Yannis C. Yortsos is the Dolley Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Born in Athens in 1951, he grew up on the island of Rhodes and graduated from the Βενετοκλειον Γυμνασιον Αρρενων Ροδου in 1968. He then attended the National Technical University of Athens, Greece (Εθνικο Μετσοβειο Πολυτεχνειο), under an ΙΚΥ scholarship, from where he received a Diploma of Engineering in 1973, graduating first in his chemical engineering class. He subsequently attended the California Institute of Technology with a scholarship, from which he received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1974 and 1978, respectively, all in chemical engineering. His research interests are in flow, transport, and reaction processes in porous media.
Yortsos joined the University of Southern California in 1978 as Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Petroleum Engineering, and rose to the rank of Professor in 1989. Between 1991 and 1997, he served as chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering. In 1995, he was appointed to the Chester D. Dolley endowed chair. Subsequently, between 2001 and 2005, he served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and from June 2005, he became Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the holder of the Ζ.Α. Kaprielian endowed chair. His appointment as dean will be completed in 2026, spanning 21 years as dean of engineering, the longest tenure for an engineering dean at USC and the longest worldwide for a dean of engineering at a research university. Yortsos has held multiple visiting professor appointments at the Université Paris VI (Orsay, France), Stanford University, Clarkson University, Bandung Technical University in Indonesia, and the California Institute of Technology. In 2017, he was awarded the title of honorary professor at Tsinghua University. Between 1995 and 1998, he was a member of the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project, which evaluated the suitability of Yucca Mountain for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste. He also served on the advisory board of the National Research Center Demokritos (2009-2024) and on the Board of Visitors of Plakhsa University (2020-present).
As dean of engineering, he has launched several educational and research initiatives and advocated the concept of Engineering+, emphasizing the empowering nature of engineering, which has led to the creation of several interdisciplinary education and research programs. In 2009, he co-founded, along with two colleagues at Duke University and Olin College, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP), which aims to solve the world’s grand challenges and, at various times, has spread to more than 100 engineering schools worldwide. The shift in the conversation about engineering has led to an increase at USC Viterbi in the percentage of women undergraduate engineering students, and, since 2019, to gender balance in the entering engineering class, likely the highest such representation among any top engineering school in the US. As a result of his GCSP leadership, he was recognized in 2022 with the Gordon Prize of the NAE, one of the NAE's three annual national awards.
Yortsos led the creation of many new academic programs, including the Department of Astronautical Engineering (in 2009), a new program in Technology Innovation in Engineering (in 2014), (now named as William W. Wang Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub), the Engineering in Society program (in 2022), and the School of Advanced Computing (in 2024) (now named as the Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence), a school-within-a-school within the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2008, served on the NAE Council from 2017 to 2023, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Academies Corporation (TNAC). Between 2014 and 2021 he served as the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation Los Angeles Regional I-Corps Node: Promoting Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Southern California Region, and he is the Principal Investigator since 2022 of the National Science Foundation, I-Corps Hub: West Region, encompassing 10 universities in the West Coast of the United States.
Since 2022, he has served as the Editor-in-Chief of PNAS Nexus, the first journal of the National Academies established in more than 100 years. Between 2006 and 2010, he also served as Editor-in-Chief of all the Society of Petroleum Engineering's journals. As a member of the executive committee of the US engineering deans, he led a nationwide American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Diversity Initiative in 2015, which was recognized by the US White House that year and is now a signature program within ASEE. In recognition of this leadership, he received the ASEE President’s Award (2017) and the ASEE Award for Excellence in Veterans in Engineering (2017).
During his tenure as dean, 28 faculty members of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering were inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, 31 in the National Academy of Inventors, while more than 90 Assistant Professors received national early-career awards from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. During the same time, and under his leadership, the Viterbi School of Engineering has raised more than $1.25B in philanthropic fundraising, including the naming of 7 academic departments, the construction of two research buildings, and a student maker space.
In 1981, Yortsos received the ARCO Oil and Gas Outstanding Jr. Faculty Award; in 1984, the Distinguished Service Award of Pi Epsilon Tau; in 1985, the Rossiter W. Raymond Award of the AIME for Outstanding Technical Paper by an author younger than 33 years of age; in 2008, the Western North America Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award of the Society of Petroleum Engineers; and in 2012, he was designated as Eminent Member of Tau Beta Pi.
He was elected in 2001 as a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, in 2013 as an Associate Member of the Academy of Athens, and in 2024 as a Foreign Fellow of the Indian Academy of Engineering. Yortsos is an honorary Member of the AIME (2011), an honorary Member of the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) (2011), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2022), and a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2024). In 2001, he received the Kapitza Medal of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences; in 2014, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor; and, in 2022, a Los Angeles-area Emmy Award for the documentary Lives, not Grades, which documents the experiences of USC Viterbi students as they address societal challenges. He was named for 9 consecutive years (2016-2024) to the Los Angeles 500: The most influential people in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal. He was recognized in 2023 with the Chairman’s Award from HENAAC (Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation) and in 2024 with the Claire Felbinger Award for Diversity and Inclusion of ABET (Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology). In 2025, he received an honorary doctoral degree from his alma mater (National Technical University of Athens). In the same year (2025), he was awarded the Duncan Fraser Award of the IFEES (International Federation of Engineering Education Societies). In 2026, he received the USC Presidential Medallion, the University of Southern California's highest recognition.
