Viterbi School of Engineering
Encyclopedia
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It was renamed following a $52 million donation by Andrew Viterbi
Andrew Viterbi
Andrew James Viterbi, Ph.D. is an Italian-American electrical engineer and businessman who co-founded Qualcomm Inc....
. The USC Viterbi School of Engineering celebrated its 100th birthday in conjunction with the university's 125th birthday.
With over $135 million in external funding support, the school is among the nation's highest in volume of research activity. The Viterbi School of Engineering is currently ranked No. 11 nationally by U.S. News and World Report.
The school is headed by Dean Yannis Yortsos
Yanis C. Yortsos
Yannis C. Yortsos is a professor of chemical engineering and petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California. Since June 2005, he has served as Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and has held the Zohrab A. Kaprielian Chair in Engineering. He has also held the Chester F....
. Its research centers have played a major role in development of multiple technologies, including early development of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
when USC researcher Jonathan Postel was an editor of communications-protocol for the fledgling internet, also known as ARPANET
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network , was the world's first operational packet switching network and the core network of a set that came to compose the global Internet...
. The school's faculty includes Irving Reed
Irving S. Reed
Irving Stoy Reed is a mathematician and engineer. He is best known for co-inventing a class of algebraic error-correcting and error-detecting codes known as Reed-Solomon codes in collaboration with Gustave Solomon...
, Leonard Adleman
Leonard Adleman
Leonard Max Adleman is an American theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science and molecular biology at the University of Southern California. He is known for being a co-inventor of the RSA cryptosystem in 1977, and of DNA computing...
, Solomon W. Golomb
Solomon W. Golomb
Solomon Wolf Golomb is an American mathematician and engineer and a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, best known to the general public and fans of mathematical games as the inventor of polyominoes, the inspiration for the computer game Tetris...
, Barry Boehm
Barry Boehm
Barry W. Boehm is an American software engineer, TRW Emeritus Professor of Software Engineering at the Computer Science Department of the University of Southern California, and known for his many contributions to software engineering.- Biography :...
, Clifford Newman, Richard Bellman
Richard Bellman
Richard Ernest Bellman was an American applied mathematician, celebrated for his invention of dynamic programming in 1953, and important contributions in other fields of mathematics.-Biography:...
, Lloyd Welch
Lloyd R. Welch
Lloyd Richard Welch is a noted American information theorist, and co-inventor of the Baum–Welch algorithm.Welch received his B.S. in mathematics from the University of Illinois, 1951, and Ph.D. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology, 1958, under advisor Frederic Bohnenblust...
, Alexander Sawchuk, and George V. Chilingar
George V. Chilingar
George V. Chilingarian is an American-Armenian Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California...
.
Previously known as the USC School of Engineering, it was renamed on March 2, 2004, as the Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering in honor of Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...
co-founder Andrew Viterbi and his wife Erna, who had recently donated $52 million to the school. The Viterbi School received other major gifts including gifts from Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
venture capitalist Mark Stevens
Mark Stevens (venture capitalist)
Mark Stevens is a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, California.Stevens obtained a Bachelor of Science and master’s degree from the University of Southern California and an MBA from Harvard University...
who created the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation in 2004; real estate developer Daniel J. Epstein who named the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering with an $11 million gift in 2002; Energy Corporation of America CEO John Mork who named the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science with a $15 million gift in 2005; Ken Klein, CEO and president of Wind River Systems
Wind River Systems
Wind River Systems, Inc. is a company providing embedded systems, development tools for embedded systems, middleware, and other types of software. The company was founded in Berkeley, California in 1981 by Jerry Fiddler and David Wilner. On June 4, 2009, Wind River announced that Intel had bought...
, who established the Klein Institute for Undergraduate Engineering Life with an $11 million gift, also in 2005; Ming Hsieh
Ming Hsieh
Ming Hsieh is a billionaire Chinese American entrepreneur and philanthropist and the founder of AMAX technology in 1987 and Cogent Systems in 1990...
, founder of Cogent Inc.
Cogent Inc.
Cogent Systems, Inc. is a manufacturer of automated fingerprint identification systems .On August 30, 2010 3M announced they acquired Cogent Systems for $943M.-External links:*...
, who named the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering in 2006 with a $35 million gift; and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
real estate developer Sonny Astani, who named the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with a $17 million gift in 2007.
