(Left to Right) Executive Vice Dean Gaurav Sukhatme and Viterbi Award honorees Christopher Borch, Melissa Orme, John Anderson, Vibhu Mittal, Sujata Banerjee and Dean Yannis C. Yortsos (Photo/Steve Cohn)
The 46th annual Viterbi Awards, “the Academy Awards of engineering,” took place on April 23 in the ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Friends, faculty, alumni, students, and staff of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering gathered to celebrate several honorees and myriad milestones.
The Viterbi Awards recognize individuals who have left an indelible impact on engineering and society. This year’s awardees included Micro-Mechanics founder Chris Borch (Daniel J. Epstein Engineering Management Award); Boeing Vice President Melissa Orme (Mark A. Stevens Distinguished Alumni Award); Microsoft’s Sujata Banerjee and Inflection’s Vibhu Mittal (Mark A. Stevens Alumni Award for the School of Advanced Computing); and National Academy of Engineering President John Anderson (Lifetime Achievement Award).
In his opening remarks, Dean Yannis C. Yortsos alluded to the 20th anniversary of the Rocket Propulsion Lab student group, which features engineering undergraduates across all academic departments and majors. The dean noted that in 2019, RPL became the first student-led group to design, build, and successfully launch a rocket, Traveler IV, past the Kármán line — the recognized boundary of space at 100 kilometers above Earth. And “more spectacularly,” in the dean’s words, RPL not only recently broke its own student record but also shattered the amateur rocketry record. In October 2024, Aftershock II became the world’s first civilian-built rocket to reach 142 kilometers in space.
“Move over Elon!” the dean quipped.
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos at the 2025 Viterbi Awards (Photo/Steve Cohn)
Yortsos humorously used mathematics to explain why 2025 has “come in with a fury.”
“Maybe it has to do with other numerical symbolisms: You see – this is primarily an engineering audience after all – you add 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9, and square the total, you get 2025! And if you add 1 cubed + 2 cubed + … +9 cubed, you also get 2025!” he said. “Maybe all these oddities are responsible for what’s going on in the world today. Sometimes I feel like we are in the process of trying to square the circle or, in case you didn’t have enough, to cube the sphere!”
Dean Yortsos also spoke briefly about a “seminal moment in the school’s history,” the creation of the School of Advanced Computing and the inauguration of the Dr. and Charlotte Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Hall. All of USC Viterbi’s computer science programs, including the recently named Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, will reside in the 116,000-square-foot building.
Executive Vice Dean Gaurav Sukhatme, the inaugural director of the School of Advanced Computing, shared his thoughts on the impact of recent transformational changes in technology.
“We are truly at a monumental time in USC’s history,” he said. “Technological change is unfurling social change at breakneck speed, and the revolution in modern computing, powered by machine learning and AI, is the center of these changes. We are building a community of scholars dedicated to expanding the frontiers of computing, not only in computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and other engineering disciplines, but across all areas at USC.”
Min Family Challenge & Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition
Ellis Meng, vice dean for technology innovation and entrepreneurship, spotlighted USC Viterbi’s two premier social engagement competitions: the Min Family Challenge (MFC) and the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition (MEPC).
“USC Viterbi is home to innovation competitions that seek to tackle social and global challenges with breakthrough solutions firmly rooted in engineering,” she said. “Our annual events have become the university’s most impressive showcases of ingenuity and creativity.”
The Min Family Engineering Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (MFC) aims to leverage engineering to solve pressing problems. Its founders, Bryan and Julie Min, were motivated to launch the event in support of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals to help vulnerable populations.
This year’s winning MFC team is CaseFlo.
MEPC was founded in 2010 thanks to an endowment from entrepreneur and NAE member Fariborz Maseeh. It aims to inspire engineering innovators to not only create new ideas and inventions but also empowers them to take the next big leap and turn that initial spark into truly meaningful products.
