Master students at their commencement ceremony. (Photo credit: Magali Gruet)
There’s a particular magic to a USC Viterbi master’s commencement ceremony – the camaraderie that comes from being part of a cohort who have chosen to specialize in the same area of study. They’ve learned together and grown together – several will be continuing their career journey in step with one another, recruited by the same top companies.
At the USC Galen Center on 15 May, that sense of solidarity set the mood. Students seated by department and program radiated an energy of togetherness, magnified when they processed to receive their diplomas, decked out in the traditional black robes with cardinal and gold sashes, mortarboard hats and orange velvet hoods.
Some had chosen to up-style their regalia with a few custom touches. Duke Bristow Jr., an aerospace graduate recently profiled by USC Viterbi, had picked up a purple and yellow flower garland on the way to the Galen Center, while others added shine to their sashes with quantities of Mardi-Gras style USC beads.
Bristow, who completed his master’s remotely through USC Viterbi’s Distance Education Network (DEN) program while working full-time at defense contractor L3 Harris in Texas, had made sure to travel back to Los Angeles to be with his cohort for commencement.
“The intense study and rapid turnaround of a master’s program makes you feel like you’re part of a team,” said Joe Rees, former captain of USC Men’s Club Lacrosse and an aerospace graduate who shares Bristow’s enthusiasm for high-stakes aviation. “If working in the labs was like going to practice, commencement is like game day.”
Master graduates at the 2026 commencement ceremony (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Master graduates at the 2026 commencement ceremony (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Master graduates at the 2026 commencement ceremony (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Watch the USC Viterbi Master’s Commencement Ceremony (Part 1):
The mastery of many minds
The unity of a shared pursuit in engineering was balanced by the diversity of the student body. The Class of 2026 represented 47 nations, including China, India, Taiwan, South Korea and Iran. Approximately one third of master’s graduates were women (double the national average for women in the engineering workforce), and the ceremony also reflected the changing profile of graduate engineering education, with hundreds of online DEN students and working professionals earning degrees.
For Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, that breadth of internationalism is part of his personal story.
“You came to USC from 47 countries,” the Dean addressed the audience of thousands. “Many of you crossed oceans to be here. You navigated a new language, a new culture, a new academic system, and a new city. I was one of you when I came to this country several decades ago. Like Andrew Viterbi, another immigrant before me, and so many others, I was warmly and unconditionally welcomed and embraced by a country that offered a generous and inspiring environment to work, grow, prosper, contribute, and ultimately serve in multiple ways. In my mind, today’s event is also a celebration of this welcoming heritage.”
Quoting British quantum physicist David Deutsch, Yortsos put forward the bold claim that “there will always be problems. But all problems are solvable.” For engineers, those global and interconnected problems (energy, materials, climate and cybersecurity, to name just a few) are compelling invitations to a challenge. “When these problems arise, the world turns to engineers like you to provide solutions — with a human-centric mindset,” he said.
Over the course of his two decades of commencement speeches, that last point —a sensitivity to human need as much as a knack for numbers and systems — has remained consistent throughout, becoming part of the School’s pedagogy and vision.
“At USC Viterbi, you learn that the world needs not only problem solvers. It also needs trustworthy problem solvers, those who combine competence with character. A trustworthy engineer is the world’s most powerful force for good.”
The crucial factor of trust is all the more important at a time when new technology has the capacity to outpace its creators; technology we can trust is dependent on the initial actions and choices of the engineers who set it in motion. “Years ago, I urged our school to ‘hug the exponential,’ to follow Moore’s Law,” Yortsos reflected. “And this we did. We are now somewhere more demanding. I call it ’embracing the singularity,’ as we enter the new phase: the phase of AI. Embracing it to help advance it for the benefit of humanity. That is an extraordinary privilege and an extraordinary responsibility.’
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos at the master commencement ceremony. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Commencement at an inflection point
An ethos of responsibility is first shaped through education, and the minds of the Class of 2026 were developing in tandem with the rapid advancement of AI.
“Your studies at USC occurred during extraordinary times, amid the most consequential technological shift in a generation.” said Dean Yortsos.
“Two years ago, a new School within a School (the School of Advanced Computing) was created to help usher in the new age of AI. Earlier last week, the school was renamed USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and AI. And soon, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, recently renamed the USC Alfred Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering, will become a joint department with the USC Keck School of Medicine to help expand what is possible at the intersection of engineering and medicine.”
The naming of the USC Stevens School is a testament to the landmark $200M gift made by USC Trustee Mark Stevens and his wife, Mary. The exceptional generosity of the gift and the significance of the School, both for USC Viterbi and the university as a whole, was expressed by Gaurav Sukhatme, Donald M. Alstadt Chair in Advanced Computing and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“Technology has always led to social change,” he stated. “Today, this is happening at unprecedented speed. The revolution in modern computing, powered by algorithms, chips, and data, is the center of these changes. These recent rapid advances, particularly in artificial intelligence, call for a rethink of how we teach at the university and how we frame our research. The new USC Stevens School of Computing and AI is our answer to this call.”
