Abdulla Al-Thani is the president of Hamad Bin Khalifa University, as well as vice president of education at the Qatar Foundation and chairman of the World Innovation Summit for Education. In his support of education initiatives, he serves on the boards of the Qatar Leadership Centre, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Qatar University, and the Palestine Happy Child Center. Al-Thani is also on the Executive Council of the World Digital Library for the Library of Congress and spearheads the Qatar Foundation national library project. He holds a master’s degree from Colorado State University and a doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Southampton.