In the News Archvie

Students recognized for outstanding academic achievement, leadership and service

Dr. Andrea Armani, a chemical engineering professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, is able to peer into the molecular world of reactions by using lasers.

The Grainger Grants give Frontiers of Engineering participants the opportunity to pursue ideas stimulated at the U.S. FOE symposium and allow for collaboration and the execution of innovative projects aimed at improving our quality of life.

Assistant Professor Andrea Hodge, two-time AFOSR Young Investigator, discusses her meteoric rise as an engineer.

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos Lends Expert Observations on U.S.'s "Reverse Brain Drain" Conundrum

Happy New Year Message to the Viterbi family of students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends!

Professor Terence G. Langdon is the winner of the 2012 Acta Materialia Gold Medal. This prestigious award, which is selected by a panel of international judges, recognizes major contributions and leadership in Materials Science.

USC Viterbi Professor Armani and Alumnus Gerkey '03 will be among 78 of "the nation's brightest young engineers" taking part in the 18th annual symposium this September.

Dean Yortsos discusses Moore's Law, quantum computing, and the future of USC Viterbi in his sit-down conversation with the campus television station.

The Director of USC's Petroleum Engineering Program talks to USC Viterbi alums at Saudi Aramco.

This prestigious honor, awarded annually to a top researcher in Materials Science, recognizes Langdon's leadership in the field and impressive record of high-impact publications.

The Mork Department professor's highly sensitive, non-destructive method of measuring optical and mechanical properties of thin films is featured in Plastics Engineering

Mork Department publications ranked #7 internationally in Thomson-Reuters citation impact study

Pin Wang of the Mork Department has developed a lentiviral vector that latches onto HIV-infected cells, targeting these cells for drugs to hunt them down

John Mork, Viterbi alumnus and member of the Board of Councilors, and his family make a transformational gift

"A GRAND CHALLENGE: Sustainable Natural Resources Development on a Small Planet"

Andrea Armani's hometown paper, the Commercial Appeal, traces the young Mork Department professor's career back to its inception in the class of a charismatic female science teacher

Dean Yannis Yortsos pens an oped article on the NAE Grand Challenges, the X-Prize and innovation.

Science Applications International Corporation gift will support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering Math) educational programs

The namesake of the Viterbi School leads the list of USC honorees at the June 26 ceremonies

California offshore fields are much shallower and lower pressure than the Gulf, and not drilling means more tanker spills.

Work by Priya Vashista (CS, Mork) reported in ScienceNews opens possibilities for energy production and storage

"Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art," begins a 5000-word feature entitled "Robots That Care." The ending: "But robotic interaction should not replace human interaction," she said. "It should only improve it."

Sophisticated warning systems are crucial, says Astani Department specialist Costas Synolakis in a WSJ opinion piece, but educating people in risk areas is equally important, and "the lesson that education saves lives has apparently been lost to emergency managers world-wide."

The Mork Family Department professor's role in the Catalyst Workshop, a DOD-funded effort to train scientists and engineers as screenwriter/directors, is explored in an L.A. Times feature about the first film to come out of the program.

P. Daniel Dapkus of the Hsieh Department and Professor of Chemistry Mark Thompson discuss the research plans for the Energy Frontiers Research Center for Emerging Materials for Solar Energy Conversion and Solid State Lighting, recently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy/ (Video)

A joint Viterbi School/College project directed by Priya Vashishta of the Mork Department reaches out to engage underrepresented communities.

The Viterbi School chapter says work on a new water system in two small Honduran towns could begin this spring.

The Viterbi School's Robert E. Vivian Professor of Energy Resources and Chair of the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science spoke and participated in a two-day program honoring U-H's Dan Luss

More than 100 faculty from USC’s medical and engineering schools spent a weekend together Oct. 17-19, exploring opportunities for enhanced collaboration.

