Jamshed Bharucha

Jamshed Bharucha is an Indian-American cognitive neuroscientist who has served in leadership roles in higher education in the United States and in India.

Bharucha is the founding vice chancellor emeritus of Sai University, Chennai, and was previously the inaugural vice chancellor of SRM University, Andhra Pradesh. Bharucha is also president emeritus of Cooper Union, a college located in Manhattan, New York City, having served as the 12th president of Cooper Union during the time of Cooper Union's financial crisis and tuition protests.

Prior to becoming president of Cooper Union, Bharucha was provost and senior vice president of Tufts University and professor in the psychology, music, and neuroscience departments. Before his time at Tufts, Bharucha was the John Wentworth Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences and dean of the faculty of arts & sciences at Dartmouth College. Bharucha returned to Dartmouth as a distinguished fellow and research professor, where his research and teaching are focused on the cognitive foundations of education. He now teaches at both Dartmouth and online at Sai University.^{[citation needed]} 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.

Jamshed Bharucha was born in Mumbai, India. His father Jal Bharucha, a Parsi engineer from Mumbai, and mother Elizabeth Bharucha (born Elizabeth Emily Robinson), a musician from Albany, New York, met at the University of Michigan. His parents were founding members of the Bombay International School, from which Jamshed graduated. Bharucha studied violin in Mumbai, received an Associate’s Diploma in violin performance from Trinity College of Music (London) in 1973, and then continued to study violin at Vassar.

Bharucha graduated from Vassar College where he majored in biopsychology (1978), then received an M.A. in philosophy from Yale University (1979) and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Harvard University (1983). At Harvard he worked with Carol L. Krumhansl, Stephen Kosslyn, William K. Estes and Roger Brown.^{[citation needed]}

Bharucha began his academic career at Dartmouth College, where he was John Wentworth Professor, and entered its academic administration as associate dean for the social sciences, eventually moving to deputy provost and then to become a dean of the faculty of arts & sciences. He was the first Indian American dean of a school at an Ivy League institution.^{[citation needed]} While in the Dartmouth administration, he established the Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center. 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 (now called "digital musics").

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 following his time at Cooper Union, Bharucha was appointed distinguished fellow at Dartmouth, where he taught in two departments: education, and psychological & brain science. He then went to India; after his time at Sai University he returned to Dartmouth, where he teaches part-time and conducts research.^{[citation needed]} He also teaches part-time online at Sai University.^{[citation needed]}