Engineering School Celebrates $52 Million Gift
School is renamed to honor digital communications pioneer Andrew J. Viterbi

Hundreds turned out to join in the naming ceremony.

Hundreds of faculty, staff, students, alumni and well-wishers crowded into USC’s engineering quad Tuesday, March 2, to honor Andrew and Erna Viterbi for their $52-million gift. Viterbi, who received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1962 from USC, is the creator of the Viterbi Algorithm embedded in hundreds of millions of cell phones, and co-founder of Qualcomm.

The gift is the largest naming gift ever given to an engineering school. In recognition of the couple’s generosity, USC’s School of Engineering will be renamed The Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering.

Video Clip

Steven Sample

Click for Quicktime 2,522KB Click for Microsoft: 1,416KB

USC President Steven B. Sample, a fellow engineer, made the formal announcement. After a drum roll from the Trojan Marching Band, he turned to watch as a 20-foot by 50-foot cardinal red banner bearing the name of the new school was uncovered on the south side of Biegler Hall. Sample then thanked Viterbi for opening the frontier of digital communications and forever changing the world of cellular technology.

L-R: USC President Steven Sample, Erna and Andrew Viterbi, holding a bouquet of flowers, and Engineering School Dean C. L. Max Nikias.

“The gift by the Viterbis will be a powerful catalyst for bold research and innovation, and will forever associate USC’s engineering school with one of the most illustrious names in the history of engineering,” Sample said. “As a distinguished USC alumnus, and as a visionary communications pioneer, Andrew Viterbi has transformed the world in which we live and has brought great honor to USC.”

Whoops of joy
Cheers, applause and whoops of joy rang out in the plaza. Erna, Viterbi’s wife of 45 years, was visibly moved by the show of appreciation.

An ebullient Dean C. L. Max Nikias called Viterbi “a true pioneer.”

“The cell phone technology he created touches millions of lives every day,” Nikias said.

Video Clip

C.L. Max Nikias

Click for Quicktime 8757KB Click for Microsoft: 523KB

He announced that a new Viterbi Museum to showcase Viterbi’s many academic and entrepreneurial accomplishments will be opened next year, on Viterbi’s 70th birthday, in the engineering school’s new Tutor Hall.

Viterbi said he was “overwhelmed” with all of the kind gestures and kudos extended to him from USC faculty, alumni and supporters in recent weeks. He said his commitment to USC goes back four-and-one-half decades, but that his ties had “only grown [stronger] over the lengthy interim.”

Morning engineering classes were canceled so that students and faculty could join in the campus celebration. A crush of spectators filled the “e quad", which was decorated with red, gold and white balloons.

Video Clip

Andrew Viterbi

Click for Quicktime 797KB Click for Microsoft: 467KB

After the presentations, a group of undergraduate engineering students, some of whom were featured in a full-page newspaper advertisement of the school’s new name, ran up the center aisle wearing cardinal red T-shirts with the new Viterbi School of Engineering logo on the front. A schematic of the Viterbi Algorithm, looking a little bit like hieroglyphics to the lay person, was etched in white lettering on the backs of the shirts.

Lunch, music and T-shirts were offered to all in the engineering plaza after the celebration.

Students show off new Viterbi School of Engineering T-shirts, which accurately depict the Viterbi Algorithm on the back.

Viterbi’s legacy
Viterbi earned one of the first doctorates in electrical engineering ever granted at USC. The Viterbi Algorithm, a mathematical formula to eliminate signal interference, paved the way for the widespread use of cellular technology, and catapulted Viterbi into the limelight of wireless communications worldwide.

Today, the Viterbi Algorithm is used in all four international standards for digital cellular telephones, as well as in data terminals, digital satellite broadcast receivers and deep space telemetry. Viterbi is also the co-developer of CDMA -- Code Division Multiple Access -- the most widely used cell phone technology in the U.S.

The Viterbi’s gift brings the school almost to the halfway mark in its recently announced $300-million fundraising initiative.

Viterbi’s inventive spirit and worldwide renown, both in industry and academia, will add momentum to the School of Engineering. Nikias said Viterbi would “help strengthen our position among elite engineering schools by broadening our fields of excellence and by recruiting and retaining excellent faculty and students.”

“Their names will forever be associated with the university,” Sample added. “The USC Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering is a vote of confidence in the faculty and students who, for nearly a century, have advanced the field of engineering at USC and around the world.”

The USC Viterbi School currently has 23 faculty who are members of the National Academy of Engineering, the fourth highest total among the nation’s private universities. With more than $135 million in annual research expenditures, it consistently ranks in the top three nationally in funding per tenured faculty.

For the past two years, the school has placed eighth in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate schools.

The Viterbis address the crowd.

Two Engineering Research Centers
The school is also one of only four schools nationwide, and the only one in California, to house two National Science Foundation-funded Engineering Research Centers. In addition, it has become the site of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s first research Center of Excellence.

Academically, USC's Viterbi School of Engineering attracts some of the top incoming freshmen, who have higher SAT scores than incoming freshmen at other universities. A diverse student body brings people from roughly 70 countries to the campus. Undergraduate enrollment is 1,878; graduate students number 3,325.

The USC Viterbi School’s Distance Education Network has 800 students in 24 M.S. degree programs utilizing an innovative high-speed Internet interface.

Viterbi, who is an IEEE fellow, is part of a select group of scientists who holds dual memberships in the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He is also a Marconi fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science.

He has received countless awards for his contributions to communications theory and its industrial applications. They include the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' Shannon Award and Alexander Graham Bell Medal, as well as the Marconi International Fellowship Award.

Other professional distinctions
In 2001, Viterbi was awarded the "Grande Ufficiale della Republica" by the President of Italy.

Over the years, he has received honorary doctorates from universities in the United States, Canada, Italy and Israel, and has been otherwise honored in Japan, Germany, Italy and U.S.

Confetti showered the audience at the conclusion.

In 1998, he and his wife established the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Chair in Communications at USC. Appropriately, the chair’s first holder, Professor Solomon Golomb, is an expert in digital and space communications.

Hailed by his peers as a digital genius, Viterbi continues to shape the industry. He currently serves as president of the Viterbi Group, LLC, which advises and invests in early stage companies, predominantly in wireless communications, network infrastructure and imaging.

In addition to those responsibilities, he has accepted an offer to teach again – at none other than the Viterbi School of Engineering. Beginning in the fall, he will be a professor of electrical engineering systems and hold the Presidential Chair of Engineering.

*Photos by Irene Fertik