Farhat (Meena) J. Lakhavani

Farhat (Meena) J. Lakhavani is the Director of Academic Technology Services (ATS) at Carnegie Mellon. She is responsible for strategic leadership and innovation in planning, developing and implementing Academic Technology Services that focus on supporting the educational mission of Carnegie Mellon. The highly talented ATS team provides and maintains reliable, usable environments used for teaching, learning and collaboration activities. One of her key role is to set strategic direction of services, in collaboration with academic leadership on campus, in support of teaching and learning while leveraging the Computing Services infrastructure.

Meena joined Carnegie Mellon as manager of research computing in 1986, providing technical consultation and programming services to the business school researchers. Since then, she has held various leadership positions. She has also taught in the undergraduate, graduate and executive programs at Carnegie Mellon and at the University of Pittsburgh.

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, she was a senior scientist with Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Meena holds a B.A. in Humanities, an M.S. in Computer Science and has completed doctoral course work in Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Meena has presented her work at national and international conferences and has published extensively – most recently in the Encyclopedia of Distance Learning (a chapter on planning for present and future of videoconferencing). She actively participates in various national organizations and has served on national advisory committees – most recently as a member of the EDUCAUSE Professional Advisory Committee. Meena also maintains relationships with peers at other universities.