Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon Elected Chairman of Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities

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Oct 19, 2010, 12:58 ET

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon has been elected chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a nonprofit organization representing 61 leading public and private universities in the United States, as well as two major universities in Canada.

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Cohon, who served as vice chairman for the past year, assumed his new one-year appointment on Oct. 19, at the conclusion of the association's fall membership meeting. He succeeds Henry T. Yang, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara. As chairman of the Executive Committee, Cohon will have oversight responsibilities for the association and will lead discussions about the AAU's position on government policies.

"The nation's private and public research universities make extraordinary contributions to society through their research and public service, and by educating generations of scientists and engineers, scholars, and business and community leaders. The AAU encourages the United States government to provide both the resources and the necessary policies to enable universities and their faculty and students to engage in teaching, research, discovery and innovation and to serve their local and global communities. I am proud to be elected chairman of AAU's Executive Committee and I look forward to helping AAU accomplish its mission of support for our leading research universities," Cohon said.

Cohon is a former co-chair of the AAU Task Force on Export Controls and former chair of the Membership Committee. The AAU Task Force played a critical role in responding on behalf of research universities to recommendations by the U.S. Department of Commerce inspector general about the application of export controls on university research. The proposed recommendations would have had a dramatically adverse impact on the ability of foreign scientists, scholars and students to be involved in research conducted on campuses in the United States.

Cohon has been president of Carnegie Mellon since 1997. During his time at Carnegie Mellon, Cohon has worked to foster an environment in which groundbreaking technological advancements and artistic excellence thrive under close collaboration between award-winning, world-class faculty and actively engaged, highly gifted students.

A respected administrator and educator, Cohon was appointed by President Bill Clinton to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and was appointed by presidents G. W. Bush and Barack Obama to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Andrew Carnegie's foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, honored Cohon with one of its first Academic Leadership awards in 2005. Among many other honors, Cohon was named a distinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the society's highest accolade. He chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel that found the harm inflicted on our health by the pollution generated by burning coal or gasoline approaches $120 billion in health care costs. Requested by Congress, the report successfully quantified many of the external effects and costs of energy, and results were reported to the White House.

A member of the AAU since 1982, Carnegie Mellon is a global university, ranked among the top 20 world universities by the (London) Times Higher Education magazine for the quality of education and research it delivers. The AAU addresses issues that are important to research universities, such as funding for research, graduate education and research policy. The organization's activities include informing policymakers and the public of the many benefits of federally funded research, from new technologies and economic growth to health advances and national security. AAU member universities in the United States award more than half of the country's doctoral degrees. Among their research contributions, AAU institutions have patented and licensed thousands of innovative discoveries and technologies that have fostered new products, companies and entire industries in diverse fields ranging from information technology to biomedicine. Carnegie Mellon is one of those leaders, having helped to create more than 200 companies and 9,000 jobs in the Pittsburgh region. Since 2007, Carnegie Mellon ranks first among all U.S. universities without a medical school in the number of start-up companies created per research dollar spent, based on a report by the Association of University Technology Managers.

More biographical details for Cohon can be found at http://www.cmu.edu/about/leadership/president/biography.shtml

About Carnegie Mellon University: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.