Janarthanan Jayawickramarajah Appointed as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs

The newly appointed Senior Associate Dean will lead Tulane’s SSE in advocating for faculty, enhancing and growing faculty careers, and obtaining greater resources for quality research and accessible experiences. 

Janarthanan (Janan) Jayawickramarajah, Professor of Chemistry at Tulane, has been appointed Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the School of Science and Engineering, effective October 1.

As Senior Associate Dean, Professor Jayawickramarajah will focus on several key initiatives. Firstly, he wants to maximize his academic affairs role to be the most ardent advocate for the faculty, enhancing their career aspirations in any way he can. He also wants to focus on building out the facilities and IT structure throughout SSE to improve the quality and access available for faculty development and research. Thirdly, he will work to obtain further resources for the school, especially by working in cooperation with other schools within the university and entities outside of Tulane. Through these collaborative initiatives, SSE will be able build out and strengthen its resources and make larger, more meaningful changes in what it does as a school.

“With a strong commitment to enhancing opportunities and experiences for our teaching and research faculty over the past 17 years at Tulane, Dr. Jayawickramarajah is well-positioned to leverage his experience and leadership to take our academic affairs to the next level of success,” noted Dean Hridesh Rajan.

Dr. Jayawickramarajah’s research focuses broadly on organic-, biological-, and nano-chemistry (specifically, the development of dynamic nanomachines and networks, as well as self-assemblies and materials with advanced properties), with his laboratory typically funded by multiple federal grants. As Principal Investigator, he is currently funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Further, Professor Jayawickramarajah has been previously funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 and S10 mechanisms.

Jayawickramarajah served as Associate Dean for Research, Faculty Affairs, and PhD programs at SSE from 2022 to 2024 and was responsible for many major improvements, namely in terms of faculty support where he established a luncheon series to discuss grant funding opportunities and research collaborations. In terms of PhD programs, Jayawickramarajah is proudly the Founding Director of the Science Policy and Communication Graduate Fellows Program at the Murphy Institute. In terms of research, Professor Jayawickramarajah utilized his time and skills as Associate Dean to build out and facilitate teams to apply for major research grants, including the ARPA-H $23M award President Biden delivered a few months ago.

Professor Jayawickramarajah is also Co-PI on two NSF Major Research Instrumentation awards at the present. He has continued to keep a strong publishing record and publishes most frequently in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Jayawickramarajah has graduated 13 PhD students and 3 MS students, who have gone-on to impressive positions such as working for Nobel prize winners, international biopharmaceutical companies, and faculty positions.   

For the past 17 years, Jayawickramarajah has worked hard to advance the SSE and Tulane at all levels. For instance, he was a Faculty Fellow in the Mellon Graduate Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship and was also a Faculty in Residence at the Weatherhead Honors Dorm. And as previously mentioned, he is the Founding Director of the Science Policy and Communication Graduate Fellows Program at the Murphy Institute. Further highlighting his interdisciplinary work, Jayawickramarajah is also a noted Professor by Courtesy of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Tulane School of Medicine.

For all of his work at the University, Jayawickramarajah has received the Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Award, the Graduate Studies Student Association Outstanding Faculty Award, and was the inaugural winner of the SSE Faculty Service Award. He also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Department of Chemistry at University of TX at Austin

Professor Jayawickramarajah obtained a bachelor’s in chemistry (with honors) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, followed by a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. Upon completing a short postdoctoral stint at Yale University, he joined the faculty at Tulane in 2007. 

The School of Science & Engineering looks forward to seeing Jayawickramarajah continue to open new doors for the school and community, as well as all the continued support he will provide to faculty.