What’s In A Naming?
Two years ago this fall, we celebrated 100 years of USC engineering.
The anniversary was marked by a special gift from the Mork Family to name the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.
Last year, in a landmark gift, alumnus Ming Hsieh named the Department of Electrical Engineering with the largest gift ever to name an engineering department in the nation.
And this fall, Sonny Astani, another very special alumnus, made a strong statement of faith to another Viterbi engineering discipline, civil and environmental engineering; a statement that will position the newly endowed department as a leader in responding to new urban challenges, particularly in the emerging area of megacities.
Civil engineering is engineering’s quintessential discipline. Throughout human history, civil engineers built structures that defied gravity, pleased the eye and the soul, and withstood the forces of nature. They devised materials that made the dreams of artists and architects come true. They constructed bridges and transportation networks to enable commerce and better human communication. And they created communities and cities. All the while, civil engineers strived to make daily life better—to improve livability.
USC civil engineers helped build Southern California—and the foundation of the Viterbi School of Engineering.
With the rapid growth of human population has come a multitude of challenges for resources and the environment. Today, human activity affects the world in ways never before experienced: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the energy we consume, the waste we generate, and the atmosphere that surrounds us, whether in the microclimate of cities or the global climate itself.
Formidable challenges in environmental quality, environmental health and, increasingly, in sustainability, are now addressed head-on by civil and environmental engineers.
This year, for the first time in human history, the earth’s population became more urban than rural. By 2030, 5 billion people, or 60 percent of humans, will call the city home. We live in the era of the megacity—metropolises of more than 10 million people. In 1950, only Tokyo and New York met that threshold. Today there are 20 such megacities, including Shanghai, Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Taipei, London, Mumbai, Jakarta, Istanbul—and Los Angeles.
But megacities present major challenges: complex infrastructure, congested transportation, environmental quality, and energy and water resources that the city must import, and which make it particularly vulnerable to adverse events, be they natural or human-driven catastrophes.
USC civil and environmental engineering aspires to be a leader in addressing these challenges. Our location at the heart of Los Angeles gives us the motivation, the credibility and the geographic relevance to become the flagship in this mission, not only in this country, but also in the world.
We are extremely fortunate that this aspiration has become possible with the help of visionary alumnus Sonny Astani.
Astani’s thirst for discovery led him to a distant land—distant in geography and culture—from where he was born and raised, but close to his inner self. In a story that has been repeated before, here and across this country, Astani engineered innovations that transformed his chosen field.
And in a story that is repeated for the second year in a row in the Viterbi School, a former international student gives back to his alma mater, for the benefit of generations of students to come and for the world at large.
What’s in a naming? Nothing less than the American ideal in generosity and in responding to the challenge.
Yannis C. Yortsos
Dean, USC Viterbi School of Engineering
