Dr. Hridesh Rajan, a UVA Engineering alumnus, has been appointed chair of the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University.Rajan, the Kingland Professor of Data Analytics, is Professor-in-Charge of Iowa State's Data Science program. He helped co-lead the effort to establish a new undergraduate data science degree, minor and certificate. In 2016, he founded the Midwest Big Data Summer School to deliver broadly accessible data science curricula to early career researchers from across the nation. Rajan is also a faculty member in Iowa State's information assurance, software engineering and human-computer interaction programs.
Rajan earned his master's and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Virginia in 2004 and 2005 respectively. He is an AAAS Fellow.