2007

The growing sophistication of games development at USC was evident when students and faculty from three schools - the Viterbi School of Engineering, the Roski School of Fine Arts and the School of Cinematic Arts - presented a glittering lineup of new ideas to industry leaders.

Electrical engineering graduate student Michael Johnson never thought he'd be introducing Bill Gates to fellow engineering students a year ago. Now that he has, he's ready for anything.

The finale of CS 445, the Viterbi School's Introduction to Robotics class, is a simulated search and rescue competition in which robots made from Legos must find and bring back cotton sack "victims" to a "hospital."

Systems that directly connect silicon circuits with brains are under intensive development all over the world, and are nearing commercial application in many areas, according to a study by a group led by USC neurobiologist Theodore W. Berger.

Yan Xiao is the designer of a new span in Leiyang, Hunan Province, China, which opened for traffic December 12.

For the first time in its history, the coveted Order of the Torch has selected two students from the Viterbi School to act as ambassadors for all USC seniors in a variety of campus events.

Hossein Hashemi, an assistant professor of electrical engineering-electrophysics in the Ming Hsieh Department, has been named to the Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair.

Nenad Medvidovic is one of the recipients of a 2007 IBM Real Time Innovation Award for university faculty — and also co-winner of a prestigious International Conference for Software Engineering prize.

Dozens of Viterbi freshmen poured off a bus and explored the corridors of the Information Sciences Institute on a recent Friday, part of the School's Freshman Engineering Academies' continuing efforts to expose beginning engineers to exciting research.

The Society of Women Engineers holds an inaugural workshop dedicated to teaching students the finer points of etiquette and professional dress, with tips on table settings and a fashion show.

Viktor Prasanna and Aristides Requicha were part of an elite company of 38 leaders in computing technology recognized this year by being named Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery,

Astani and Viterbi School faculty and board members celebrate a new beginning for one of the school's original departments.

With a historic $17 million gift, the largest ever to name a civil engineering department, Sonny Astani (MSISE’78) positions a department to meet the challenges of megacities.

Engineering society honors USC’s president and provost for their exceptional leadership and contributions.

Raj Reddy, the Carnegie-Mellon professor who founded that school's well-known Robotics Institute, delivered the second George Bekey Lecture, on "Technology and Society," November 20 to a capacity crowd.

Engineering senior and basketball player Reed Doucette, who is working on the efficiency of solar cells, will continue his studies at Oxford next year.

After years of systems installation work aboard many Navy ships, ISE doctoral student Yvette Torres becomes a professor in pursuit of a new career in academia.

A Viterbi School team has created software system to help combat commanders make correct decisions in complex, fast-changing conditions. The system dramatically outperformed rivals in recent trials.

Undergrad Roxanna Aliabadi, masters candidates Yoonji Kim and Jin Huang; and PhD aspirants Leila Kaghazian, Rutu Mehta and Bo Mi Song went to Orlando, Florida for the seventh Grace Murray Hopper Celebration

MIT bioengineer Douglas Lauffenburger presents keynote lecture on the promising intersection between bioengineering and biotechnology.

Viterbi School Dean Yannis Yortsos announced the first holders of two new endowed professorships: Joe Qin will hold the Fluor Professorship in Process Engineering and Don Zhang the Marshall Professorship in Engineering Technology.

The Viterbi School welcomes two research scholars who show promise of advancing the fields of nano device technology and health care systems engineering.

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research has awarded 13 USC engineers 2007 Zumberge interdisciplinary research grants for projects in quantum computing and new educational technologies to ultrasonic image-guided surgery.

USC Viterbi School computer programming students need problems. University Park neighborhood organizations need their own applications and websites. The two find each other at Prof. Barry Boehm’s long-running graduate level course in Software Engineering, CS 577.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recognizes Senior Associate Dean Maja Mataric and USC Provost C.L. Max Nikias for distinguished contributions in science and engineering.

Kids, teachers and Viterbi School seniors benefit from a special outreach program of supplemental science and engineering classes.

Fundraising leaders in Viterbi’s arm of the Good Neighbors Campaign hope to increase participation in the annual USC funding drive.

Viterbi's chemical engineering department pilots a new curriculum designed to marry modern technologies with core undergraduate courses with long-term lab modules called "degree projects."

Computer scientists at the University of Southern California and the start-up company they created are creating new generations of multi-dimensional world and local maps using an emerging mixed private-academic research model as they do it.

