March 16, 2018
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has named an Iranian-born scientist as its 10th president.
Farnam Jahanian came to the United States in 1977 after completing high school in Iran. He got his BS in math and computer science summa cum laude in 1982 from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Then he moved across the state to the University of Texas at Austin where he got a master’s and a doctorate in computer science.
He taught at the University of Michigan for years before moving to Carnegie Mellon in 2014 as a vice president.
Carnegie Mellon University is a private institution that was founded in 1900. It has 14,000 students in an urban setting and is noted primarily for its science and engineering programs. It is ranked 25th in the 2018 edition of Best Colleges and National Universities.
Jahanian is a noted specialist in cybersecurity. The university said his widely published work on cybersecurity and networks has transformed how cyber threats are addressed. In 2000, he co-founded a company that developed cybersecurity protections implemented by hundreds of Internet service providers, wireless carriers and others.