Professor Mohamed-Vall Mohamed Salem Zein was appointed January 2015 as President of the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD) and has focused since then on driving initiatives to strengthen the position of UOWD as a leading academic institution in the UAE and the region. Mohamed Salem joined UOWD in 2004 and made since then important contributions to the University in a wide range of responsibilities first as member of the academic staff and later as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences. He worked previously as a software engineer for several years in both public and private sectors in Mauritania and Canada and collaborated in research with industry in the UAE and Canada.

Professor Salem received his PhD from the University of Montreal in 2002 and is a recipient of IBM Center for Advanced Studies PhD fellowship and the "Bourse d'excellence de la Francophonie" from the Canadian International Development Agency.