A prizewinning paper by Maged Dessouky from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering has elegantly solved a basic transit scheduling problem, potentially meaning shorter waits and more predictable travel for bus riders.

Fully a quarter of all the bandsmen in “The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the universe” are from the Viterbi School.

The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science has elected Don N. Kleinmuntz president of its board of directors, only a month after he became a fellow of the exclusive organization.

A multi-institutional team led by USC faculty has received a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for an ambitious effort to survey the genetic, physical, environmental and behavioral profiles of children with autism.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings show Viterbi School gaining ground in engineering, technology and computer science

The USC Trustee and member of the Viterbi School Board of Councilors outlines his menu for success when he delivers the plenary address.

Researchers have just completed and plotted a comprehensive census of the more 2.8 billion allocated addresses on the Internet -- the first complete effort of its kind in more than two decades, they believe.

Childrens Hospital's Jeffrey S. Upperman, who has long collaborated with ISI's Robert Neches on designs for next-generation pediatric emergency response systems, has just received a $5 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to develop such a system.

A new NIH-funded project will focus on visual displays to help people suffering from macular degeneration and other forms of vision loss.

Research on airport security led by Milind Tambe of the Viterbi School department of computer science working with USC's Homeland Security-funded Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events received worldwide media attention.

The IIE president emphasizes fundamental shifts in thinking and education to keep pace with complex, 21st century industrial processes and systems.

Security officials at Los Angeles Airport are using software developed by USC computer scientists to make their operations harder for the bad guys to predict and defeat.

Alan Willner and Giuseppe Caire are the new co-directors of the Communication Sciences Institute (CSI) and leaders of the communications group within the USC Ming Hsieh Electrical Engineering department, effective immediately.

Computer scientist David Kempe and biomedical engineer Ellis Meng named to endowed chairs for their exceptional early career contributions.

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos has appointed Ellis Meng of Biomedical Engineering and David Kempe of Computer Science to endowed early career chairs.

Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, has won the highly competitive Oliver Keith Hansen Outreach Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

The Epstein Department assistant professor is recognized for exceptional contributions in the early stage of his career.

Prof. Gaurav Sukhatme takes over from George Bekey, professor emeritus and University Professor. Both are in the Department of Computer Science.

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos delivers his annual state of the school address and sets new goals for the coming year.

The Mork Family Department professor will receive the North America Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos announces the establishment of the new Division of Engineering Education to focus on undergergraduate and Master’s level engineering education.

Jerry Mendel has received a 2008 Pioneer Award from IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, the third USC faculty member to be so honored He will receive it in Hong Kong next June.

Astronautics Professor Mike Gruntman looks back at the Sputnik era and ahead to interstellar space exploration during AIAA anniversary celebration of space.

The Viterbi School computer scientist extraordinaire this summer added to his long list of honors a pair of special lifetime contributions to software engineering awards, presented at prestigious research and education conferences.

Systems Architecting and Engineering Program Director Stan Settles started his fall semester with a high-speed race over Utah's famous Bonneville salt flats.

Francisco Valero-Cuevas, who joined the Viterbi School's Department of Biomedical Engineering this fall, is studying the biomechanical complexities of the human hand.

Shinyi Wu, a RAND Corporation engineer who will join the Viterbi faculty in January, 2008, was recently honored for "outstanding contributions to furthering RAND's mission of improving policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis."

Impressive scientific imagination and effective showmanship by graduate students doing research in the Viterbi School's Information Sciences Institute's Intelligent Systems Division were on view at the August 24 event.

The first batch of Viterbi Masters Scholars have their grants and are starting their studies. The basic grant remits tuition for six graduate units, three units in each of two successive semesters. Students from the whole range of Viterbi departments received the awards.

In a talk opening a new school year, Dean Yannis C. Yortsos gives the Viterbi School’s outstanding new students a warm welcome – and a little fatherly advice.

Eight undergraduates from China’s top engineering school, Tsinghua University, impress Viterbi School faculty with their engineering moxie and hard work.

Engineers C.C. Jay Kuo and Stefan Schaal will continue an unbroken string of Viterbi honorees stretching back many years when they make an October journey to San Francisco to receive their plaques

Sandia computer scientist and software engineer Donna Djordjevich (MSCS'06) has returned to her alma mater to create an interactive gaming platform to prepare decision makers and first responders.

Conclusions from a CREATE risk analysis could help local authorities with emergency planning at Los Angeles ports and electric systems.

The collaboration will help prepare undergraduates for a career in dental biotechnology.

