Jamshed Bharucha is a cognitive neuroscientist who has served in top leadership roles in higher education. His research has focused on music and the brain. His current interest is in employing data science to look for underlying patterns in higher education finance, admissions and communications.. He has served as Distinguished Fellow and Research Professor at Dartmouth College, where his research and teaching were focused on education data science. He is President Emeritus of Cooper Union, a college located in Manhattan, New York City, having served as the 12th President of Cooper Union from July 2011 through June 2015. Prior to becoming President of Cooper Union, Bharucha was Provost and Senior Vice President of Tufts University and Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Music and in the Medical School's Department of Neuroscience. Prior to Tufts he was the John Wentworth Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Dartmouth College. His research is in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, focusing on the cognitive and neural basis of the perception of music. He was editor of the interdisciplinary journal Music Perception and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Bharucha spent most of his academic career at Dartmouth College, where he was John Wentworth Professor and rose from Associate Dean for the Social Sciences to Deputy Provost to Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. He was the first Indian American dean of a school at an Ivy League institution. While in the Dartmouth administration, he established the Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center - the first teaching and research MRI facility outside a medical school, accessible to undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. His principal faculty appointment was in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, but he also taught in the Program in Linguistics & Cognitive Science and the Program in Electroacoustic Music. As an academic administrator, he launched initiatives on teaching and research, as well as their integration in the form of active learning, encouraging undergraduates to get involved in research with their professors. After spending 2015-2016 at Harvard, Bharucha was appointed Distinguished Fellow at Dartmouth, where he teaches in two departments: Education and Psychological & Brain Science.
Tufts University
Bharucha moved to Tufts in 2002 to assume the position of Provost & Senior Vice President. As Provost, Bharucha was the chief academic officer of the university, overseeing the seven schools, the Tisch College, the Institute for Global Leadership, the Fares Center and the Clinical & Translational Research Institute. Bharucha recruited to Tufts Vali Nasr, Nalini Ambady, Ray Jackendoff, Gina Kuperberg, Mathias Scheutz and Peniel Joseph. During his tenure, the volume of sponsored research doubled, the average number of patents per year from research doubled, and revenues from technology transfer and industrial collaboration increased tenfold. Bharucha launched the Summer Scholars program, which provides opportunities for undergraduate students to work on collaborative research with faculty across the university and its affiliated hospitals. He also launched the University Seminar, a cross-disciplinary course, open to undergraduate, graduate and professional students. Additions to the campus during his tenure include the Granoff Music Center and the rebuilt Neuroscience Department at the Tufts School of Medicine.
Cooper Union
Bharucha was appointed as the twelfth president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art effective July 1, 2011. His tenure at Cooper Union was marked by a financial crisis and tuition protests. An investigation by the New York State attorney general's office ensued into the institution's decision to charge tuition for the first time in its history and other financial decisions made by the Trustees. This eventually led to the attorney general's office brokering a settlement of a lawsuit filed by a group of students, alumni and faculty. On June 10, 2015, Bharuchafind ve trustees, who had been supporters of tuition, and were opponents of the settlement, resigned. The following day, Bharucha announced that he would be stepping down to become a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
Bharucha has been named the inaugural Vice Chancellor of SRM University, Amaravati, a new university in the newly designed capital city of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. He established a partnership with Minerva Schools at KGI to adopt their active learning platform.
Honours
He is a Trustee of Vassar College, where he has chaired the Budget & Finance Committee and the Academic Affairs Committee. He received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Alumnae & Alumni of Vassar College. Other past and present board service includes: the Board of Managers of SRM University - Amaravati, a new university in Amaravati, the new capital of the State of Andhra Pradesh in India; the Board of Trustees of Vellore Christian Medical College Foundation, which supports Christian Medical College and Hospital, the top private medical school in India; and the Honorary Advisory Board of IIMUN.
