Yannis C. Yortsos

Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Biography

Yannis C. Yortsos is the Dolley Professor of Chemical Engineering, and since 2005, serves as the Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and holds the Dean’s Zohrab Kaprielian Chair. He has received a Diploma from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology, all in chemical engineering. His research interests are in transport and reaction processes in porous media. As dean of engineering, he launched a number of educational and research initiatives, including establishing in 2024 the new School of Advanced Computing within the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He has advocated the concept of Engineering+, related to the empowering nature of engineering for all disciplines, which has led to the creation of a number of interdisciplinary education and research programs. This changing of the conversation about engineering has led to a strong gender balance in the engineering entering class at USC Viterbi for six consecutive years since 2019.

Yortsos was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2008, has served as an elected member of the NAE council from 2017 to 2023, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Academies Corporation (TNAC). Since 2022, he serves as the editor-in-chief of PNAS Nexus, the first journal of the National Academies established in more than 100 years. Yortsos has served in various leadership roles in engineering education and research, including being elected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Engineering Deans Council (2011-2017), and on the Executive Board of the Global Engineering Deans Council (2011-2015 and 2022-2024). He has also served on the advisory committee of the Engineering Division of the National Science Foundation (2017-2020). As a member of the executive committee of EDI, he led in 2015 the ASEE Diversity Initiative, now a signature program within ASEE, for which he received the ASEE President’s Award (2017). In 2009, he co-founded, along with two other colleagues, the NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program, which at various times has spread to more than 100 engineering schools worldwide, and in 2022, was recognized with the Gordon Prize of the NAE. He was one of 15 members of the Task Force on Expanding U.S.-India University Partnerships, Association of American Universities (April 2023- January 2024).

Yortsos was elected as an Associate Member of the Academy of Athens in 2013 and as a Foreign Fellow of the Indian Academy of Engineering in 2024. He received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2014) and, in 2022, a Los Angeles-area Emmy for the documentary Lives, not Grades, documenting the experience of USC Viterbi students in addressing various societal challenges. He was recognized in 2023 with the Chairman’s Award from HENAAC (Great in Minds in STEM), and in 2024, received the Claire Felbinger Award of ABET. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and an Honorary member of the AIME. In 2025, he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.