Soumitra Dutta of Cornell Named Dean of Saïd Business School at Oxford University
- The Indian American was previously Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean at the N.Y.-based university’s graduate school of management.
Soumitra Dutta, professor of management and former founding dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, has been named dean of the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford. The Indian American will assume his new role at Oxford on June 1.
Dutta joined Cornell in 2012 as the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, the Cornell Chronicle reported. Before joining Cornell in 2012, Dutta was on the faculty of INSEAD, a leading international business school with campuses in France and Singapore.
Dutta served as dean of the SC Johnson College until January 2018 before returning to teaching and research. He told the Cornell Chronicle that the business college, and establishing the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, are his greatest accomplishments at Cornell. “Cornell has been a wonderful experience,” Dutta told the university paper. “And certainly the thing that I will miss the most is the community of friends and colleagues at Cornell.”
Provost Michael I. Kotlikoff told the Cornell Chronicle that Dutta “helped establish the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business as one of the premier business schools in the nation and expanded the college’s programs in New York City.”
Dutta’s Cornell profile describes him as “an authority on innovation in the knowledge economy, with a refreshing global perspective.”
He is co-founder or founder of two major global technology and innovation indices – the Network Readiness Index, published for 15 years by the World Economic Forum (WEF); and the Global Innovation Index, published for 10 years by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
He is the co-editor and author of the Global Information Technology Report, published by the World Economic Forum and the Global Innovation Index, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
In addition, Dutta has worked with several governments on formulating national technology and innovation policies. He also has served on the boards of international corporations, including Sodexo (a food services multinational), Dassault Systemes (a world leader in 3D experience systems) and ZS Associates (a global management consultancy focused on health care).
Dutta is also a member of the exclusive “Davos Circle” – participants who’ve been invited to the annual meeting of the WEF in Davos, Switzerland, for more than 10 years. In 2017, he was elected a fellow of the WEF.
He received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990. In 2017, he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, where he received a B.Tech in 1985.
Dutta will be moving to the U.K. with his wife, Lourdes Casanova, a senior lecturer and the Gail and Rob Cañizares Director of the Emerging Markets Institute at Johnson.