancellor-level posts in both the British higher-education system and China's top universities, and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. His field is power systems; his research focus is the safe and efficient operation of low-carbon power systems.

Profile

  • Chinese Name: 宋永華
  • English Name: Yonghua Song
  • Born: January 1964
  • Domains: Academia
  • Industry: Higher education · Power-systems engineering
  • Subject type: Academic (Rector of the University of Macau)
  • Education: B.Eng., Chengdu University of Science and Technology (1984); PhD, China Electric Power Research Institute (1989)
  • Took office (current role): 9 January 2018

Background

Song was born in January 1964, earned a B.Eng. from Chengdu University of Science and Technology (later merged into Sichuan University) in 1984, and completed a PhD in power systems at the China Electric Power Research Institute in 1989. He then moved to Britain, teaching and researching at the University of Bristol, the University of Bath, and Liverpool John Moores University, before becoming Professor of Power Systems at Brunel University in 1997.

Over more than two decades in Britain he moved steadily from researcher to academic administrator: Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Graduate Studies at Brunel in 2004, then Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool in 2007, concurrently serving as Executive President of the Sino-foreign Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University — a cross-border "joint-venture university" experience that would become central to his approach to running institutions.