The USC Viterbi School of Engineering community celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the school’s naming gift on Sept. 30, 2014. The $52 million gift was generously bestowed by Andrew and Erna Viterbi in 2004, and the gift was a milestone for the university under the dean of that time, C. L. Max Nikias, now president of USC.
Communications pioneer and USC Trustee Andrew J. Viterbi — who in 1962 earned one of the first doctorates in electrical engineering granted at the University of Southern California — is widely recognized as the engineer whose work enabled the development of CDMA mobile phones, wi-fi, and host of other current technologies.
The son of Jewish Italian immigrants, Andrew Viterbi was born in the small town of Bergamo in northern Italy, and went on to earn undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. He co-founded LINKABIT Corporation in 1968 and technology giant Qualcomm in 1985. One of his most highly influential works is the development of the Viterbi algorithm, a mathematical means of distinguishing critical information from background noise. Viterbi was recognized with the National Medal of Science, our nation’s highest honor for science and technology, as a 2007 honoree.
Andrew Viterbi’s numerous contributions to the field of engineering are widely used in today’s wireless devices and satellite broadcast receivers; they are also used in magnetic recording, speech recognition, DNA sequence analysis, and a diverse array of other applications.
Earlier in 2014, Andrew and Erna Viterbi renewed their commitment the USC with a new gift of $15 million to the university; designating $10 million for the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and $5 million to USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, which also celebrated an anniversary, the 20th year of its founding.