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 led Carnegie Mellon through one of the most ambitious chapters in its history. In 2026, the university announced a historic $3 billion gift from Citadel CEO and philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin — the largest philanthropic investment by an individual in the history of higher education. The gift includes a $1 billion investment in CMU’s Pittsburgh campus, supporting the university’s highest priorities and its top-ranked School of Computer Science, now named the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science, as well as $2 billion to launch Carnegie Mellon University Miami.
CMU Miami–one of the university’s boldest strategic moves to date–is expected to support 3,375 undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students at full scale and activate a new model for education and research. By leveraging Carnegie Mellon’s strengths across computing, engineering, the sciences, business, policy, design, the arts and the humanities, the campus will orient its learning and discovery around addressing complex societal challenges, including human health and biological discovery, national security and strategic capabilities, energy and climate resilience, and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation.
Under Jahanian’s leadership, Carnegie Mellon has expanded its research enterprise, which draws more than $600 million in external funding annually and is widely recognized as a global force in emerging technologies, AI, robotics, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing and industry collaboration. He has also led the most ambitious evolution of campus to date, with the university investing nearly $1 billion by 2027 in infrastructure supporting education and research, and oversaw the most successful capital campaign in CMU history, with more than $2.5 billion raised.
Jahanian has also made access and affordability a central priority of his presidency. Carnegie Mellon continues to expand initiatives including the Tartan Scholars and CMU Pathway programs for undergraduates and the CMU Rales Fellows program for graduate-level STEM students. The university has significantly grown its investment in undergraduate financial aid while continuing to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need for all undergraduate U.S. citizens and permanent residents, regardless of family income.
A leading voice in higher education, Jahanian is deeply engaged in national conversations about the future of work, automation, AI, U.S. competitiveness and the role of universities in strengthening the nation’s innovation ecosystem. He has testified before Congress on cybersecurity, next-generation computing and big data analytics, and champions basic research as central to economic prosperity and national security.
Before becoming president, Jahanian joined CMU in 2014 as vice president for research and later served as provost and chief academic officer from 2015 to 2017. Prior to CMU, he led the National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering from 2011 to 2014, overseeing a budget of more than $900 million and advancing research, cyberinfrastructure, interdisciplinary collaboration and workforce development. He 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, coordinating R&D activities across 17 federal 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, served as chair of Computer Science and Engineering, and directed the Software Systems Laboratory. In 2001, he co-founded Arbor Networks, serving as president and chief scientist until 2004 and chairman until the company’s acquisition in 2010. Earlier in his career, he held research and management positions at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
Jahanian serves on a number of national, civic and nonprofit boards and advisory groups, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Highmark Health, Inc., the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and the Dietrich Foundation. He is also active with the World Economic Forum as a member of the Global University Leaders Forum and the Global Network Advisory Board for the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The author of more than 100 published research papers, Jahanian is a celebrated scholar in distributed computing, network security and network protocols and architectures. His honors include the NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Innovation Award, ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award, the Computing Research Association’s Distinguished Service Award and recognition in Carnegie Corporation of New York’s “Great Immigrants — The Pride of America” campaign.
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 Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.