Viterbi staff and faculty visit the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln meeting many engineers, some of whom are Trojans.

Juniors from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur were almost reluctant to leave USC after a summer of stimulating hands-on research.

H. K. Cheng, distinguished professor emeritus of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the USC Viterbi School, has died.

SeaBee II – a 50-pound underwater robotic submarine with three camera eyes, two arms, a novel water-cooling system, and enough smarts to find Pirate Dave’s treasure at the bottom of the lagoon – is swimming for the championship in this week’s international robot competition.

Undergraduate engineers wrote postcards home over the past seven weeks while studying in Paris, France on the Viterbi Overseas Program.

During the past decade robotic devices have moved out of research laboratories into clinical practice, emeritus professor George Bekey told a recent Southern California Biomedical Industry Investors conference.

The professor of astronautics is a founding member of the Viterbi School's Astronautics and Space Technology Division.

Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering researcher Chongwu Zhou has been named Jack Munushian Professor.

Nanotechnologist Chongwu Zhou and colleagues at Purdue and Northwestern universities have created transparent transistors with great potential to create head-up displays, ‘e-paper’ and ‘smart’ credit cards.

A USC Information Sciences Institute researcher thinks she has found a new source of artificial intelligence computing power to solve difficult IT problems of information classification, reliability, and meaning. People.

The mutts are metal, the size of toy poodles, with four pointy feet ending in little balls. They need to learn how to make their way on those little feet across a treacherous terrain of broken rocks. The Viterbi School's Stefan Schaal is teaching them.

The auto maker has donated $225,000 to launch a new high school mentoring program to prepare and encourage educationally disadvantaged but promising minority students to pursue undergraduate engineering degrees.

A husband-and-wife ISE/Computer Science team were among the 32 women and 19 men who will be fellows of Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, forming a "thematic cluster" studying the interactive visualization of musical structure.

The young researcher, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is developing novel ultrasound transducers that can image tissue in three dimensions and provide more than four times the resolution of two-dimensional imaging.

Six new faculty with expertise in biochemical and biomedical engineering, materials science, electrical engineering and computer science will join the Viterbi School this fall.

The much-honored USC electrical engineering alumnus is the inaugural co-winner of the the James Clerk Maxwell award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Professor Ramesh Govindan will assume the chairmanship of the Viterbi School Department of Computer Science on an interim basis, effective July 1, Dean Yannis Yortsos has announced.

A 22-year old electrical engineering student from Suzhou and a 22-year old signal and image processing specialist from Tianjing will begin classes at the USC Viterbi School in Los Angeles this fall as the first Ming Hsieh scholars.

A workshop to celebrate Solomon Golomb's 75th birthday attracts a bevy of international scholars.

The Viterbi School's Distance Education Network, the leading provider of distance graduate education in engineering among research universities, has a new executive director.

Yacht-owners, kayakers, harbor patrolmen and sea lions are seeing a new vessel on the waters of King Harbor these days — one that may someday save the lives of the lions.

Viterbi students taking Principles of Software Development work as a team to create a videogame.

A new book brings together key contributions by Barry Boehm, the highly influential creator of the Viterbi School's Center for Software and Systems Engineering.

James Moore, the newly re-appointed chair of the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, has been elected to the leadership of the Council of the Industrial Engineering Academic Department Heads.

The USC Viterbi School and Tsinghua University faculty establish a strategic partnership and build bridges of collaboration with a joint workshop.

A Viterbi School team at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) is creating a system to help policymakers with a faster more consistent way of quantifying risk estimates.

Viterbi students pursue their love of rocketry through the USC Rocket Propulsion Lab. Their goal is to reach space.

A Viterbi School computer science graduate student now has his PhD, and this thesis project continues in development as a way to train firefighters and other responders to fight conflagrations.

A sleepness night of preparation by student gamemakers leads to a morning of presentations at what one game company executive who attended called "the best program out there... the strongest technically in the world."

He’s been on loan to the NSF for a year and a half, influencing policy and funding decisions in computer science at the national level. When he returns to USC’s Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering next year, Timothy Pinkston will have some compelling news about research directions in the field.

James Baker, chairman and chief executive officer of Fuji Xerox’s Palo Alto Laboratory (FXPAL), has been appointed new director of USC's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), effective June 1, 2007.

The Viterbi School and Korean Aerospace University mark a Memorandum of Understanding by planting a commemorative tree in Korea.

