Undergraduate Students News Back to News Archive

Read More

Alara Berkmen

From Maui to Medicine, Viterbi Helped Her Chart Her Own Path

April 30, 2026

CLASS OF 2026 – The daughter of Turkish immigrant physicians, Maui-raised Alara Berkmen is graduating from USC Viterbi with a bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering on the pre-med track, a business club she built from scratch, and a hard-won clarity about who she wants to be and why.

Read More

Alexa Garcia

From First-Gen Engineer to PwC: A Four-Year Yes Strategy

April 29, 2026

CLASS OF 2026 – The first engineer in her family, this Industrial & Systems Engineering graduate from USC Viterbi’s Daniel J. Epstein Department is heading to PwC this fall – with two degrees, a passport full of band trips, and a philosophy she learned the hard way.

Read More

Nicholas Lototsky

Engineering Lift-Off: Four Years of Flight, Research, and Curiosity

April 28, 2026

CLASS OF 2026 – From building LEGO airplanes as a kid to winning back-to-back AIAA regional awards and co-founding USC’s Human-Powered Flight Research Team, Long Beach native Nicholas Lototsky is finishing his bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering at USC Viterbi the same way he started it: full throttle.

Read More

Lab manager Jeffrey Vargas and Akshay Potnuru, senior lecturer, oversee a lab for AME 341. (Photo Credit: Magali Gruet/USC)

Building Engineers: Inside USC’s Hands-On Mechoptronics Lab

March 10, 2026

At USC Viterbi’s Mechoptronics lab, 190 students learn measurement, troubleshooting, and hands-on engineering skills they’ll carry for life. From soldering capacitors to dissecting cameras, students say the course is challenging, time-consuming, and ultimately the most useful class they take.