CMU’s global search for president ends at home
When an institution like Carnegie Mellon University elevates its former provost to the presidency, it’sthe smallest of details that can do themost to illuminate the man.
For instance, Farnam Jahanian, 57,is a dog lover. His family’s pooch, Penny, is a year-old schnauzer-shih tzu mix, “small, as you might expect, hyper but very affectionate” and often seen at events on the research campus that Mr. Jahanian nowleads.
His 29-year marriage to Teresa, or “Tris,” suggests how well two computer scientists can mesh, even if the conversation might occasionally turn arcane. On their very first date decades ago, “We found ourselves waiting in a movie theater talking about computing and operating-systems.”
And, as for leading a university where your daughter is an undergraduate, the Iranian-bornscholar seemed like a father well-schooled in walking that delicate line as he addressed a crowd Thursday in theJared L. Cohon University Center.
“My daughter Sara, who is more than halfway through her junior year here: I love you,” he said. “Thanks for always letting me embarrass you in front of your friends – it started in kindergarten and continuesto this day.”
The audience of several hundred students, employees and others laughed as the statistics major, one of the couple’s three children, sat smiling with her mother in the front row of the university center’sRangos Auditorium.
In his formal noon-hour remarksand in a brief interview afterward, Mr. Jahanian, who until Wednesday was the school’s interim president, talked about his family and his enthusiasm for what he called “a great privilege and a tremendousresponsibility.”
Just hours before, an email to campus had announced the board of trustees’ unanimous vote the day before to make him Carnegie Mellon’s 10th president.
Mr. Jahanian, a nationally prominent scientist, entrepreneurand administrator, came to CMU in 2014 and served as vice president for research and later as provost. He assumedthe interim presidency when Subra Suresh resigned effective June 30 after four yearsin the job.
Mr. Jahanian has a career spanning three-plus decades in academia, industry and in the public realm, including 21 years at the University of Michigan. He came to CMU from the National Science Foundation, where he headed the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineeringfrom 2011 to 2014.
The vote by CMU’s board Wednesday solidified his place atop an internationally known research university that is an anchor of the Pittsburgh region’s hightech economy. The campus has long prided itself on work across the disciplines, from engineering and computer science to theater and music.
Its researchers spawned the field of artificial intelligence in the 1950s, and today the campus is among the world’s foremost robotics centers, with so many robots spread out on campus doing so many things that it took a robotcensus to count them.
Butin addition to pressures felt in general by elite institutions, Carnegie Mellon has an added worry: an endowment to support its endeavors that is dwarfed by those held by competitors, among them Cornell and Stanford universities and the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology.
In the email announcing the appointment, James E. Rohr, chairman of CMU’s board of trustees, called Mr. Jahanian a leader with vision and a deft understanding of humannature.
“A rigorous, international search over the last eight months has made it clear that Dr. Jahanian possesses a rare set of qualities and experiences that make him exactly the right leader for this university at this extraordinary moment in its history,’’ Mr. Rohrwrote.
“In short, Dr. Jahanian embodies a bold, boundary-crossing, creative approach to the most important issues of our time — the very qualities that define and differentiate CarnegieMellon.”
Mr.Jahanian’s scholarship has enhanced the field of computer science, Mr. Rohr said, and his experience as an entrepreneur gives him firsthandunderstanding of what it takes to bring knowledge to market.
“Just as importantly, during his time as provost and interim president, Dr. Jahanian hasled this institution with an irresistible urgency and a determination to seize the opportunities at hand,” said Mr. Rohr.
That approach has enabled deans, senior administrators, faculty, staff and students “to pursue excellence at every levelof their work,” he added.
Officials of the private university said their search that began last fall was confidential, and, as such, they declined to specify the number of applications received and from how many countries. The length and term of Mr. Jahanian’s contract was not disclosed, nor was his compensation.
His predecessor, Mr. Suresh, made $1,205,311, including $775,507 in base pay, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in December, using 2015 survey data. Following his departure from Pittsburgh, Mr. Suresh was announced as the new president of Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity Singapore.
Mr. Jahanian is the author of 100 research papers and has served on numerous national advisoryboards.
His research in network routing and security gave birth to the Internet security company Arbor Networks, which he co-founded in 2001 and was its chairman until its acquisitionin 2010.
The youngest of six childrren, Mr. Jahanian came to the United States from Iran at age 16, having persuaded his parents in 1977 to let him attend high school in San Antonio, Texas.
He received a bachelor of science degree in mathematics, computer science and system design in 1982 from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He received a master’s degree in 1987 and a doctoral degree in 1989, both in computer science, from the University of Texas at Austin.
Between 1993 and 2014, Mr. Jahanian worked at Michigan, where he held the Edward S. Davidson Collegiate Professorship in the College of Engineering, served four years as chair for computer science and engineering, and directed the Software Systems Laboratory from 1997to 2000.
His remarks Thursday touched on the power of higher education to open doors and its ability to bridge race, economic and geogprahic divides. He spoke of Carnegie Mellon’s rich array of knowledge from neuroscience and robotics to business and the performing arts and humanities.
“But what truly defines us as an institution is not any one school, discipline, or award,” he said. “Deep in our DNA, we are about problem-solving and fearless creativity at the edges and intersections of traditional boundaries.”