University Leadership

Dr. Shu-Park Chan, Ph.D.
Founder/President Emeritus

Merging his own successful Silicon Valley educational experience with his father’s dream, Dr. Shu-Park Chan retired early in 1994 to found ITU. He previously served as a professor and Dean of the Engineering School at Santa Clara University (SCU) for 30 years. He was the first endowed and most celebrated professor at SCU. Professor Chan began his career with merely 50 students in electrical engineering. Under his direction, the department reached a height of over 1,200 students. Professor Chan has personally taught over 10,000 students graph theory and network topology, bridging the electrical engineering and computer science fields. His doctoral students include the founders of ATMEL, Cadence, Microelectronics Technologies, Oak Technology and many other corporate pillars of Silicon Valley.

Dr. Chan received his doctoral degree in electrical engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana. He was the first Asian American appointed by President Bush to sit on the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship Board.

Yau-Gene Chan, MFA
President & CEO

Yau-Gene Chan was appointed Executive Vice President to run ITU and carry forward his family’s vision. Mr. Chan took ITU from running on a deficit of $300K to generating an operating surplus of $4.2M at the end of 2008. In addition to teaching technical writing and public speaking courses at ITU, Yau-Gene Chan has taught Acuflo (a movement and alignment technique) and acting classes for fine arts masters programs at University of Southern California (USC) and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Mr. Chan was part of the founding team of USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center, which applied for and received an $88 million National Science Foundation grant to become one of five national Engineering Research Centers. Mr. Chan has Hollywood film and television acting credits in Absolute Power, The Pest, Replacement Killers, Baywatch, NYPD Blue and X-Files.

He graduated with honors from University of California, Berkeley with a bachelors degree in sociology. He received his masters of fine arts in acting at UCLA, where he also received the Jack Nicholson Prize and the Edna Yu Han Fellowship. Mr. Chan’s first conference paper on Dual Motive Theory and its application to Chinese rule in the Warlord era of the 1920s-30s was delivered at an ITU panel presented in the Western Economic Association International’s Pacific Rim Economic Conference in Beijing, China.

Dr. Gerald A. Cory, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President (Asia)

Named “Legend of Silicon Valley” by the Association of Start Up Entrepreneurs (SVASE) in 2005, Dr. Cory has published many books, articles and scientific papers on Dual Motive Theory. Dr. Cory’s research developed the foundations of this theory, which is the tension between our early self-preserving mental wiring and our later-developed mental affections. Dr. Cory has tested the Dual Motive Theory by serving as President and CEO of Tandem Computers in Japan (now owned by Hewlett-Packard), co-founding the University of Phoenix, organizing US Festivals in San Bernardino, California and founding the Center for Behavior Ecology in San Jose, California.

Dr. Cory received masters and doctoral degrees in political science from Stanford University. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow of Graduate Studies and Research at California State University and mentors promising entrepreneurs.

Mikel Duffy, Ph.D. Candidate
Associate Executive Vice President

Mikel Duffy is a doctoral student at ITU, majoring in Consilience Science under Dr. Gerald Cory. Mikel manages many of ITU’s key operations, such as processing key administrative documents, building and managing various staff teams, and has also played a large role in the conceptualization and development of ITU’s centralized student database.

He earned his Bachelor’s degree in computer science with a focus in multi-media marketing from ITU and graduated Valedictorian. He has delivered three academic conference papers in the field of Dual Motive Theory and political economic development, including one as an undergraduate.