The University Council has appointed Professor Mahendra Kumar as the next Vice-Chancellor with effect from 17 December 2011, to succeed Professor Muralidhar who left the University on 16 December 2011.

Professor Kumar holds a BSc Biology/Mathematics/Physics from USP and PhD Environmental Physics from the University of Nottingham, UK.

He has served at the University of the South Pacific for over 25 years. He also served as Head of the Physics Department at USP. He undertook various administrative responsibilities including Acting Head of School and served in various Committees such as research, staff policy, academic, discipline and Senate.  He was also the elected member for non-professorial staff on USP Council for a number of years.

Professor Mahendra Kumar

From 2004 to 2006 he served in United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya as Technical Specialist Climate Change, Task Manager Adaptation.

He was Foundation Dean for Planning, Development, Campuses, Library, and IT at the Fiji Institute of Technology in 2009.
At UniFiji he was responsible for setting up the Centre for Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development and is currently its Director.

He joined The University of Fiji in 2011 initially as Professor of Physics and was subsequently appointed as Acting Dean of the School of Science and Technology as well as Head of the Science Department. He held the three appointments until his appointment as Vice-Chancellor.

Professor Kumar has a wide community engagement in Fiji.