CMU president to speak on effect of tech disruption on higher education
Farnam Jahanian, the president of Carnegie Mellon University, will deliver a public lecture, “The Future of Higher Education in the Age of Technological Disruption” at CMU’s Qatar campus on Sunday, March 24.
Jahanian is visiting Doha as a distinguished speaker for Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). He is a member of QCRI’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
Jahanian’s talk will discuss the unprecedented pace, scope and scale of technological advances that continue to catalyze societal and economic transformations and accelerate the pace of discovery across all fields of inquiry. In particular, access to massive amounts of data and the rise of artificial intelligence and automation are leading the global economy to an inflection point.
“As these advances disrupt every sector of the global economy, higher education must adapt in order to ensure we are providing the right talent for this constantly evolving future,” Jahanian said. “Institutions such as Carnegie Mellon must not only train the next generation of computing talent, but also equip tomorrow’s workforce with the cross-cutting human skills that that will only increase in value as automation matures and pervades more tasks.”
Jahanian was appointed the 10th president of CMU in March last year after a brief tenure as interim president. He first joined the university as vice president for research in 2014 and later served as provost and chief academic officer.
He previously led the US National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) from 2011 to 2014. Prior to that, Jahanian was the Edward S. Davidson Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan, where he served as chair for Computer Science and Engineering from 2007 to 2011 and as director of the Software Systems Laboratory from 1997 to 2000.
Jahanian has been an advocate for how basic research can be central to an innovation ecosystem that drives global competitiveness and addresses national priorities. His research on internet infrastructure security formed the basis for the internet security company Arbor Networks, which he co-founded in 2001 and where he served as chairman until its acquisition in 2010.
Jahanian serves as chair of the US National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), sits on the executive committee of the Council on Competitiveness. He is also a board member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), and the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, among others.
His talk will be held at 4:15 p.m. at CMU Qatar’s assembly area.