Rangarajan K. Sundaram

Biography

Raghu Sundaram is Senior Vice-Chancellor and Head of Global Strategy for New York University, and Dean Emeritus and the Edward I. Altman Professor of Credit and Debt Markets at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He served as Dean of NYU Stern from January 1, 2018 through June 30, 2024; and as Vice Dean for MBA Programs and Online Learning from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2017.

Under Raghu’s deanship, Stern raised over $400 million, including the three largest scholarship gifts in NYU’s history; created/expanded signature accessibility initiatives, such as the undergraduate Breakthrough and Berkley Scholars Programs and the graduate Fertitta Military Veterans MBA Program; shattered past records for incoming class metrics and student career outcomes, in both the undergraduate college and the MBA; launched a number of successful initiatives at the intersection of business, technology, and entrepreneurship, including the Andre Koo Tech MBA, the Endless Frontier Labs, and the Khubani BS in Business, Technology, and Entrepreneurship; created new initiatives around leadership, financial history, sustainability, real estate, climate finance, purpose and flourishing, and other areas; expanded the School’s physical footprint to Washington, D.C., London and Shanghai, soon to be joined by an MBA jointly with NYUAD that will launch in January 2025; launched its first online degree program; and established the School’s first Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Raghu’s academic work in finance spans a number of areas including agency problems, executive compensation, corporate finance, derivatives pricing, and credit risk and credit derivatives. He has also published extensively in mathematical economics, decision theory, and game theory. His research has appeared in leading academic journals in finance and economics, as well as in several practitioner-oriented journals. He is the author of two books: A First Course in Optimization Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Derivatives: Principles and Practice (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

Raghu has taught courses across Stern’s Undergraduate, MBA, PhD, and Executive Education programs. Of all the awards he has received over the years, he is most proud of being the inaugural recipient of Stern’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2007. He has a long record of service to the School and the University, including two terms as chair of the University’s Faculty Senators Council (2013-15) and as a member of NYU’s Presidential Search Committee in both 2014 and 2023. He currently serves as a member of the Governing Council of Krea University and the Advisory Board of the Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Beijing, China.

Prior to joining NYU Stern in 1996, Raghu was on the faculty of the University of Rochester from 1988-96. He received a bachelor of arts degree in economics from the University of Madras, India, in 1982; an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1984; and his MA and PhD in economics from Cornell University in 1987 and 1988, respectively.

Research Interests

• Derivatives: equity, interest-rate, & credit-risk
• Agency & executive compensation
• Corporate finance
• Other finance
• Dynamic & stochastic games
• Optimal learning & bandit problems
• Other game theory, economics, & dynamic programming

Courses Taught

• Derivatives Pricing
• Risk-Management

Academic Background

Ph.D., Economics, 1988
Cornell University

M.A., Economics, 1987
Cornell University

M.B.A., Operations, 1984
Indian Institute of Management, Ahemedabad, India

B.A., Economics, 1982
University of Madras, India