Credit: Cornell University

Former Wall Street equities researcher Lakshmi R. Bhojraj has been appointed director of operations of the Parker Center for Investment Research at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management.

The Parker Center is a fully equipped trading room in Sage Hall on Cornell's campus. It uses $1.5 million of cutting-edge analyst software on an electronic educational platform and is a major teaching center for financial analysts at the Johnson School.

Bhojraj was previously an equity research analyst at Salomon Smith Barney in New York City, where she provided investment recommendations and expertise on the life sciences tools (scientific instrumentation) industry to institutional investment fund money managers.

"Lakshmi's real-world experience in Wall Street equity research will help the Parker Center strengthen its position as one of the premier centers of investment-management education," said Charles Lee, Johnson School professor of finance and academic director of the Parker Center. "She will be a valuable resource to students who are learning how to research and manage stock portfolios in our Cayuga MBA Fund." The equities hedge fund is run primarily by Johnson School students.

At the Johnson School, Bhojraj will serve as a member of the investment committee for the Cayuga MBA Fund and run the daily operations of the center. She also plans to use her Wall Street contacts to help the Johnson School's career services office boost its presence on buy- and sell-side institutions' core recruiting school lists and help find experts for the school's speaker series.

Bhojraj earned an MBA degree from the Johnson School in 2001. As a Johnson School student, she was a portfolio manager for the Cayuga MBA Fund, which she will now help oversee together with Lee and Bhaskaran Swaminathan, an associate professor of finance at the Johnson School. Both professors are founders of the fund.

The Parker Center was established by Jeffrey P. Parker '65, M.Eng. '66, MBA '70, a founder and CEO of CCBN, a web-based information services company, as well as founder and managing director of Private Equity Investments, a venture capital firm focusing on start-up and early stage companies.

The Johnson Graduate School of Management, founded in 1946, is located at the center of Cornell University, one of the world's top research institutions and the largest one in the Ivy League. The Johnson School offers MBA and doctoral degrees, an executive MBA and a variety of non-degree executive education programs.