Major research centers
- Alfred Mann InstituteAlfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical EngineeringThe Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering, commonly known as the Alfred Mann Institute, AMI or Mann Institute of Biomedical Engineering, is located on the University Park campus of the University of Southern California...
- business incubatorBusiness incubatorBusiness incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts...
for medical deviceMedical deviceA medical device is a product which is used for medical purposes in patients, in diagnosis, therapy or surgery . Whereas medicinal products achieve their principal action by pharmacological, metabolic or immunological means. Medical devices act by other means like physical, mechanical, thermal,...
development in preparation for commercialization - Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic SystemsCenter for Biomimetic Microelectronic SystemsCenter for Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems is on the campus of the University of Southern California.The Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems vision is realized first by identifying the unmet medical needs in the 3 testbeds of blindness, paralysis, and central nervous system impairments...
- National Science FoundationNational Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
Engineering Research Center - Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) - interdisciplinary national research center funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityUnited States Department of Homeland SecurityThe United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
- Collaborative High Altitude Flow Facility (CHAFF) - Space and Vacuum Science research group, a funded Air Force Research LaboratoryAir Force Research LaboratoryThe Air Force Research Laboratory is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of affordable aerospace warfighting technologies; planning and executing the Air Force science and...
- Information Sciences InstituteInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing...
(housed at a separate facility in Marina del Rey, CaliforniaMarina del Rey, California-Demographics:-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Marina del Rey had a population of 8,866. The population density was 6,094.6 people per square mile...
) - played a major role in the development of the InternetInternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, and continues to be a major research center in computer scienceComputer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems... - Institute for Creative TechnologiesInstitute for Creative TechnologiesThe Institute for Creative Technologies is a research institute of the University of Southern California located in Playa Vista, California. ICT was established in 1999 with funding from the US Army...
- conducts research in virtual realityVirtual realityVirtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
and immersive digital environment - Integrated Media Systems CenterIntegrated Media Systems CenterThe Integrated Media Systems Center is on the campus of the University of Southern California, USA. It was founded using a grant from the US National Science Foundation in 1996 for the study of Integrated Media Systems ....
- National Science Foundation's Exclusive Engineering Research Center for multimediaMultimediaMultimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
and Internet research - Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) Partner Institution - Current Research
Specific contributions
- AFL TheoryAbstract family of languagesIn computer science, in particular in the field of formal language theory,the term abstract family of languages refers to an abstract mathematical notion generalizing characteristics common to the regular languages, the context-free languages and the recursively enumerable languages, and other...
- created by Prof. Seymour GinsburgSeymour GinsburgSeymour Ginsburg was a pioneer of automata theory, formal language theory, anddatabase theory, in particular; and computer science, in general... - ART image file formatART image file formatART is a proprietary image file format used mostly by the America Online service and client software.- Technical details :The ART format holds a single still image that has been highly compressed. The format was designed to facilitate the quick downloading of images, among other things...
- developed by Prof. Irving ReedIrving S. ReedIrving Stoy Reed is a mathematician and engineer. He is best known for co-inventing a class of algebraic error-correcting and error-detecting codes known as Reed-Solomon codes in collaboration with Gustave Solomon... - Baum-Welch algorithmBaum-Welch algorithmIn electrical engineering, computer science, statistical computing and bioinformatics, the Baum–Welch algorithm is used to find the unknown parameters of a hidden Markov model . It makes use of the forward-backward algorithm and is named for Leonard E. Baum and Lloyd R...
- developed by Prof. Lloyd WelchLloyd R. WelchLloyd Richard Welch is a noted American information theorist, and co-inventor of the Baum–Welch algorithm.Welch received his B.S. in mathematics from the University of Illinois, 1951, and Ph.D. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology, 1958, under advisor Frederic Bohnenblust...
in collaboration with Leonard E. Baum - CMOS image sensorActive pixel sensorAn active-pixel sensor is an image sensor consisting of an integrated circuit containing an array of pixel sensors, each pixel containing a photodetector and an active amplifier. There are many types of active pixel sensors including the CMOS APS used most commonly in cell phone cameras, web...
- invented by Prof. Eric FossumEric FossumEric R. Fossum is an American physicist and engineer, inventor of the CMOS image sensor. He is currently a professor at Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmouth College.- Early years and education :... - COCOMOCOCOMO**********************************************************************************************The Constructive Cost Model is an algorithmic software cost estimation model developed by Barry W. Boehm...
