09/01/2026
Welcome to our first of the 2026-2027 school year: Sidharth (Sid) Muralidharan, Endowed Chair and Professor at TAI.
🎓 Background: Dr. Muralidharan earned an engineering degree before pivoting to advertising. He later completed a Ph.D. in Mass Communication, with an emphasis on Advertising, at the University of Southern Mississippi.
📝 Experience: Dr. Muralidharan worked as a Junior Account Executive at Zehnder Communications in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his client was Edgen Murray.
📊 Research: Dr. Muralidharan’s research has focused on pro-social advertising. “Being originally from India, I noticed that there weren’t many advertising studies on India,” he says. “So, a decade’s worth of my research was spent on pro-social advertising in India.”
✏️ In the Classroom: Dr. Muralidharan teaches “ADV 2302: Advertising, Society, and Ethics” and the for-credit undergraduate internship courses at TAI.
✈️ Outside the Classroom: When not on campus or doing research, Dr. Muralidharan enjoys traveling and spending time with his family.
🗣️ Fun Fact: Dr. Muralidharan is good at doing impressions of other people!
💙 Favorite SMU Memory: Dr. Muralidharan’s most memorable moments at SMU? Getting tenure and being promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, followed by his promotion to full Professor in 2024 and Temerlin Endowed Distinguished Chair of Advertising in 2026. “It was a 12-year-long journey, and it would not have been possible without support from TAI, Meadows, and SMU.”
Read more about Dr. Muralidharan at the link in our bio! 🔗
