Meet the President: Jared L. Cohon
Jared L. Cohon, a highly acclaimed university administrator, civil engineer, professor and government adviser, has served as Carnegie Mellon University's eighth president since 1997.
During his presidency, Carnegie Mellon has continued along its trajectory of innovation and growth.
Under Cohon's leadership, Carnegie Mellon has expanded globally and now offers graduate degree programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America, and has an undergraduate campus in Doha, Qatar.
New research institutes and degree programs have also been established in California's Silicon Valley.
In early 2011, the World Economic Forum invited Cohon to represent Carnegie Mellon as a permanent member of its Global University Leaders Forum (GULF). A small, elite group of international university leaders, GULF members formally engage with the forum's corporate members on issues of critical importance to the global community.
In October 2010, Cohon was elected chairman of the Executive Committee of the 63-member Association of American Universities, which represents leading public and private research institutions.
He chaired a National Research Council committee that authored a report in 2009 on the "hidden" costs of energy production and use—such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health— that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them.
Cohon was appointed by President Bill Clinton to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, and was appointed by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
He also serves on the boards of numerous Pittsburgh civic organizations.
Among numerous other awards, Cohon received the 2011 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies. He was named a distinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the society’s highest accolade, in 2009, and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.
Andrew Carnegie's foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, honored him with one of its first Academic Leadership awards in 2005.
Cohon came to Carnegie Mellon from Yale University, where he was dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and professor of environmental systems analysis. He joined Yale after 19 years at The Johns Hopkins University, where he rose through the faculty ranks to become associate dean of engineering and vice provost for research.
Cohon earned his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
