Farnam Jahanian
President, Henry L. Hillman President's Chair
Farnam Jahanian is the 10th president of Carnegie Mellon University, where he holds the Henry L. Hillman President’s Chair. He is currently serving in his second five-year term as president and holds three faculty appointments — in CMU’s School of Computer Science, College of Engineering, and the H. John Heinz III College of Information Systems and Public Policy.
A nationally recognized computer scientist, entrepreneur, public servant and academic leader, Jahanian has advanced a number of key priorities at the university and in higher education more broadly.
He has overseen the expansion of Carnegie Mellon’s research enterprise, which is now widely recognized as a global force in driving innovation, emerging technologies and industry collaboration and draws in more than $600 million in external funding annually. In addition, he has led the most ambitious evolution of campus to date — with the university investing nearly $1 billion by 2027 to enhance its infrastructure in support of its education and research missions — as well as the most successful capital campaign in the university’s history, with nearly $2.5 billion dollars raised to date.
Beyond these achievements, Jahanian has spearheaded efforts to ensure that deserving, talented and high-achieving students have a pathway to affording and attending CMU for their undergraduate journey — regardless of their socioeconomic background or family resources. The university continues to expand its suite of access and affordability initiatives, recently adding the Tartan Scholars and CMU Pathway programs for undergraduates as well as the CMU Rales Fellows program for graduate-level STEM students. As a result, Carnegie Mellon has grown its investment in undergraduate financial aid by more than 86% in the last 10 years while continuing to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need for all undergraduate U.S. citizens and permanent residents, regardless of their family income.
A key leader in higher education, Jahanian also drives important conversations and initiatives aimed at helping the field adapt to the future of work in the age of automation and AI while advocating for the role of universities in bolstering the footprint of U.S. innovation. He has testified before Congress on a broad range of topics, including cybersecurity, next generation computing and big data analytics and champions basic research as uniquely central to an innovation ecosystem that drives global competitiveness and strengthens national security.
In 2014, Jahanian first joined CMU as vice president for research, where he nurtured excellence in research, scholarship and creative activities. In his subsequent role as the university’s provost and chief academic officer — a position he held from May 2015 to June 2017 — he had broad responsibility for leading CMU’s schools, colleges, institutes and campuses and was a significant driver of planning and implementing long-range institutional and academic priorities.
Prior to CMU, Jahanian led the National Science Foundation Directorate for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) from 2011 to 2014. With a budget of over $900 million, CISE was — and is — home to a number of programs and initiatives focused on advancing research and cyber infrastructure, fostering broad interdisciplinary collaborations and contributing to the development of a computing and information technology workforce. During this time, Jahanian also served as co-chair of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology, where he coordinated and oversaw the research and development activities of 17 government agencies.
From 1993 to 2014, Jahanian was on faculty at the University of Michigan, where he held the Edward S. Davidson Collegiate Professorship in the College of Engineering. He also served as chair for Computer Science and Engineering from 2007 to 2011 and director of the Software Systems Laboratory from 1997 to 2000. In 2001, he co-founded a software company called Arbor Networks and served as its president and chief scientist until 2004 and chairman until the company’s acquisition in 2010. Prior to this, he held research and management positions at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
A sought-after thought leader, Jahanian has participated on dozens of national, state and regional advisory boards and panels. He has served on the President’s Export Council (2023), Pennsylvania Governor-elect Josh Shapiro’s transition team (2022) and chaired the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (2015 to 2021). He is also active with the World Economic Forum, serving as a member of the Global University Leaders Forum and as a member of the Global Network Advisory Board for the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Beyond these engagements, Jahanian serves on the board of directors for a number of organizations, such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Highmark Health, Inc., and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. He also sits on the executive committee of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, is a trustee of the Dietrich Foundation and serves as co-chair of the Southwestern Pennsylvania New Economy Collaborative, which is the governing board for implementing the coalition’s $62.7M Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant.
Jahanian has earned numerous awards over his career to date, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1995), University of Michigan College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award (1998), Amoco Teaching Award (2000), DARPA Innovation Award (2000), EECS Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award (2005), the State of Michigan Governor’s University Award for Commercialization Excellence (2005) and the ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (2008 and 2021). In 2015, He also earned the Computing Research Association’s Distinguished Service Award (2015) and was honored in Carnegie Corporation of New York’s “Great Immigrants — The Pride of America” campaign (2016).
The author of over 100 published research papers, Jahanian is a celebrated scholar on a range of topics, including distributed computing, network security and network protocols and architectures. His research has been supported by numerous major sponsors, including the NSF, DHS, DARPA, NSA, ONR as well as companies like Cisco, Intel, Google, Boeing, VeriSign, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
Jahanian holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.