Hossam Kamel, who resigned recently from his post as president of Cairo University, was voted back into the university's top job on Thursday.
The elections supervisory committee announced that Kamel won 51 votes out of 87, giving him a 20-vote lead over the second-place candidate.
Students and faculty members staged protests across Egyptian universities in March demanding that all university presidents loyal to ousted President Hosni Mubarak be sacked.
Observers note that Mubarak appointed university administrators loyal to his regime and that the dissolved State Security Investigations Service was involved in selecting candidates.
Elections for deans and electoral college members took place at a number of Egyptian universities, including Cairo University, last month. Kamel quit in response to the protests, before re-applying successfully for his old job. Eighty-two percent of those who are eligible to vote in the elections took part in the ballot.
Observers say that Kamel's success in the poll was due in part to the withdrawal of several candidates from the race.
Prior to the poll, several university activist groups, including the 9 March Movement, announced that they would boycott the elections on the principle that former Mubarak loyalists should be barred from senior university jobs. Kamel is considered an old-regime loyalist.
