Steven B. Sample and Andrew J. Viterbi Both Become Eta Kappa Nu Eminent Members

 

In separate ceremonies, USC President Steven B. Sample and Viterbi School alumnus and naming donor Andrew J. Viterbi, were both honored with Eminent Member status by Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the 100-year-old national honor society for electrical and computer engineering.

Eminent Member status is HKN’s highest membership classification, and requires “attainments and contributions to society through leadership in engineering that have resulted in significant benefits to humankind” for the distinction.

Sample became the 108th Eminent Member of HKN on Oct. 31 in a noontime celebration held in the Ronald Tutor Hall Dean’s Boardroom.  An electrical engineer who is on the faculty of the Viterbi School, Sample was honored by 40 fellow Eta Kappa Nu members, including about two dozen USC student members. Also attending were USC trustee Malcolm Currie and and USC alumnus Marcus Dodson, who are also Eminent Members. Sample was cited for his extraordinary leadership skills as 10th president of the University of Southern California.

Andrew Viterbi and President Steven B. Sample at the 100th anniversary gala of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

“It’s wonderful to be with my fellow Eta Kappa Nu members,” Sample said in accepting the award. “That Eta Kappa Nu had its roots at my alma mater — the University of Illinois — makes this award specially meaningful.”

Sample became president of USC in March of 1991. He is an electrical engineer, a musician, an outdoorsman, a best-selling author, and an inventor. He has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to consumer electronics and leadership in interdisciplinary research and education.  He earned B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Notre Dame, Northeastern University, the University of Nebraska, Purdue University, Hebrew Union College, the University of Sheffield, England and Canisius College, Buffalo. Sample has also received a number of awards from civic organizations and educational institutions, including the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal from SUNY Buffalo, a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois, and the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice.

Viterbi was presented with the HKN Eminent Member award on January 17 at the 2006 IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium in San Diego.  Viterbi’s principal original research contribution, the Viterbi Algorithm, has changed the world. The algorithm is used in most digital cellular phones and digital satellite receivers, as well as in such diverse fields as magnetic recording, voice recognition, and DNA sequence analysis. More recently, he has concentrated his efforts on establishing CDMA as the multiple access technology of choice for cellular telephony and wireless data communication.

Viterbi, who holds the USC Presidential Chair of Engineering, with his wife Erna, made a record-setting $52 million gift to name the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2004.

In accepting the HKN award, Viterbi said, "I am honored to be selected for inclusion among such a distinguished group of my professional peers. Interestingly, this is the fiftieth anniversary of my election to Eta Kappa Nu as a student at MIT and the three hundredth birthday of the eminent "founder" of our discipline, Benjamin Franklin."

Viterbi is a co-founder and retired vice chairman and chief technical officer of QUALCOMM Incorporated. He spent equal portions of his career in industry, having previously co-founded Linkabit Corporation, and in academia, as a professor in the Schools of Engineering and Applied Science, first at UCLA and then at UCSD, where he is now professor emeritus. He is currently president of the Viterbi Group, a technical advisory and investment company.

Viterbi has received numerous honors both in the United States and internationally. Among these are six honorary doctorates from universities in Canada, Israel, Italy, and the United States. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received the Marconi International Fellowship Award, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell and Claude Shannon Awards, the NEC C&C Award, the Eduard Rhein Foundation Award, the Christopher Columbus Medal, and the Franklin Medal.

He has also received an honorary title from the President of Italy, and he has served on the U.S. President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. Viterbi serves on boards of numerous non-profit institutions, including the University of Southern California. He also serves on the California Council on Science and Technology, the MIT Visiting Committee for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, the Burnham Institute, and the Scripps Research Institute.