- developed by Prof. Barry BoehmBarry BoehmBarry W. Boehm is an American software engineer, TRW Emeritus Professor of Software Engineering at the Computer Science Department of the University of Southern California, and known for his many contributions to software engineering.- Biography :... - Contour CraftingContour CraftingContour Crafting is a construction process under development by Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute that uses a computer-controlled crane or gantry to build edifices rapidly and efficiently without manual labor. It was originally conceived...
- under development by Behrokh KhoshnevisBehrokh KhoshnevisBehrokh Khoshnevis is a professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and is the Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California ....
of ISIInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing... - DNA computingDNA computingDNA computing is a form of computing which uses DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology, instead of the traditional silicon-based computer technologies. DNA computing, or, more generally, biomolecular computing, is a fast developing interdisciplinary area...
- invented by Prof. Leonard AdlemanLeonard AdlemanLeonard Max Adleman is an American theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science and molecular biology at the University of Southern California. He is known for being a co-inventor of the RSA cryptosystem in 1977, and of DNA computing... - Domain name systemDomain name systemThe Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
(DNS) - developed by Paul MockapetrisPaul MockapetrisDr. Paul V. Mockapetris is the inventor of the Domain Name System.In 1983, he proposed a Domain Name System architecture in RFCs 882 and 883 while at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California....
and the late Jon PostelJon PostelJonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards...
at ISIInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing... - Dynamic programmingDynamic programmingIn mathematics and computer science, dynamic programming is a method for solving complex problems by breaking them down into simpler subproblems. It is applicable to problems exhibiting the properties of overlapping subproblems which are only slightly smaller and optimal substructure...
- developed by Prof. Richard BellmanRichard BellmanRichard Ernest Bellman was an American applied mathematician, celebrated for his invention of dynamic programming in 1953, and important contributions in other fields of mathematics.-Biography:... - Golomb codingGolomb codingGolomb coding is a lossless data compression method using a family of data compression codes invented by Solomon W. Golomb in the 1960s. Alphabets following a geometric distribution will have a Golomb code as an optimal prefix code, making Golomb coding highly suitable for situations in which the...
- entropy encodingEntropy encodingIn information theory an entropy encoding is a lossless data compression scheme that is independent of the specific characteristics of the medium....
invented by Prof. Solomon W. GolombSolomon W. GolombSolomon Wolf Golomb is an American mathematician and engineer and a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, best known to the general public and fans of mathematical games as the inventor of polyominoes, the inspiration for the computer game Tetris...
that is optimal for alphabets following geometric distributions - ICANNICANNThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly...
- founded by Jon Postel, to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems - Image compressionImage compressionThe objective of image compression is to reduce irrelevance and redundancy of the image data in order to be able to store or transmit data in an efficient form.- Lossy and lossless compression :...
& recognitionImage analysisImage analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from images; mainly from digital images by means of digital image processing techniques...
- the work of William Pratt, Harry Andrews and subsequently Andrew G. Tescher led to today’s JPEGJPEGIn computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
compression system for still images - Kerberos - security protocolCryptographic protocolA security protocol is an abstract or concrete protocol that performs a security-related function and applies cryptographic methods.A protocol describes how the algorithms should be used...
developed by B.Clifford Neuman. - LennaLennaLenna or Lena is the name given to a 512 x 512 pixel standard test image originally cropped from the centerfold of November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine. It is a picture of Lena Söderberg, a Swedish model, shot by photographer Dwight Hooker...
- widely used standard test imageStandard test imageA standard test image is a digital image file used across different institutions to test image processing and image compression algorithms. By using the same standard test images, different labs are able to compare results, both visually and quantitatively...
in image processingImage processingIn electrical engineering and computer science, image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or, a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image...
experiments - LOOMLOOM (ontology)Loom or LOOM is a knowledge representation language developed by researchers in the Artificial Intelligence research group at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute...
- knowledge representationKnowledge representationKnowledge representation is an area of artificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitate inferencing from those knowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge...
language developed by researchers in the AIArtificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
research group at ISIInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing... - MBASEMBASEModel-Based Architecture and Software Engineering in software engineering is a software development process developed by Barry Boehm and Dan Port in the late 1990s...
- software development processSoftware development processA software development process, also known as a software development life cycle , is a structure imposed on the development of a software product. Similar terms include software life cycle and software process. It is often considered a subset of systems development life cycle...
developed by Prof. Barry Boehm and Dan Port - MOSISMOSISMOSIS is probably the oldest integrated circuit foundry service and one of the first Internet services other than supercomputing services and basic infrastructure such as E-mail or FTP....