Dean Yannis Yortsos congratulates Elaine Chew, of the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Tzung “John” Hsiai of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Viterbi School graduates 1,762 Viterbi School engineers during the 79th annual commencement ceremonies in Archimedes Plaza.

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Distance Education Network (DEN) granted Master of Science degrees to a record 272 students located all over the U.S., most of whom earned their degrees while working full-time.

Angus McColl, a veteran of 24 years in the U.S. Navy, is the new executive director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at the Viterbi School.

Bats generate a measurably distinct aerodynamic footprint to achieve lift and maneuverability, quite unlike birds and contrary to many of the assumptions that aerodynamicists have used to model animal flight, asserts aerodynamicist Geoff Spedding in this week's issue of Science.

David B. Wittry, a Viterbi School distinguished emeritus professor of materials science and of electrical engineering, was known for pioneering work in electron probe analysis.

A collaborative program to study the risks and economic consequences of terrorism gets the OK to investigate other forms of terrorism, including chemical and biological weapons, explosives, borderline security and protecting infrastructure.

Dean Yannis Yortsos thanks individuals for exceptional service and raises the bar for continued success in academics, research and fund-raising.

In an experiment transcending the classroom, Viterbi School’s Zero G team takes their fire ball experiment for a ride on NASA’s Vomit Comet.

Eun Sok Kim has improved his team's radically new technique, announced last year, for making DNA microarrays, a basic tool of modern medicine and biology.

The Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science's student chapter of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) has been named Chapter of the Month for May, the national SPE office has announced.

Dean Yannis Yortsos announces that Alexander A. Sawchuk, Systems Chair of the Viterbi School's Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering will be the first holder of the Leonard Silverman Chair.

The MEDICUS project, created by researchers at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering, was one of two projects honored by the Internet2 research consortium.

Caltech’s Anatol Roshko relates science’s long quest to understand the fluid mechanics of turbulence in the inaugural Janos Laufer Lecture.

Maximizing energy efficiency and developing a variety of clean alternative energy sources must become a global priority if there is any chance of keeping carbon dioxide emissions at tolerable levels.

An expert in cutting-edge technologies to measure tiny air pollutants is recognized for his leadership and contributions to the study of public health and environmental hazards.

A new chair in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering will honor the founder of Korean Airlines

Biomedical engineering students presented research and met industry representatives at the 11th installment of the Fred S. Grodins Symposium

A 'capstone' computer science class demonstrates how to help pilots and air traffic controllers prevent aircraft accidents on runways.

One of America's brilliant young engineers added still another honor to a lengthening list when he was named the first holder of the Viterbi Professorship in Engineering, effective July 1, 2007.

The researcher's proposal was one of 21 winners selected from more than 140 entries.

Ed Lazowska, the University of Washington professor famous for his indefatigable efforts to advance the discipline of computer science while preserving its conscience, appeared before a capacity crowd to deliver the first in a series of lectures named after USC's amazingly versatile roboticist/computer scientist/electrical engineer George Bekey.

A growing number of scientific fields suffer from a stifling embarrassment of riches. Data pile up much faster than they can be analyzed. The Viterbi School's Information Sciences Institute is building a system prototype that will address the problem by automating scientific workflow

A nationally known researcher, renowned for his early contributions to the Internet as part of the Information Sciences Institute, has come back to join the Viterbi School Department of Computer Science.

Sami Masri has been chosen recipient of the 2007 Newmark Medal, which is awarded each year by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Eva Kanso, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has won a highly competitive Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for her work to model aquatic locomotion.

Two USC engineering students are on the game development fast track. Years from graduation, “Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike,” a game "booster package" they helped develop, hit the shelves last week.

In the fifth annual Viterbi Lecture, Caltech’s Robert McEliece wows the audience with multimedia and humor.

A revolutionary processor package co-designed by Viterbi computer scientists, one that changes its architecture to adapt to the demands of different computing tasks more than met design expectations in recent trials.

The graduating senior — one of 18 students selected nationwide — hopes to receive an internship in China, working with environmental issues, such as global warming and alternative energy resources.

A special IEEE half-day conference event celebrated the work and influence of computer scientist/electrical engineer Melvin A. Breuer.

Kim Pacheco, a junior in structural engineering, a Viterbi student ambassador and co-captain of this year's ASCE Concrete Canoe team, is recognized for her outstanding work in the field.

Alexander Sawchuk and Bart Kosko came home from the University of Southern California Convocation, USC's solemn annual ceremony acknowledging academic excellence, with citations for distinction.

