The USC Viterbi School of Engineering has created a new early career chair with a gift from Viterbi School parents Colleen and Roberto Padovani to recognize faculty in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering.
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, who made the announcement, said the new Colleen and Roberto Padovani Early Career Chair will acknowledge electrical engineering faculty early in their career who show exceptional distinction and promise within their fields.
Colleen and Roberto Padovani
“Faculty early in their career are critically important to our mission as a leading research university,” Yortsos said. “We are very pleased that this chair in the important discipline of electrical engineering acknowledges and supports them. It will be a big help in the recruitment and retention of the best in the field.”
Padovani, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Qualcomm, holds a laureate degree from the University of Padova, Italy, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, all in electrical and computer engineering. Prior to establishing the Padovani Early Career Chair, he spearheaded a fundraising initiative that created an endowment to support the Viterbi Museum in Ronald Tutor Hall. The museum houses photographs and memorabilia of the Viterbi family and Andrew Viterbi’s illustrious career.
The Padovanis are the parents of Niccolo Padovani, an undergraduate engineering student in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Matteo Padovani, a Fine Arts major in the Roski School of Fine Arts.
With the addition of the Padovani Early Career Chair, the Viterbi School now has seven early career chairs, including: the Fluor Early Career Chair in Engineering; the Robert G. and Mary G. Lane Early Career Chair; the Philip and Cayley MacDonald Early Career Chair; the Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair in Engineering; the Jack Munushian Early Career Chair; and the Viterbi Early Career Chair in Engineering.
Faculty appointed to an early career chair demonstrate promise for distinguished accomplishments and an exceptional academic career.
