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More than 40 years ago, S. Jack Hu was the first member of his rural family to attend university in China.
Eventually, he became the chancellor of UC Riverside, an important university in the United States.
The 62-year-old came from a village in Changde, in central Hunan province. He is the first person with a bachelor’s degree from mainland China to head a top university in the United States.
He studied engineering machinery at Tianjin University in China, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1983. Later, he went to the US to attend the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering and got his PhD in 1990. He continued his research at the University of Michigan after graduation.
In 2021, Hu was named one of the 20 most important global scholars by Smart Manufacturing magazine, based in the US state of Michigan.
He began his appointment as the 10th chancellor of UC Riverside in July 2025.