Herbert Schorr, executive director of the Information Sciences Institute since 1988, has won the Presidential Medallion, the University of Southern California's highest honor.

La Estanzuela, Honduras may not be top on many students’ lists of places to spend spring break, but it is for this student-managed humanitarian organization.

Wei-Min Shen of the USC Information Sciences Institute recently reported to NASA significant progress in developing "SuperBot," identical modular units that plug into each other to create robots that can stand, crawl, wiggle and even roll, illustrating his comments with striking video of the system in action

A new communication protocol for wireless sensor networks just released by the Information Sciences Institute is the most efficient yet, more than a tenfold improvement on previous versions.

They won brand new Chevy Aveos, but these two USC students didn't drive them home; they donated the cash value of the cars to impoverished communities in Third World countries.

Viterbi researchers and front-line Chevron personnel gathered recently at USC to take stock of more than two years of cooperation, and plan their next steps.

Viterbi School students, faculty join the Women's Transportation Seminar in a special dinner and Q&A with the federal transportation secretary.

A Viterbi engineer who has created and demontrated the use of new composite bamboo building materials is organizing an international conference on the emerging technology and its message for a world increasingly focused on sustainability.

Improved understanding of nanostructures such as molecular switches will be the catalysts of dramatic changes in the understanding of disease in the coming decade, predicts an expert in the field.

They jousted, launched bottle rockets and tossed a few pies at the professors, but it was all in fun to celebrate National Engineers Week.

Gérard Medioni has been honored by his peers in his specialty for a classic paper he presented in 1996.

NAE member Mitra, internationally known for his work in analog and digital signal and image processing, is now a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India.

The new study, published in Nature demonstrates a powerful tool that may help make the next generation of atom smashers more effective and more affordable.

A first-time campus event — WIE Connect — introduces promising high school girls to engineering with an 'amazing race' and hands-on activities.

The laboratory of Assistant Professor Hossein Hashemi of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering has created two radar chips that make a range of uses both efficient and affordable.

In March, a team of Viterbi School student engineers will hitch a ride aboard NASA’s microgravity laboratory to study how fire balls burn in zero G.

Bruce Matthews, a stellar student athlete, great collegiate and professional offensive lineman, and engineer, enters the NFL Hall of Fame.

Viterbi School astronautics professor Mike Gruntman chronicles the history of spaceflight in this special Distance Education Network (DEN) space anniversary webcast.

The University of Southern California is establishing a new USC Games Institute, which will be “an umbrella of activity” for the many schools and departments, including the Viterbi School, now involved in games research, according to Vice Provost for Research Advancement Randolph Hall

Check out all USC Viterbi undergraduates who achieved a 3.5 grade point average or higher on the Dean's List.

Chongwu Zhou, whose recent work on ingenious techniques to have carbon nanotubes self-assemble themselves into useful structures on sapphire bases has attracted international attention, is the first winner of a new IEEE honor.

Every year Google challenges the student computing world to come up with 'gadgets,' visual gizmos that users of the ubiquitous search service can use to personalize their home Google page. This year, there were only five winners - including Viterbi CS students Ryan Brown and Pamela Fox.

Find out who made last semester's Dean's List for achieving a 3.5 grade point average or higher.

USC biochemical engineer Pin Wang and an interdisciplinary team of scientists explore a new gene therapy to combat HIV.

Professor Robert A. Scholtz of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering received his 2006 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award "for pioneering contributions to ultra-wide band communications science and technology" at a recent ceremony in San Francisco.

Viterbi School computer scientists Ramesh Govindan, Aiichiro Nakano and Milind Tambe; civil engineer Najmedin Meshkati; and electrical engineer Eun Sok Kim are promoted to the full professor.

The Viterbi School applauds 24 talented engineering undergraduates from around the country for their Herculean efforts to build and demonstrate the powers of a parallel computer.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has named Tomlinson Holman as the recipient of its 2007 Masaru Ibuka Award, recognizing his contribution to the development of advanced audio and cinema multi-channel playback systems.

Tzung (John) Hsiai, a biomedical engineer and cardiologist, has received a Zumberge grant to help establish a Cardiovascular Research Core involving seven departments in five schools at USC.

Two faculty from the USC Viterbi School’s Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, Urbashi Mitra and Antonio Ortega, have been elected Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Endowed departmental lectures will honor the Viterbi School’s illustrious past while providing incisive looks at the new frontiers of science and technology.