Meng also announced that Maseeh has pledged to increase support for the competition, raising the grand prize amount from $50,000 to $100,000. The increase makes MEPC the largest innovation prize awarded by any school at USC.
This year’s winning MEPC team is Generation Quantum.
Besides competition winners, the night honored specific alumni, friends, and change-makers, all of whom perfectly represent the school’s mission to “engineer a better world for all humanity.” They included:
Daniel J. Epstein Engineering Management Award: Chris Borch
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos and Christopher Borch (Photo/Steve Cohn)
Borch has more than 40 years of engineering, manufacturing, and management experience in the semiconductor industry.
In 1983, he founded Micro-Mechanics, a publicly listed company that designs, manufactures, and markets high precision parts and tools used in the semiconductor and other high-technology industries.
Borch, a member of the USC Viterbi Board of Councilors, and his wife, Andrea, established the school’s Borch Family Scholarship and Borch Family Manufacturing Research Fellowship Fund.
“I have seen first-hand how an industrial and systems engineering education opens-up a world of possibilities for young men and women,” Borch said. “I take much pleasure supporting Dean Yortsos’ inspired vision for engineers as change-makers in the world.”
Mark A. Stevens Distinguished Alumni Award: Melissa Orme
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos and Melissa Orme (Photo/Steve Cohn)
Orme received all three of her degrees from USC Viterbi: a bachelor’s (’84), master’s (’85) and Ph.D. (’89), all in aerospace engineering.
She is currently vice president of additive manufacturing at Boeing, a sector that works with 3D printing on an industrial scale. Before her role at Boeing, she served as the chief technology officer of Morf3D and also served as a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Irvine.
In 2024, Orme was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
“In each turn of my career, I never forgot my academic roots, my mentors, the people who believed in me and bet on me,” Orme said. “This award [also] belongs to the people who made me feel that I was not overreaching but instead taught me to reach far.”
Mark A. Stevens Alumni Award for the School of Advanced Computing: Sujata Banerjee & Vibhu Mittal
(Left to Right) Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, Vibhu Mittal, Sujata Banerjee and Executive Vice Dean Gaurav Sukhatme (Photo/Steve Cohn)
Banerjee (Ph.D. EE ’93) and Mittal (Ph.D. CS ’93) met at USC Viterbi as doctoral students and recently gave back to the school in a significant way, providing the Ginsburg Hall auditorium naming gift.
A member of USC Viterbi’s Board of Councilors, Banerjee is partner research manager at Microsoft. Previously, she was vice president of research at VMware, a cloud infrastructure & digital workspace technology company. She is a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER award.
Mittal is the chief technology officer of Inflection AI. He was among the first 100 employees at Google, and he was the CEO of Edmodo, a K-12 educational platform, which was acquired by NetDragon in April 2018. He is a member of the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science Advisory Board.
“We feel extremely grateful and lucky to have been part of the USC Viterbi family for three decades,” Banerjee said. “I remember the kindness and compassion that were shown to me, and I see it today.”
Added Mittal: “My stay at USC was instrumental in where I am now. Coming to USC was a gift.”
USC Viterbi Lifetime Achievement Award: John Anderson
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos and John Anderson (Photo/Steve Cohn)
Anderson has been the president of the National Academy of Engineering since July 2019.
Before that, he served as president of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering from 2007 to 2015. He also served as provost and executive vice president at Case Western Reserve University, following 28 years at Carnegie Mellon University.
Anderson was elected to the NAE in 1992 for contributions to the understanding of colloidal hydrodynamics and membrane transport phenomena. In addition to his NAE membership, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“To have my name associated with Andrew Viterbi is an extraordinary distinction,” he said. “I’m equally grateful to join the list of remarkable individuals who have previously received this award, especially Simon Ramo, a founder of the National Academy of Engineering.”
The Trojan Marching Band ended the evening on a high note (Photo/Steve Cohn)
Published on April 28th, 2025
Last updated on April 28th, 2025