A guest editorial by a Schlumberger executive quotes the Mork Department's Iraj Ershaghi and praises "innovative programs, such as those offered at USC," as key to "a major transformation" in the industry

The first issue of the new electronic newsletter produced by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency features a Q&A with the director of the USC Collaboratory for Advanced Computing and Simulations, both on his work creating supermaterials and on general WMD defense basic research priorities.

Iraj Ershaghi of the Mork Family Department discussed the potential for increasing production from the 9-billion-barrel oil field that lies under Southern California.

The newspaper portrays the Viterbi School as the destination for "an academic tidal wave from the Indian Ocean," thanks to its excellent overseas reputation, outreach trips and welcoming campus environment. The article spotlights Indian Student Association president Guarav Kumar, Senior Associate Dean Cauligi Raghavendra and others.

In a Houston Chronicle opinion essay, Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos argues for urgently increased federal funding supporting basic research in energy.

The Brazilian science magazine Galileu's September issue includes a Q&A with Najmedin Meshkati of the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, discussing issues ranging from Iran's nuclear program to quake-prone Japanese nuclear reactors to recent Brazilian air and oil platform disasters. (in Portuguese)

Headlining the opening session of the SPE's first R&D conference, Dean Yannis "Yortsos [challenged] the audience to consider some of the major issues that may hinder innovation, 'namely the shortage of technical people, negative public perceptions of the E&P sector, and the challenge of producing the next trillion while transforming the industry into a leader of clean power initiatives'"

The Viterbi school's much-honored William E. Leonard professor was in the Ural mountain region headlining a symposium on materials science innovation and commercialization with his photo on the front page the local paper paying tribute to the event's organizer, Professor Ruslan Valiyev, "a personality who is showing himself a leader." [Russian language pdf]

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering climbed to seventh place among the best public and private engineering schools in the nation in this year's U.S. News & World Report guide to "America's Best Graduate Schools."

A Trojan Family magazine feature spotlights USC interdisciplinary research developing ultrasmall devices and specialized materials to fight diseases, describing collaborations by the Viterbi School's Chongwu Zhou, Aristides Requicha, Anupam Madhukar, and also Ted Lee's pathbreaking Mork family Department class in 'nano-blacksmithing.'

If successful, the biomedical team would be significantly closer to designing a brain implant that could improve or restore people's memory.

"An amazing metal-munching microbe holds out big hopes for an interdisciplinary team of USC scientists in hot pursuit of a cold alternative energy source." The team includes the Viterbi School's Florian Mansfeld, Paul Ronney, Hai Wang and grad student Esra Kus.

Alice P. Gast (B.S. Chemical Engineering at USC in 1980), has been appointed president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Congratulations to her.

"USC's Viterbi School of Engineering, named for an Italian immigrant," was the scene of the report, which included an interview with Yannis Yortsos, "its dean, who hails from Greece. 'A lot of students who come here get educated and then start a startup company and they're very, very successful.'" Grad student Amit Desai was also quoted.

When a best-presentations winners envelope was opened at the annual meeting of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) in San Antonio, researchers from USC Viterbi School Prof. Terry Langdon's group had taken the top two honors in their category.

Professors Lynn Orr and Paul Hansma presented the Centennial Celebration lectures for Department on January 26, 2006 at the Gerontology Auditorium.

The Viterbi School's celebration of 100 years of engineering at USC continues as departments host a series of distinguished lectures during the Spring Semester.

Energy entrepreneur John Mork and his family have given $15 million to the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering to name the newly merged Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, which includes petroleum engineering, the program from which Mork received his degree in 1970.

August 08, 2005 — POINT OF IMPACT: Indenter drives down into silicon carbide ceramic in an 18.7 million atom simulation created by supercomputers at the USC Collaboratory for Advanced Computing and Simulations Ceramics are both hard and brittle. Now supercomputer modeling of the activity of millions of individual atoms in a ceramic hints that it may be possible to get rid of some of the brittleness.