USC, Dean, Viterbi School of Engineering

Yortsos became the school’s dean in 2005. The Viterbi School, founded in 1905, has 2,985 undergraduate and 7,187 graduate students.  In the summer of 2022, Yortsos received a Los-Angeles area Emmy as an executive producer of the documentary “Lives not Grades,” which documented how engineering students used technology to improve the lives of refugees in the island of Lesvos in Greece. He also received the Gordon Prize of  the National Academy of Engineering for being the co-founder of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program. A native of Greece, Yortsos joined the Viterbi School’s chemical engineering department in 1978, chaired that department in the 1990s, then rose through USC’s administrative ranks.

YEARS ON THE LA500: 8