This academic assignment started on 1 September 2012 following a four-year tenure as the Director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science in Arab States [2008-2012] located in Cairo, Egypt.

[2] Dr. Shawki has served as the regional advisor for Communications and Information at the UNESCO Cairo Office (UCO) between January 1999 and November 2005.

His leadership is considered paramount to the Arab region in modernizing university education in basic and engineering sciences, through the promotion of the Mathematica technology.

Dr. Shawki has pioneered the strategic public-private partnerships with the IT corporate within UNESCO which includes Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and Apple, Inc.

He has been the key architect of the standard setting effort by UNESCO involving the "ICT Competency Framework for Teachers" ( ICT-CFT).