Jamilur Reza Choudhury

Jamilur Reza Choudhury (15 November 1943 – 28 April 2020) was a Bangladeshi civil engineer, professor and education leader. He taught structural engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) for almost four decades, became the first vice-chancellor of BRAC University and then vice-chancellor of the University of Asia Pacific, advised the caretaker government of 1996, and was named a National Professor of Bangladesh in 2018. ¹

Choudhury was born on 15 November 1943 in Sylhet, then in Assam Province, British India. (The article on which this record rests prints 1942 in its lead but 1943 in its infobox and early-life text; 1943 is the date carried here.) His father, Abid Reza Choudhury, was a civil engineer who moved the family to Dhaka in 1952. He studied at Mymensingh Zilla School, St Gregory's High School and Dhaka College, and took a first-class honours degree in civil engineering from BUET in 1963, followed by a master's in advanced structural engineering (1965) and a PhD on shear walls and high-rise structures (1968), both at the University of Southampton. ¹

He joined BUET as a lecturer in 1963, became a full professor in 1976, and directed its computer centre for about ten years. After retiring from BUET in 2001 he served as the first vice-chancellor of BRAC University until 2010, and in May 2012 became vice-chancellor of the University of Asia Pacific, a post he held until his death. In 1996 he served for three months as an adviser, with ministerial rank, to the caretaker government of Bangladesh. He chaired or advised the expert panels of the country's largest infrastructure projects, including the Padma Bridge, the Jamuna (Bangabandhu) Bridge and the Karnaphuli Tunnel, and presided over the Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad Committee from 2003. ¹

Choudhury received the Ekushey Padak, one of Bangladesh's highest civilian honours, in 2017, in the category of science and technology, and was inducted as a National Professor in 2018; Manchester University gave him an honorary doctorate of engineering in 2010, and Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018. He died of a heart attack at his home in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, on 28 April 2020. ¹

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