Dr. Sam Chandan is the Founding Director of the Chen Institute for Global Real Estate Finance at the NYU Stern School of Business, where he leads the Institute’s industry and policy engagement activities, research initiatives, and MBA and undergraduate real estate programs. The Institute is consistently ranked among the top business school real estate programs globally.
The Institute was established in September 2022 and is supported by the largest-ever gift for an Institute or Center at Stern. In addition to the NYU Center for Real Estate Finance, it houses the school’s centers and initiatives in climate change, public health, and the built environment; property technology; real estate data science and artificial intelligence; and cities and real estate in emerging economies.
Prior to joining the faculty of Stern’s Finance Department in January 2022, Dr. Chandan was the Silverstein Chair and academic dean of the Schack Institute of Real Estate at the NYU School of Professional Studies, one of the world’s largest centers of real estate continuing education. He is a contributor to the World Economic Forum and co-author of its Framework for the Future of Real Estate, presented at Davos in January 2025, and a Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point’s McDonald Conference.
Dr. Chandan is founder and executive chairman of Chandan Economics, an economic advisory and data science firm serving the institutional real estate industry; independent advisor to TruAmerica, one of the nation’s leading multifamily developers, owners, and operators with over $18.0 billion in assets under management.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH), Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS), and Real Estate Research Institute (RERI), Dr. Chandan’s multifaceted research interests address real estate capital markets, the application of artificial intelligence to real estate finance, urban epidemiology, and the preparedness of global cities and other systemically important urban areas in managing and mitigating novel infectious disease threats.
