Pitt professor Kuldeep Shastri dies

Pitt lost a distinguished member of its faculty yesterday.

Kuldeep Shastri, the chair of… Pitt lost a distinguished member of its faculty yesterday.

Kuldeep Shastri, the chair of the finance program at the Katz Graduate School of Business and an alumnus of its MBA program, died of cardiac arrest yesterday morning at St. Clair Hospital, in Mt. Lebanon.

Shastri, 55, was known for his dedication to teaching, his knowledge of the stock market and love for his family and for cooking.

Shaun Eng, a senior in Shastri’s markets and trading class, said Shastri was one of the most easygoing professors in the business school.

Eng said Shastri taught him and his classmates about the stock market using a simulator called Stock-Trak.

“It would crash all the time, and I think it was great that most professors might brush that [program] off. He would just laugh and make the best of it,” Eng said.

He said he and his classmates did simulations every other week in Shastri’s class. They would perform a simulation one week and turn in a paper about it the next.

“You got to learn a lot more than buying low and selling high,” Eng said, referring to a common mantra in the trading profession. “Compared to other professors, I think that he was a lot more involved in letting the students get their hands dirty. He really wanted you to learn from doing things.”

Eng said he would consult Shastri when he was trying to decide which stocks to buy, and Shastri would always provide him with solid yet unconventional advice.

“We would look at the P/E ratio, and I would never consider things like that,” Eng said, referring to a market principal that tracks whether a company is turning over its inventory and making money.

Eng said he couldn’t remember where Shastri acquired his knowledge of the market.

“I don’t think he ever talked about his personal life,” Eng said.

Shastri was born in India in 1954. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi in 1975. He earned his MBA from the Katz Graduate School of Business in 1976 and his doctorate in financial economics from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1982.

He published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals from 1981 to 2008.

He began teaching at Pitt in 1981 as a visiting lecturer and was named the Roger S. Ahlbrandt Sr. Endowed Chair in Finance in 2000.

Shastri’s wife, Karen, is an associate professor for the Katz Graduate School of Business. She described him as a “brilliant scholar, wonderful cook and a wonderful father.”

Kuldeep Shastri created a webpage for himself on Pitt’s site. Under the “Personal Page” section of his site, he wrote that he was “pretty good” at cooking and enjoyed watching sports, “especially anything that involves the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Pittsburgh Panthers and the UCLA Bruins.”

“I am told my first name means ‘Light of the Family,’ but am not certain any member of my family would agree with that characterization,” he wrote.

Kuldeep Shastri is survived by his wife, Karen, and his son, Joey, 18.

Karen said the family plans to hold a visitation for Kuldeep Thursday and a funeral service Friday, but she did not have the specific time or locations for the services as of last night.

Laura Schmid, manager of administrative operations for the College of Business Administration, said administrators planned to tell students today what would happen to Kuldeep’s classes.