NYU Invests $1 Billion in Tandon School of Engineering, Named After Philanthropists Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon
- “Continuing the stunning upward trajectory! So thrilling! Love Light Laughter,” tweeted Chandrika Tandon, a Grammy-nominated artist and businesswoman.
New York University has invested $1 billion in the Tandon School of Engineering “to improve its ranking among competitors and raise New York City’s profile in the technology sector,” the university announced last week. The school, located in Brooklyn, is named after Indian American philanthropists Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon.
Additionally, it will allow the school “to increase its tenured and tenure-track faculty by nearly 50 percent with a particular focus in key disciplines for which Tandon is globally recognized and to maximize space for research, study, student life, and collaboration.” The $1 billion investment includes “$600 million in previous funding with additional planned future funding of another $400 million in operating budget growth plus capital investments in new and renovated facilities,” the university said.
“Continuing the stunning upward trajectory! So thrilling! Love Light Laughter,” tweeted Tandon, a Grammy-nominated artist and businesswoman. She and her husband, Ranjan Tandon, an Indian American engineer-turned-businessman, donated $100 million to NYU’s business school. That money was used to improve lab spaces at the Brooklyn campus, “with a big effort to recruit faculty members focused on robotics, health and data science,” NYU aid at the time. The donation is believed to be the largest philanthropic gift by a member of the Indian American community.
Chandrika Tandon is a Grammy-nominated musician, with an album, “Soul Call,” nominated for Best Contemporary World Music in 2011.
Chandrika Tandon is a member of the Board of Overseers of NYU’s business school, a member of the NYU Board of Trustees, and leads the NYU President’s Global Council. A former partner at McKinsey and Company, she is chair of Tandon Capital Associates, a financial advisory firm she founded in 1992. She is also a Grammy-nominated musician, with an album, “Soul Call,” nominated for Best Contemporary World Music in 2011. Her husband, Ranjan Tandon, is an engineer by training and a graduate of the Harvard Business School. He is the founder and chair, Libra Advisors, a hedge fund he founded in 1990.
The New York Times notes that NYU Tandon “was a product of a merger between the NYU College of Engineering and the Polytechnic Institute of New York,” which were both “struggling in the midst of the city’s financial crisis.” The two institutions merged in 2014. The renaming happened a year later.
The latest NYU investment comes a few months after the university purchased 3 MetroTech Center, a 10-story, 350,000 square-feet building in Brooklyn. “Beginning with the merger with the former Polytechnic University in 2014, NYU has established a vibrant and growing academic presence in Downtown Brooklyn that emphasizes engineering, technology, new media, gaming, and recorded music,” as well as the expansion of the College of Dentistry, the university said.