Indian American professor Rangarajan Sundaram has been appointed as the new Dean of the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU). NYU President Andrew Hamilton and Provost Katherine Fleming officially announced the appointment of Sundaram in a press release on December 20.

Prof. Sundaram has served as the faculty of Stern’s for more than two decades. He will take charge from Peter Henry, who held the deanship since January 2010. Sundaram will join as the Dean from January 1, 2018, onwards. He has worked as the Edward I. Altman Professor of Credit and Debt Markets and Professor of Finance and served as the Vice Dean of MBA programs since 2016.

“Stern’s reputation is such that it had an outstanding group of candidates for the dean’s post. But in the end, the Search Committee found the best candidate here in our own midst. And rightly so,” Hamilton said in the media statement. “Raghu Sundaram has a strong, highly regarded record of leadership and innovation, scholarship and teaching, and collegiality and service to both Stern and the University. Ina field of distinguished candidates for Stern’s deanship, Raghu stood out.”

Sundaram completed his BA in economics from the University of Madras in 1982. He earned his MA and Ph.D. from the Cornell University. He joined as a Professor at the University of Rochester in 1988 till 1996. Following this, he joined Stern’s Faculty.

Sundaram is the author of two texts, named ‘A First Course in Optimization Theory,’ which was published in 1996 by Cambridge University Press. His second book ‘Derivatives: Principles and Practice,’ which was published in 2010 by Mcgraw-Hill. A recipient of Jensen Prize, Sundaram has received research grants from National Science Foundation. He was also awarded the Stern Business School’s inaugural Distinguished Teaching Award.

According to the university’s website, Sundaram’s scholarly interests include agency problems, executive compensation, corporate finance, derivatives pricing, credit risk and credit derivatives. He is an expert in the areas like mathematical economics, decision theory, and game theory, with articles appearing in such journals as Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, and Review of Financial Studies.