The Cosmos Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment to the membership of its Advisory Board of Haider A. Khan, a professor of economics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

Prof Khan was the chief international adviser to Arab Trade and Human Development in Cairo and a senior economic adviser to the Secretary General of UNCTAD in Geneva.

He has also been a visiting professor at Tokyo University and a visiting scholar at Hitotsubashi University, Tilburg University, People's University in Beijing and UNU-WIDER. He was also a distinguished visiting fellow at the Asian Development Bank Institute, Tokyo and an adviser to the Asian Development Bank.

Welcoming the appointment, Chairman of the Cosmos Foundation Mr Enayetullah Khan said: "Haider A. Khan does us great honour by joining our Advisory Board. He has had an illustrious career in national and global trade, development economics, economic and econometric modelling, and banking sector as well as in the academia. We will be benefited enormously from his knowledge and experience."

In March 2005, Prof Khan received the prestigious Distinguished Scholar Award from the Academy of International Business.

He has also won awards and delivered invited addresses in Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Finland, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, India, China, and Japan among other countries.

Giving a visionary idea about Bangladesh, Prof Khan in an interview with the United News of Bangladesh (UNB), said Bangladesh can have an "innovation system" driven by talented and hardworking young people within the next 10 years taking Bangladesh to the next stage of development.

It may be recalled that three other members of the Advisory Board of the Cosmos Foundation are Dr Danilo Turk, former President of the Republic of Slovenia, Professor George Edward Moose from the United States, and Ambassador Krishnan Srinivasan from India.

Dr Turk, a globally renowned expert in international law and human rights, is a European Statesman who was President of the Republic of Slovenia between 2007 and 2012. He was the first Slovenian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations between 1992 and 2000. He was also a senior international civil servant having served as Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations for Political Affairs from 2000 to 2005.

Professor Moose, currently Vice Chair of the United States Peace Institute, is a former United States career diplomat, who had served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs at the State Department, Permanent Representative and Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations Offices in Geneva and also as Ambassador to Benin and Senegal.

The Board member from India, Ambassador Krishnan Srinivasan had been Foreign Secretary, Deputy Secretary General at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, and also High Commissioner to Bangladesh. He is a well-known political commentator and analyst, and for a long time was associated with the Mowlana Abul Kalam Azad Institute in Kolkata.

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore National University, a reputed diplomat turned scholar, who had also served as Foreign Advisor in a Caretaker Government, is the President of the Cosmos Foundation.