Kanshukan Rajaratnam joined Stellenbosch University as the Director of the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking in January 2020 and is a professor in the Department of Logicis (Operations Research and Business Analytics). He completed his undergraduate studies in chemical engineering from the University of​​ Natal and a master’s degree in industrial engineering, specializing in operations research from the National University of Singapore. He read for his doctoral studies in systems engineering from University of Virginia, where he received the most outstanding doctoral student prize from the department. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked in industry - Accenture and Nedbank in South Africa and Capital One in the U.S.A. Prior to him joining the School, he was an associate professor of finance at University of Cape Town, where he held multiple leadership roles including faculty strategic projects manager, deputy deanship and acting deanship. He was a member of the South African Young Academy of Science and holds a B-rating from the National Research Foundation of South Africa.