- integrated circuitIntegrated circuitAn integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
(IC) foundry serviceFoundry modelIn microelectronics, the foundry model refers to the separation of a semiconductor fabrication plant operation from an integrated circuit design operation, into separate companies or business units.-Overview:...
run by ISIInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing... - Network Voice ProtocolNetwork Voice ProtocolThe Network Voice Protocol was a pioneering computer network protocol for transporting human speech over packetized communications networks...
(NVP) - first implemented in 1973 by Internet researcher Danny Cohen of ISIInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing... - Pseudorandom sequences/shift register sequenceLinear feedback shift registerA linear feedback shift register is a shift register whose input bit is a linear function of its previous state.The most commonly used linear function of single bits is XOR...
s - in 1967, Prof. Solomon Golomb published the first book devoted exclusively to pseudorandom sequences - Reed-Solomon code - invented in 1960 by Prof. Irving S. ReedIrving S. ReedIrving Stoy Reed is a mathematician and engineer. He is best known for co-inventing a class of algebraic error-correcting and error-detecting codes known as Reed-Solomon codes in collaboration with Gustave Solomon...
and Gustave SolomonGustave SolomonGustave Solomon was a mathematician and engineer who was one of the founders of the algebraic theory of error-correction. He received Ph.D. in Mathematics at MIT in 1956 under direction of Kenkichi Iwasawa.... - Viterbi algorithmViterbi algorithmThe Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for finding the most likely sequence of hidden states – called the Viterbi path – that results in a sequence of observed events, especially in the context of Markov information sources, and more generally, hidden Markov models...
- invented by Andrew ViterbiAndrew ViterbiAndrew James Viterbi, Ph.D. is an Italian-American electrical engineer and businessman who co-founded Qualcomm Inc.... - .us.us.us is the Internet country code top-level domain for the United States and was established in 1985. Registrants of .us domains must be United States citizens, residents, or organizations, or a foreign entity with a presence in the United States...
- the ccTLDCountry code top-level domainA country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, a sovereign state, or a dependent territory....
for the United States, originally administrated by Jon Postel of ISIInformation Sciences InstituteThe Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing... - 10.210.210.2 is the surround sound format developed by THX creator Tomlinson Holman of TMH Labs and University of Southern California . Developed along with Chris Kyriakakis of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, 10.2 refers to the format's slogan: "Twice as good as 5.1"...
- surround soundSurround soundSurround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
format developed by Prof. Tomlinson HolmanTomlinson HolmanTomlinson M. Holman is an American film theorist, audio engineer, and inventor of film technologies, notably the Lucasfilm THX sound system. He developed the world's first 10.2 sound system. Earlier, Holman developed what was known as the Holman Preamplifier, for the Apt Corporation. He holds a...
(creator of THXTHXTHX is a trade name of a high-fidelity audio/visual reproduction standard for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, and car audio systems. The current THX was created in 2001 when it spun off from Lucasfilm Ltd...
) and Prof. Chris Kyriakakis
Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering
Among the many organizations on campus, the Associated Students of Biomedical Engineering (ASBME) is an undergraduate student organization for biomedical engineeringBiomedical engineering
Biomedical Engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology. This field seeks to close the gap between engineering and medicine: It combines the design and problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences to improve...
students at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
Activities consist of regular meetings and an annual Corporate Luncheon designed to foster relationships between graduating students and industry.
ASBME serves as USC's chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society
BMES
BMES was founded on February 1, 1968 "to promote the increase of biomedical engineering knowledge and its utilization." It is active primarily in America....
(BMES).
Pi Tau Sigma (Tau Beta Chapter)
Pi Tau SigmaPi Tau Sigma
Pi Tau Sigma is an International Mechanical Engineering Honor Society. Pi Tau Sigma's core values are:*Integrity ,*Service , and...
is an international mechanical engineering honor society that strives to "create better engineers through commitment to academic excellence and dedication to service.” The USC Tau Beta Chapter is composed of the top mechanical engineers at the University of Southern California. USC's Pi Tau Sigma engages in social, industry and community service related events in the USC neighborhood and beyond. Paul Ronney and David Salter serve as advisors for the 51st chapter of Pi Tau Sigma.