Gaurav Sukhatme. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
“So many advances today are powered by computation,” Sukhatme continued. “Accordingly, the growth of the USC Stevens School in the years to come will be to build a community of scholars dedicated to expanding the frontiers of computing in all areas of engineering, indeed across all disciplines of study.”
Learning from life
Computer science and data science are USC’s largest master’s programs, reflecting sustained student demand for AI and software-focused careers. A second dedicated ceremony was held at the Galen Center for those graduates of the USC Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science.
Watch the USC Viterbi Master’s Commencement Ceremony (Part 2): USC Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Each ceremony was distinguished by a keynote speaker and student speaker, combining insights from the experience of industry professionals who are leaders in their field, and new graduates whose career at USC has been marked by extraordinary achievements.
William Ballhaus Jr., former director of NASA Ames Research Center and president of Aerospace Corporation, opened the first ceremony’s keynote by sharing the hard-earned lessons that can take some engineers decades to absorb. USC master’s students were granted the fast-track version, receiving those lessons before even collecting their diplomas.
Having participated in government-led independent investigations of six space launch failures in the late 1990s, Ballhaus drew on firsthand experience of what happens when cost is allowed to eclipse mission success, and when risk information never reaches those with the authority to act. His investigations found that a lack of clear individual accountability was a contributing factor in several of those billion-dollar losses. His corrective at Aerospace Corporation involved cutting through diffused responsibility by asking every person in every organization to articulate what they were accountable for – a strategy that yielded what he describes as an unprecedented record of 100% mission success across space launches. “If you can’t clearly define what you are accountable for,” Ballhaus told the graduates with the directness of a good mentor, “you likely aren’t adding any value.”
William Ballhaus Jr., former director of NASA Ames Research Center and president of Aerospace Corporation. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Student speaker Eliana Amanuel, a graduate of the USC Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, continued the theme of accountability with a personal anecdote. She described standing inside an operating room at LA General Medical Center, as part of an engineering project to reduce surgical turnover time between procedures, with the goal of getting more patients treated each day. There, in the context of others’ physical trauma and psychological distress, she had a moment of doubt; what gave her the right to be there?
The answer, she said, was USC Viterbi: the professors and mentors who had equipped her with the mindset to step confidently into rooms where real problems exist and to address the world’s grandest challenges. She pushed the obligation further, challenging her classmates not only to build solutions that work, but to interrogate who those solutions serve and who they leave out – to go the extra mile to ensure data is unbiased, and to resist settling for the most convenient answer.
Eliana Amanuel gives her commencement speech. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
People are the asset, not the technology
The keynote speaker for the second ceremony was Asghar Mostafa , founder of Rubriq Corporation, established to assist other entrepreneurs in building and leading the next generation of high technology companies. Having spent decades building companies when AI was still considered science fiction, his six lessons were direct as those offered by Ballhaus: don’t wait for permission, let passion outlast doubt, treat obstacles as the default condition rather than the exception, think unconventionally, maintain a winner’s mindset and build teams that prioritize mutual support and open communication. Where Ballhaus had described the discipline of not letting systems fail, Asghar described the discipline of building something new – in the face of failure. “Your greatest asset is never your technology,” he said. “It is your people.”
Asghar Mostafa, President & CEO and Chairman of Rubriq Corporation. (Photo Credit: Noe Montes)
Student speaker Roshni Anand, a computer science graduate, reframed professional ambition in the context of a personal reckoning. Having moved from Bengaluru, India, to attend USC, her story was marked by a bereavement that had given her a clear-eyed view of the fragility that tempers human ambition.
Her father, who died of cancer three years ago, had told her that character is defined not by the high moments but by how a person reconstructs themselves at their darkest hour. She had carried that instruction through every deadline and all-nighter, and she knew that her master’s students of the Class of 2026 had each learned their own version of what it means to persist. “The people who change the world aren’t the ones who never fall,” she told the crowd. “They’re the ones who got back up.”
Who are those students? They’re the ones who left the Galen Center that day – cheering, crying, laughing, taking photos together as members of a cohort who will share memories of a time of intellectual intensity, a time at a technological turning point that will change every aspect of human life.
For Sofia Pantoja, a graduate in astronautical engineering and former lead engineer of USC Rocket Propulsion Lab, leaving USC won’t be too much of a leap from the lab. In June, she’ll be joining SpaceX, where USC Viterbi is one of the most represented engineering schools among employees.
For Sasha Chehrzadeh and Noah Reynolds, both graduates in biomedical engineering, they’ll be leaving their home town of LA to embark on medical school and pursue a shared dream of working in emergency medicine. Over the last year, Chehrzadeh has been working at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital and Noah has been working at Los Robles Regional Medical Center
“In a way, it’s bittersweet,” reflected Chehrzadeh. “Commencement is a new beginning, and a last hurrah. We’ll be leaving so many of our friends – but wherever we go next, we’ll always be part of USC.”
Proud parents at the master’s ceremony. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Dean Yannis C.Yortsos with a graduating student. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
A student on stage. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
A student on stage. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet)
Published on May 17th, 2026
Last updated on May 18th, 2026