The Viterbi School of Engineering (formerly the USC School of Engineering) is located at the University of Southern California in the United States. It was renamed following a $52 million donation by Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm Inc. The USC Viterbi School of Engineering celebrated its 100th birthday in conjunction with the university's 125th birthday.
With over $135 million in external funding support, the school is among the nation's highest in volume of research activity. The Viterbi School of Engineering is currently ranked No. 10 in the United States by U.S. News and World Report.
The school is headed by Dean Yannis Yortsos. Its research centers have played a major role in development of multiple technologies, including early development of the Internet when USC researcher Jonathan Postel was an editor of communications-protocol for the fledgling internet, also known as ARPANET. The school's faculty includes Irving Reed, Leonard Adleman, Solomon W. Golomb, Barry Boehm, Clifford Newman, Richard Bellman, Lloyd Welch, Alexander Sawchuk, and George V. Chilingar.
Major research centers
- Alfred Mann Institute - business incubator for medical device development in preparation for commercialization
- Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems - National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center
- Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) - interdisciplinary national research center funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- Center for Systems and Software Engineering (CSSE) - research the relationship between systems, software, and users.
- Collaborative High Altitude Flow Facility (CHAFF) - Space and Vacuum Science research group, a funded Air Force Research Laboratory
- Information Sciences Institute (housed at a separate facilities in Marina del Rey, California and Arlington, Virginia) - played a major role in the development of the Internet, and continues to be a major research center in computer science
- Institute for Creative Technologies - conducts research in virtual reality and immersive digital environment
- Integrated Media Systems Center - National Science Foundation's Exclusive Engineering Research Center for multimedia and Internet research
- Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) Partner Institution - Current Research
Specific contributions
- AFL Theory - created by Prof. Seymour Ginsburg
- ART image file format - developed by Prof. Irving Reed
- Baum-Welch algorithm - developed by Prof. Lloyd Welch in collaboration with Leonard E. Baum
- CMOS image sensor - invented by Prof. Eric Fossum
- COCOMO - developed by Prof. Barry Boehm
- Contour Crafting - under development by Behrokh Khoshnevis of ISI
- DNA computing - invented by Prof. Leonard Adleman
- Domain name system (DNS) - developed by Paul Mockapetris and the late Jon Postel at ISI
- Dynamic programming - developed by Prof. Richard Bellman
- Golomb coding - entropy encoding invented by Prof. Solomon W. Golomb that is optimal for alphabets following geometric distributions
- ICANN - founded by Jon Postel, to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems
- Image compression & recognition - the work of William Pratt, Harry Andrews and subsequently Andrew G. Tescher led to today’s JPEG compression system for still images
- Kerberos - security protocol developed by B.Clifford Neuman.
- Lenna - widely used standard test image in image processing experiments
- LOOM - knowledge representation language developed by researchers in the AI research group at ISI
- MBASE - software development process developed by Prof. Barry Boehm and Dan Port
- MOSIS - integrated circuit (IC) foundry service run by ISI
- Network Voice Protocol (NVP) - first implemented in 1973 by Internet researcher Danny Cohen of ISI
- Pseudorandom sequences/shift register sequences - in 1967, Prof. Solomon Golomb published the first book devoted exclusively to pseudorandom sequences
- Reed-Solomon code - invented in 1960 by Prof. Irving S. Reed and Gustave Solomon
- Viterbi algorithm - invented by Andrew Viterbi
- .us - the ccTLD for the United States, originally administrated by Jon Postel of ISI
- 10.2 - surround sound format developed by Prof. Tomlinson Holman (creator of THX) and Prof. Chris Kyriakakis
Student organizations
Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering
Among the many organizations on campus, the Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering (ASBME) is an undergraduate student organization for biomedical engineering students at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. ASBME is a student run undergraduate and graduate biomedical engineering organization at USC that serves the engineering student body through academic, social, and corporate events. Students gain clarity of their chosen field of study and the opportunities that being a BME major brings. Students are also able to get a foot in the corporate door at the annual ASBME corporate dinner, attended by USC alumni as well as other corporate representatives.
Activities consist of regular meetings with guest speakers and panels, the BIOMED Research Symposium, annual Corporate Dinner and Networking Nights designed to foster relationships between graduating students and industry, and many other social, community, and corporate events.
ASBME serves as USC's chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and sends some of its students to the annual BMES Conference each year.
Pi Tau Sigma (Tau Beta Chapter)
Pi Tau Sigma is an international mechanical engineering honor society that strives to "create better engineers through commitment to academic excellence and dedication to service.†The USC Tau Beta Chapter is composed of the top mechanical engineers at the University of Southern California. USC's Pi Tau Sigma engages in social, industry and community service related events in the USC neighborhood and beyond. Paul Ronney and David Salter serve as advisors for the 51st chapter of Pi Tau Sigma.
USC Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
USC has a student chapter of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. AAAI organizes speaker events and information sessions in the field of Artificial Intelligence to increase student's interest in AI.
Viterbi Graduate Students' Association (VGSA)
The Viterbi Graduate Students' Association (VGSA) is the students' body for about 3,300 Graduate students at USC. It consists of representatives from all departments and the Engineering Graduate Student in Liaison (EGSL).
Fundraising
Previously known as the USC School of Engineering, it was renamed on March 2, 2004, as the Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering in honor of Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi and his wife Erna, who had recently donated $52 million to the school. The Viterbi School received other major gifts including gifts from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Mark Stevens who created the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation in 2004; real estate developer Daniel J. Epstein who named the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering with an $11 million gift in 2002; Energy Corporation of America CEO John Mork who named the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science with a $15 million gift in 2005; Ken Klein, CEO and president of Wind River Systems, who established the Klein Institute for Undergraduate Engineering Life with an $11 million gift, also in 2005; Ming Hsieh, founder of Cogent Inc., who named the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering in 2006 with a $35 million gift; and Los Angeles real estate developer Sonny Astani, who named the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a $17 million gift in 2007.
See also
- Engineering
- Glossary of engineering
- Artificial intelligence
- Glossary of artificial intelligence
References
External links
- Viterbi School of Engineering web site
- Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering web site
