Dr. Jamshed Bharucha
Founding Vice Chancellor
Letter from the Vice Chancellor, Sai University
Welcome to Sai University, a magnificent new enterprise in Chennai!
We are launching Sai University for a new age – in which each student’s potential, passion, and imagination can soar. The time has come for India to emerge as an international center for higher learning — attracting the best talent and unleashing the creativity of the next generation. I returned from the US to join SaiU’s Founder and Chancellor, tech entrepreneur K. V. Ramani, in the creation of a globally eminent university.
At SaiU, we don’t wait for the future to hit us — we shape it. The jobs of today may not exist tomorrow, so we prepare students to seize unforeseen opportunities. The jobs of tomorrow are unknown today, so we prepare students to be job creators. The laws, public policies, and technologies of today are not equal to the challenges of tomorrow, so we prepare students to be innovators and problem solvers.
Accomplished leaders from all walks of Indian life have joined our Board to forge a future for the nation and the world. Original thinkers from around the world have joined us as advisors and visiting faculty to ensure that Sai University takes its place among the finest universities. These include: Michael Gazzaniga, the founder of the field of cognitive neuroscience; Daniel Dennett, the preeminent philosopher on the relationship between the mind, the brain, and computers; John C. Mitchell, Chairperson the Computer Science Department at Stanford University and Geraldine Laybourne, Co-Founder of media giant Nickelodeon. They come from storied institutions, including Stanford, Dartmouth, Tufts, IIT-Gandhinagar, Vellore Institute of Technology, and the Paris College of Art.
From computing and data science, to the arts and humanities, to law and international relations, SaiU is designed to grow into a vibrant interdisciplinary community of learning and research. No longer will a student interested in computer science and the arts have to choose one or the other; computational applications of the visual and musical arts form a vast horizon. No longer will a student interested in data science and public health have to choose one or the other; data analytics of infectious disease is an exploding area in the wake of the pandemic. No longer will a student interested in economics and psychology have to choose one or the other; the psychology of economic behavior is an expanding field guiding business and politics. And no longer will a student interested in law and technology have to choose one or the other; they are increasingly interdependent.
Active learning is a mantra at SaiU. Education should be more than the passive transmission of information to be regurgitated on an exam. We seek students who are intellectually curious and who want to participate, create, communicate, imagine, experiment, discover and innovate – under the mentorship of outstanding professors. We want students to be inspired — and to inspire others — to do things they have never done before. We expect students to discover their unique selves, become the best human beings they can be, and contribute to the betterment of the nation and the world.
Please join us as pioneers on this journey.