Eliana Amanuel
Eliana Amanuel grew up all over Los Angeles. Her family moved five times, always chasing better schools and more fruitful communities. The neighborhood where she went to kindergarten has since been converted into USC student housing. She had no idea that the campus she would one day call home was growing up right alongside her.
Her parents came from Eritrea in East Africa and were among the first in their family to come to America. By the time Eliana reached middle school, they had landed in Cerritos, where she enrolled at Whitney High School, ranked number one in California. And in 8th grade, something happened that would set the course for everything that followed.
A teacher led a simulation to teach students about slavery. Wrists and ankles taped. Students assigned roles. The incident went viral. Eliana stepped forward. She co-founded the Young Black Scholars chapter at her school and became student representative on the district’s legislative board. She was 13 years old.
“I’m just a student,” she says, “but there’s still so much you can do as a student.”
This May, she will graduate from the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at USC Viterbi. The road from that kindergarten building to this stage is anything but ordinary.
It Had to Be USC
By the time Eliana was applying to colleges, her mind was everywhere. It was COVID, people were suffering, and everyone had a suggestion: law, politics, medicine. Her East African background came with its own pressure. “Coming from East Africa, STEM is just what all Africans want you to do,” she says, laughing. “Doctor, doctor, doctor.”
She had even considered skipping college to do full-time ministry. Her faith had always been the foundation of how she moved through the world, and during COVID, she thought that was where she was needed most. But she realized she could carry her faith into every space she entered, including an engineering school.
She came across USC Viterbi’s website and found Industrial and Systems Engineering, a major she had never heard of. Everything fit. Not pure math, not narrow problems, but systems thinking at scale. She had worked with Kaiser during her junior year of high school and realized her instinct was not to treat patients one at a time. “Rather than being a doctor and treating patients,” she says, “I wanted to open a whole hospital.” She found a Viterbi research project using traffic flow modeling to predict COVID surge locations and ensure vaccine distribution. “That’s exactly what I want.”
Then she watched a YouTube video asking engineering students at different schools whether their classmates were there to change the world or make money. At every other school, students talked about money. At USC, they talked about impact. “Engineering a better world for humanity,” she says. “That’s exactly why I want to be here.”
She got into UCLA, Berkeley, every school she applied to. She told her mother she didn’t care. If she didn’t get USC with a scholarship, she would go to community college and transfer. She opened the acceptance letter alone in her room. She started screaming. Her family came running. A month or two later, after a scholarship interview with Professor Najmedin Meshkati*, the full ride was confirmed. Every single thing she needed.
“The fruit of investing in me,” she says, “would bear tenfold.”
Meshkati, her self-described Viterbi dad, has never been her professor but has been a steady presence throughout her time at USC. He sent her resources and encouragement before she had even set foot on campus as a student.
A USC Village Baby
She lived in McCarthy Honors College her freshman year and Illium Honors College her sophomore year — both USC Village dorms for merit scholarship students — then studied abroad in London, and returned to the Village once more as an RA at Cale & Irani Hall. She jokes that she’s a USC Village baby.
In McCarthy, her floor took over the fourth-floor lounge, studying through the night until Starbucks opened again. Physics office hours with Professor Vahe Peroomian** were standing room only, students sitting on the floor together. “We’re all in it together,” she says. “It’s not like, oh, I finished the question, go figure it out yourself.”
She did not arrive at USC as the most confident version of herself. As a minority in engineering spaces, she often second-guessed whether she belonged or whether she had anything worth saying. What changed that were the people around her. Senior Lecturer Yalda Kashe and ISE Undergraduate Program Associate Director Krystian Ruiz consistently encouraged her to speak up and take space, even in moments of uncertainty and even when she wasn’t sure she was right. “This has been one of the major contributors to my confidence today,” she says. The girl who hesitated is now the one delivering the commencement address. She joined Engineers Without Borders, served as pre-collegiate initiative chair for the National Society of Black Engineers, supported the launch of USC’s first East African Student Association culture show as Vice President , and started hosting a Bible study on her floor lounge that has grown to nearly 50 people. “You are never alone at USC,” she says. “And if there isn’t a community you need, you can create it.”
Junior year, she studied abroad at Queen Mary University of London. On weekends, she and her USC friends traveled wherever they could: Morocco, France, the Sahara Desert. “I’m a USC engineering student,” she says, “and I’m on this camel. What?” Some of those London friends are flying in this May to watch her graduate. Others are coming for the summer.
We Are All Walking the Stage
She is graduating with a Bachelor’s in Industrial and Systems Engineering and a Master’s in Health Systems Management Engineering, both from the Daniel J. Epstein Department, completed in four years through USC’s PDP program. She is the first in her family to earn a master’s degree. “Everything I do, it’s them investing in me,” she says of her family. “The only reason I was able to do all these things is because they covered aspects of my life in other areas.” She pauses. “When I walk the stage, we’re all walking the stage.”
She is walking it twice for her bachelor’s and for her master’s, and will be delivering a speech. Her family does not know yet.Â
Eliana will join PwC as a tech consultant in the fall, but before the work begins, the summer belongs to the people who made it all possible. London friends are already booking flights. She will host them, show them LA, and somewhere in between she will sit with her family for a Bun ceremony, the traditional Eritrean coffee ritual where the beans are roasted and brewed from scratch in three slow rounds, everyone gathered, talking, catching up. She has over 20 cousins. Her grandparents are nearby. She sings at her church, is rekindling her love of piano after a long pause, runs and hikes when she can. She has been so focused these last four years that she has not been as present as she would like. The summer is for that.
On the side, she will research healthcare systems in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The ISE toolkit she came to USC for was always pointed there.
Ten years from now, she wants to be wherever the hardest problems are.
*Najmedin Meshkati is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Industrial Systems Engineering, and International Relations with joint appointments in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is also the director, of the USC Viterbi Grand Challenge Scholars Program
**Vahe Peroomian is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy for USC Dornsife.
Published on May 11th, 2026
Last updated on May 12th, 2026