Photo by: Steve Cohn
On Friday, May 8th, Dean Yannis C. Yortsos was honored by USC President Beong-Soo Kim, dignitaries, and guests — including Dr. Andrew Viterbi himself — in celebration of his retirement after serving as the longest-tenured dean in the history of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. What unfolded was a day of carefully orchestrated surprises, each one catching the dean off guard and visibly moving a leader who, by all accounts, never sought the spotlight.
The celebrations began with the inaugural board meeting of the newly named USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence. Made possible by a landmark gift from USC alumnus Mark Stevens and his wife Mary — one of the largest philanthropic commitments in the university’s history — the school’s naming signals USC’s ambitions at the forefront of the AI era. For Yortsos, the moment was deeply personal. He called the Stevens gift “an unequivocal testament to faith in investing in enduring ingenuity and humanity” — a living example of the catalytic philanthropy he had spent two decades cultivating.
Inaugural Board Meeting of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence
