Daniel J. Epstein, Bill Jia and Department Chair Maged Dessouky at the 2024 ISE Alumni Mixer. Image/Samantha Sy.
The Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has named Bill Jia as 2024 Alumni of the Year at the department’s March 2024 alumni mixer in Downtown Los Angeles. Jia is Google’s VP of Engineering, Core Machine Learning and AI. He graduated from the department in 2007 with a Ph.D. in Operations Research.
In his role at Google, Jia leads an organization to co-design AI software/hardware, build AI compiler and framework, create AI training and inference software services, optimize AI developer experiences with tools and automation and drive Google’s AI efforts, including Gemini, from AI model research to production.
Prior to joining Google, Jia was the Senior VP of Engineering at Meta/Facebook, overseeing AI Infrastructure/Platform, Data Infrastructure/Platform, Software Performance and Capacity Engineering, and Hardware Engineering. Jia also previously worked at Microsoft and was in charge of improving and optimizing various Microsoft online services.
In addition to his USC Viterbi Ph.D., Jia received dual BS degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and received his MS from the National University of Singapore.
The Epstein Department’s 2024 alumni mixer was hosted at the USC Tower, bringing together department faculty staff, alumni and special guests including Executive Chairman and Founder of the ConAm Group Daniel J. Epstein, who provided the department’s historic naming gift.
More images from the event are available here.
Published on April 9th, 2024
Last updated on April 9th, 2024
