Chawin Chantharasenawong
Chawin Chantharasenawong is Vice President for Internationalisation at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Since 2023, he has led KMUTT’s engagement with global academic partners — across the World Technology Universities Network, ASEAN–EU higher education dialogues, and Asia-Pacific regional consortia — translating institutional strategy into research and teaching collaborations. In April 2026, he was appointed Deputy Chair of the International Mission Committee at the Council of University Presidents of Thailand (CUPT) for its 2025–2026 term, the apex body that coordinates internationalisation strategy across the country’s universities.
His academic foundation is in aeronautics. He earned his MEng (2003) and PhD (2007) at Imperial College London, working on the nonlinear aeroelastic behaviour of aerofoils under dynamic stall — research that continues to inform his thinking about wind energy systems. He returned to Thailand in 2008 to join KMUTT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, where he has taught engineering mechanics, gas turbine theory, and aeroelasticity, and supervised undergraduate teams that have won the TSAE Auto Challenge Formula Student national championship in 2013, 2016, and 2018.
The shift toward leadership came gradually. From 2010 to 2012 he directed KMUTT’s International Centre for Engineering, then served as Associate Dean for International Affairs in the Faculty of Engineering from 2012 to 2020. He completed the University Leadership and Management Training Course (UniLEAD), run by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), in 2014–2015. The current Vice Presidency, beginning in 2023, brought these threads together at the institutional level.
Beyond KMUTT, he serves on the Board of Trustees at Concordian International School, an IB World School in Bangkok offering trilingual education — which he chaired from 2018 to 2023 before stepping down to continue as a Board member, having joined the Board in 2015. He is also Deputy Manager of the International Affairs Committee at the Princess Maha Chakri Award Foundation (PMCAF), which honours teachers across ASEAN, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Mongolia who change their students’ lives.
His research interests remain centred on wind energy technology and aeroelastic phenomena, with continuing work on dynamic stall and small-scale wind turbine design. His public commitments increasingly focus on the connective tissue of higher education: how Thai universities partner with European and regional peers, how engineering programmes prepare students for industries that don’t yet exist, and how governance — at universities, at schools, at award foundations — shapes the conditions for serious teaching and research to flourish.
Away from the university, Dr. Chawin is a long-standing supporter of Arsenal and the England national team.
Connect
Dr. Chawin shares most of his current thinking online — on higher education, internationalisation, and engineering education. To follow the work, or to get in touch, here is where to find him.
- Facebook — where he writes regularly on the ideas and projects he is working on. Read the latest
- LinkedIn — his professional background, and the most direct way to connect. Connect on LinkedIn
Downloads
Contact: chawin.cha@kmutt.ac.th