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About // Featured Deans // Yannis C. Yortsos

Featured Dean

Yannis C. Yortsos

Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California

United States of America

Yannis C. Yortsos is the Dolley Professor of Chemical Engineering, and since 2005, serves as the Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and holds the Dean’s Zohrab Kaprielian Chair. He received a BS (Diploma) from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and MS and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology, all in chemical engineering. Yortsos was elected in 2008 to the US National Academy of Engineering, in 2013 to the Academy of Athens (as a corresponding member- a term used for members living outside Greece), and in 2024 to the Indian Academy of Engineering as a Foreign Fellow. In 2014, he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and in 2017, the ASEE President’s Award. Along with two other colleagues, he co-founded in 2009 the NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program, which has spread at different times to as many as 100 engineering schools worldwide and, in 2022, received the Gordon Prize of the NAE. The same year, he received a Los Angeles area Emmy for the documentary Lives, not Grades. In 2023, Yortsos received the Chairman’s Award from HENAAC (Great in Minds in STEM) and 2024 the Claire Felbinger Award of ABET on Diversity and Inclusion. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and an Honorary member of the AIME. Since 2022, he has served as the editor-in-chief of PNAS Nexus, the first journal of the National Academies established in more than 100 years. Yortsos has served as a member of the Engineering Deans Council (2011-2017), led in 2015 the ASEE Diversity Initiative, now a signature program within ASEE, and also served on the Executive Board of the GEDC, the latest term between 2022 and 2024. As dean of engineering, he has launched a number of educational and research initiatives, including establishing gender parity in the engineering entering class at USC Viterbi for six consecutive years since 2019. He received in 2024 an honorary degree from his alma mater, the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
What keeps me going is that there’s just so much left to do!

It is a challenge to describe the multi-faceted distinctive engineering education leader Yannis Yortsos, Dean of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering. Yannis is an expansive “thinker” as well as “doer” in terms of his perspective, program development, and clear belief in the values of diversity and creating positive impact on society and the world at large. He credits his Greek heritage and formative years in Greece for this tendency and his professional trajectory. His elementary- secondary education in Greece was before the acronym “STEM” was born, but not before schooling included a comprehensive study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And being Greece, studies also included philosophy, the arts, and “looking at the world”. For Yannis there was an early realization that science and engineering were everywhere; inherently global in nature, having universal impact.

Fast forward from then to now. Among recent accomplishments, Yannis notes the 2009 milestone of collaborative founding of the Grand Challenges Scholarship Program aimed at educating engineers to solve the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges. The program is global and has since grown to include 100+ schools of engineering worldwide. For the last six years, the Viterbi School of Engineering has reached gender parity in its entering class. Developing that diverse student population pipeline requires the hard work of changing the mindset that “engineering” is first a matter of rigorous technical study and then an applied practice of “solving important societal problems”. Listening to Yannis you hear engineering discussed as a pathway toward the exciting ability to enrich society and sustain the health of our planet and population in myriad ways including problem solving and innovation and through enabling medicine, cinematic arts, architecture, dance, and so many other disciplines. To that end, USC has created a lively K-12 STEM Center that reaches out to the Los Angeles community. This program received the 2023 GEDC Diversity Award. 

In 2024 the Viterbi School founded a new School of Advanced Computing as an integral part of the Viterbi School, but with reach through affinity programs across the entire University. Currently, two breakthrough initiatives are also underway. One supports offering AI classes to all students, regardless of their engineering major; the second centers on creating a new program, Engineering in Society, to address the impact of technology and engineering on society and the world at large. Together, these two enhance technical competence and enable character development – a combination aligned with the School’s vision to “Engineer a better world for all humanity” and to create what he calls “trustworthy engineers”. He affirms his view that technology and humanity are increasingly intertwined. 

Reflecting on how the GEDC has influenced and supported his thinking and doing, Yannis believes that through its existence, GEDC has widened the participation of an increasingly larger number of institutions and individuals worldwide. He has seen how GEDC has encouraged connection and understanding of the strengths among partnering institutions, and enabled the identification of critical common challenges that can be addressed collaboratively. Yannis is an actively engaged and highly valued leader in GEDC, and served on its Executive Board twice, between 2011 and 2015 and also between 2022 and 2024. 

It’s obvious that Dean Yortsos is a very busy man and a passionate leader committed to engineering, technology and engineering education to benefit the world. Offhandedly, he credits perhaps some combination of DNA, his formative years in Greece, and even a bit of luck to having brought him to who he is and what he does. When asked what keeps him going and what’s left to do, he readily replies, “What keeps me going is that there’s just so much left to do!” This spirit and the impact of his work are evidence that engineering really is everywhere, and expansive thinking in service of action pays off!