Yannis C. Yortsos

Yannis C. Yortsos is Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Zohrab Kaprielian Chair in Engineering, a position he has held since 2005. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008, where he has also served as secretary, vice-chair and chair of Section 11 and since July 2017 as a member of the NAE Council. In 2011 he was awarded the distinction of honorary member of the AIME, in 2013 he was elected as Associate member of the Academy of Athens, in 2014 he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. In 2017 he was given an honorary degree from Tsinghua University. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Engineering Deans Council (2011-2017) and on the Executive Committee of the Global Engineering Deans Council (2012-2016). A member of its executive committee since April 2020, he has directed the NAE Covid-19 Call for Engineering Action. Yortsos co-founded in 2009 the Grand Challenges Scholars Program, an engineering educational transformation to prepare the engineers who will solve the Grand Challenges of our time. As a chair of the Engineering Deans Diversity Committee, he helped launch in 2015 an initiative to enhance diversity across all engineering schools in the US, which has been signed by more than 230 engineering schools across the country.