Massachusetts (USA), Oct 3 (Agencies): EdX CEO Anant Agarwal of Mangaluru origin has been appointed to the International Commission on Financing Global Education. The appointment was made by Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education.

Agarwal joins more than twenty world leaders, including five former Presidents and Prime Ministers and three Nobel Prize recipients, to review the future of global education.

The group comes together at a crucial time when increased conflict has forced millions of children out of the classrooms to become refugees with no prospects of education.

The Commission will explore how, over the next 20 years, education could lead to greater economic growth, better health outcomes, and improved global security.

The Commission met during the recent UN General Assembly to start building the economic case to inspire and persuade world leaders to action.

"I am humbled to contribute to this group of world leaders and thinkers as we tackle the paramount issue of our time," said Anant Agarwal, edX CEO and MIT professor. "Now more than ever before, it is critical that we reflect on the current state of global education and work to create a future of expanded access and opportunity for everyone, everywhere, regardless of their social status or geography."

The Commission, supported by the government of Norway and Norweigan Prime Minister Erna Solberg, will review the future of global education which currently leaves 124 million young people out of school. The Commission is co-convened by the Norwegian Prime Minister alongside President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, President Peter Mutharika of Malawi and the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova. Malala Yousafzai will join the Commission’s youth panel.

In September 2016, the Commission will report to the co-conveners and the secretary-general of United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, who has agreed to receive the report and act on its recommendations.

Agarwal did his early education in city's St Aloysius Institute right from std 1 to second PUC (1977). He then moved to IIT-Madras where he did his BTech, and followed it up with MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Standford University, USA.

He has been featured in Guiness Book of World Records too for the largest microphone array in the world. He was conferred the USA Presidential Award for Young Scientists in the year 1999 and the Maurice Wilkes Award for computer architechture in 2001, besides several other prestigious awards. In 2012, he entered the Forbes' list of 15 classroom revolutionaries for reinventing education through technology.