University Of Southern California Launches $1 Billion Advanced Computing Initiative

The University of Southern California (USC) has announced the launch of “Frontiers of Computing,” a comprehensive $1 billion initiative that will expand education and research in advanced computing throughout the university.

“I want every student who comes through our programs, whether they are in science, business, the humanities or the arts, to have a solid grounding in technology and the ethics of the work that they do,” said USC President Carol Folt, as part of the university’s announcement. “We will integrate digital literacy across disciplines to create responsible leaders for the workforce of the future.” You can read Folt’s letter to the campus, announcing the initiative, here.

Frontiers of Computing, which has been in the planning for three years, is being supported in part by a $260 million gift to USC in 2019 by the Lord Foundation of California.

Among the new components under the Frontiers of Computing umbrella, USC will:

• form a new School of Advanced Computing that will feature research and academic programming in advanced computing technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, blockchain and quantum information. The school will be housed in the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Human-Centered Computation Hall, now under construction and scheduled for completion next spring.
• add new faculty. Thirty new faculty members are expected to be appointed in priority areas by 2025, with another 60 to be added by 2030. Three key areas of technology will be emphasized at the beginning: advancing AI and machine learning software; improving hardware efficiency and scalability; and expanding quantum computing.
• rename its computer science department the “Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science” to honor the donor, engineer and inventor who founded the Lord Foundation of California.
• endow a chair in the name of the late Donald M. Alstadt, the former Lord Corporation president and director of the Lord Foundation of California.
• expand its presence in Silicon Beach, a current hub for tech companies. USC has two institutes in that area already – at Marina del Rey, with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Information Sciences Institute, and at Playa del Rey, home of the USC Viterbi’s Institute for Creative Technologies.
• create a new presidential scholars program to prepare community college students to transfer into four-year degree programs at USC.
• provide computing and coding camps for K-12 schools and community college students in Silicon Beach.

According to the university, it plans to graduate more than 28,000 students with computing-related proficiency across different disciplines and degrees in the next decade. In addition to technical skills, the curriculum will emphasize ethics and communication skills to develop students whose technical competence is matched by trustworthiness in the use of technology.

“The world needs engineers and computer scientists to solve the grand challenges we face,” said Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, which will oversee the new school. “The new School of Advanced Computing will tackle this goal by developing reimagined engineering curricula, that also emphasize the ethics of technology, in our fast-changing world.”