USC Viterbi Faculty and Staff Awards 2022: “The Pre-Post-COVID Era”

On April 27, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering hosted its 2022 Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony, an annual event held to celebrate the school’s achievements over the past year and to recognize the individual excellence of faculty and staff members. Over 200 guests gathered in Town and Gown for the celebration, which was held in-person for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is so wonderful to be here in-person with you all today to honor our faculty and staff colleagues who’ve excelled in their many endeavors; who are making USC Viterbi a special place; who are helping to inspire and uplift us; and who are leading the way in charting an exciting future ahead,” USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos said in his opening remarks.

In recognition of the hard work and noteworthy achievement of select faculty and staff members, Dean Yortsos and other USC Viterbi leaders presented a series of awards during the event. Awardees included:

• Eric Perez: Staff Early Career Award
• Shokry Bastorous: Staff Award for Excellence
• Niema Pahlevan and Phebe Vayanos: Junior Research Awards
• Qifa Zhou: Senior Research Award
• Keith Chugg: Use-Inspired Research Award
• Shaama Sharada: Chevron Research Innovation Award
• Meisam Razaviyayn: Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award
• David Gerber: Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching and Education
• John Brooks Slaughter: John O’Brien Faculty Service Award
• Amy Blumenthal: Linda Rock Staff Award for Service
• Viktor Brandtneris and Beong-Soo Kim: Special Service Awards

Yortsos also introduced the USC Viterbi “Year in Review” video, which showcased some of the most noteworthy accomplishments of both faculty and the school as a whole over the last year. Some of the highlights included:

• USC Viterbi’s premier Distance Education Network, DEN@Viterbi, celebrated its 50th anniversary, having been ranked in the top five for Best Online Graduate Engineering Programs by the US News and World Report for the 10th consecutive year.
• This year, USC Viterbi welcomed the most diverse group of incoming freshmen in the school’s history, with a class of students that was 25% first-generation, 14% Black, 28% Latinx, and 50% female (for the third year in a row).
• The USC + Amazon Center for Secure & Trusted Machine Learning was established. The center will support a new era of research focused on building societal trust in AI and machine learning.
• USC Viterbi began construction on the new, state-of-the-art Dr. Allen & Charlotte Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Building, which will advance computer science’s role in improving and benefiting society as a whole.
• Eight USC Viterbi professors received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (a historic high for the school). Awardees included Nick Graham, Wade Hsu, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Niema Pahlevan, Mukund Raghothaman, Meisam Razaviyayn, Jiapeng Zhang, and Ivan Bermejo-Moreno.
• Two USC Viterbi professors, Andrea Armani and Cyrus Shahabi, were elected fellows of the National Academy of Inventors.
• USC Viterbi Professor Petros Ioannou was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
• Dean Yortsos received the Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering for co-founding the Grand Challenges Scholars Program.

The dean also discussed the crucial role engineers will play as we enter what he called the “pre-post-COVID” era.

“The post-Covid era is full of unanticipated challenges, but also full of promise and opportunity for endless innovation,” he said.

“What will continue to drive us, however, remains constant: our four pillars of talent, value, thought leadership, and impact,” Yortsos added. “We aim to continuously hug the exponential, and, in the process, constantly changing the conversation about ‘who we are, what we do, and what we look like,’ as we engineer a better world for all humanity.”

Congratulations to this year’s awardees:

Eric Perez, Staff Early Career Award

Shokry Bastorous, Staff Award for Excellence

Niema Pahlevan, Junior Research Award

Phebe Vayanos, Junior Research Award

Qifa Zhou, Senior Research Award

Keith Chugg, Use-Inspired Research Award

Shaama Sharada, Chevron Research Innovation Award

Meisam Razaviyayn, Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award

David Gerber, Dean’s Award for Innovation in Teaching and Education

John Brooks Slaughter, John O’Brien Faculty Service Award

Amy Blumenthal, Linda Rock Staff Award for Service

Viktor Brandtneris, Special Service Award

Beong-Soo Kim, Special Service Award

Published on May 3rd, 2022

Last updated on May 3rd, 2022