Less than a month after Carnegie Mellon University announced that the Pittsburgh-based school would be expanding, officials appointed a faculty member and researcher as dean of the new campus in Miami.
Carnegie Mellon officials said in an Oct. 20 release that Jignesh Patel, a computer scientist at CMU, will serve as founding dean and vice president at CMU Miami.
While the campus won't enroll students until 2028, Jignesh has already been instrumental in helping define CMU Miami's research portfolio, academic mission and more.
"CMU Miami is an opportunity to start with the challenges facing society and figure out how to solve them in the most effective way," Patel said. "That has been a theme throughout my teaching and research career — turning ideas
into results that make a difference. From the foundational research all the way to real-world implementation — that’s what CMU does. That’s what we want to build in Miami. And that is what society needs too — now more than ever."
Who is Jignesh Patel? What to know about dean of Carnegie Mellon Miami
Patel is a computer scientist and faculty member of Carnegie Mellon's Kennth C. Griffin School of Computer Science, where he's served as interim head of the computer science department since 2025, according to a release from CMU. He began working at CMU in 2023 after time spent at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan.
"(Patel) is a distinguished scholar, an exceptional educator and an entrepreneur who understands how to move ideas from discovery to impact," Carnegie Mellon President Farnam Jahanian said in a statement. "His leadership will be essential as we build a campus that reflects the very best of Carnegie Mellon: rigorous, interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial and focused on solving problems that matter."
Patel's research — which has been supported by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes for Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Homeland Security — encompasses scalable algorithms for efficient data systems and natural language interfaces for data analysis. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Patel holds a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At University of Michigan, he was awarded the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering Education Excellence Award, while he received the Wisconsin Computer Science Department’s Student Choice Professor of the Year Award at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Patel has also used his expertise in computer science to cofound four companies, including Locomatix, which managed real-time location data. The company was acquired by X, known as Twitter at the time, which integrated its technology into its real-time streaming platform.
Where will Carnegie Mellon's Miami campus be located?
The university said its Miami campus will be built at 318 NW 23rd St. in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, just a few miles north of the Brickell neighborhood, where Griffin's hedge fund Citadel is headquartered, according to Refresh Miami. It will span more than 35 acres, according to the university.
Who is Ken Griffin?
Ken Griffin is the founder and CEO of Citadel, a Miami-based hedge fund that was founded in 1990. He's given more than $5.7 billion to education and related initiatives, according to Carnegie Mellon.
At the end of September, CMU announced that Griffin had gifted $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon, with $2 billion of those funds set to go toward the launch of Carnegie Mellon Miami. The remaining funds will go to supporting Pittsburgh's campus.
When will construction, enrollment start at Carnegie Mellon Miami?
Carnegie Mellon's Miami campus is set to enroll more than 3,500 undergraduate, master's and Ph.D. students while employing nearly 300 faculty members and more than 600 staff members, according to the university. Construction will kick off in 2027, and students are scheduled to begin enrolling in 2028.
The campus' program offerings will focus on "challenge areas" across human health and biological discovery; national security and strategic capabilities; energy and climate resilience; and advanced manufacturing and industrial transformation. The campus is set to include space for industry research labs and venture studios, serving as a "living laboratory for new ideas" university officials said.
Sarah Perkel and Natalie Neysa Alund contributed to this report.
Finch Walker is the Pittsburgh Connect Reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Contact Walker at FWalker@usatodayco.com. Instagram: @finchwalker_. X: @_finchwalker.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Carnegie Mellon University's Miami campus now has a dean
