Hridesh Rajan

Dr. Hridesh Rajan is the Dean of the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane University, a position he has held since July 2024. As the leader of the second largest school at Tulane, encompassing eleven departments ranging from biological sciences and chemical engineering to physics and psychology, Dr. Rajan oversees more than 60 academic programs enrolling 2,255 undergraduate and 473 graduate/professional students. He is deeply committed to building an interdisciplinary-first, translational school of science and engineering focused on better lives. A distinguished computer scientist and academic leader, Dr. Rajan's career spans extensive contributions in research, education, and higher education administration.

Prior to joining Tulane, Dr. Rajan served for nearly two decades at Iowa State University, where he was the Kingland Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science. In this role, he significantly enhanced the department's national standing by overseeing substantial growth in student enrollment, faculty size, and research funding. He led a comprehensive strategic planning process that positioned the department for long-term success, emphasizing academic excellence, interdisciplinary innovation, and institutional alignment. Dr. Rajan also launched pioneering interdisciplinary data science programs and founded the Midwest Big Data Summer School, expanding access to advanced research training. Widely recognized for his administrative acumen and collaborative leadership, he increased the representation of women in computing programs by 45% and fostered cross-disciplinary research efforts that secured significant external funding. His leadership consistently emphasized student success, equitable faculty workload, and fiscal responsibility.

Dr. Rajan earned his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, and completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Virginia. His research has advanced the fields of software engineering, programming languages, and data science, notably through the creation of the Boa programming language, designed to democratize large-scale data analysis. He has held visiting positions at the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard University, and as a U.S.-UK Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bristol. His scholarly excellence has been recognized with numerous honors, including the NSF CAREER Award, a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award, and election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

As Dean at Tulane, Dr. Rajan is committed to student success, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, enhancing research capabilities, and strategically growing the School of Science and Engineering’s national and global impact. Central to his leadership at Tulane is the ambitious 1000 Days Plan, a strategic initiative aimed at accelerating interdisciplinary and translational research, expanding academic programs especially in engineering, expanding experiential opportunities for undergraduate students, and strengthening industry and community partnerships to elevate Tulane’s prominence in science and engineering education and research.