University Trustee Is Class Day Speaker

Armen A. Avanessians, a partner at Goldman Sachs & Co and alumnus of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, who was recently named a University Trustee, will be the keynote speaker for Class Day. The Class Day ceremony celebrates the accomplishments of all SEAS degree candidates (B.S., M.S., M.Phil., Eng.Sc.D., and Ph.D.) and will be held on Monday, May 19, at 1:30 p.m. on the South Lawn of Columbia University’s Morningside Campus.

“Mr. Avanessians is the perfect example of how engineering has become a ‘liberal arts’ education for the 21st century,” said Gerald A. Navratil, Interim Dean of SEAS. “His background and accomplishments highlight how education in traditional engineering disciplines allows flexibility to develop diverse career paths.” Mr. Avanessians majored in electrical engineering and began his career in research in the common subsystems laboratory at Bell Laboratories. He then joined Goldman Sachs as a foreign exchange strategist in 1984. He was named a vice president in 1988, and a partner in 1994. He currently directs Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Strategies, Equity Strategies, Investment Banking and Financing Group Strategies, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management Strategies at the firm.

“Mr. Avanessians is a dedicated SEAS alumnus who serves as a University Trustee, Chair of the School’s Board of Visitors, Chair of The Columbia Campaign for Engineering, and a member of the Financial Engineering Advisory Committee of the SEAS Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research,” said Dean Navratil. “We are very pleased that he will be addressing the Class of 2008 at the Class Day ceremony.”

In addition to his volunteer leadership commitment to the School, Mr. Avanessians has supported both faculty and students. He endowed The Alexander and Hermine Avanessians Professorship in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research in memory of his parents. In 2006, he created the Janette and Armen Avanessians Diversity Award to recognize SEAS faculty for enhancing diversity in departmental, school and university programs at Columbia. The award is presented each year at the Class Day ceremony. Last year’s recipient was Professor Chris Wiggins of the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics. This year’s recipient has not yet been announced.

Mr. Avanessians earned a B.S.E.E. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Columbia in 1983.