C. L. Max Nikias

C. L. Max Nikias Biography

C. L. Max Nikias became the University of Southern California’s eleventh president in August 2010. He is the holder of the Robert C. Packard President’s Chair and the Malcolm R. Currie Chair in Technology and the Humanities, and also chairs the USC Hospitals Governing Board. He has been at USC since 1991, as a professor, director of national research centers, dean, provost, and now president. He holds faculty appointments in both electrical engineering and the classics. In addition, he leads special freshman seminars each fall on ancient Athenian democracy and drama.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Among numerous other honors, he has received the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal and the University at Buffalo’s Clifford C. Furnas Memorial Award. He has served as a senior consultant to a variety of corporations and as a high-level consultant to the U.S. government. The author of more than 275 journal articles and conference papers, three textbooks, and eight patents, Dr. Nikias has mentored more than 30 Ph.D. and postdoctoral scholars. Three of his publications received prestigious best papers awards.

As president, Dr. Nikias has articulated a vision for USC to attain undisputed, elite status as a global research university.  His initiatives include recruiting a cadre of transformative, world-class faculty; elevating USC’s academic medical enterprise; expanding USC’s international presence; further improving the breadth and quality of USC’s world-class student body; and embarking on the largest fundraising campaign in higher education’s history.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has called Dr. Nikias a “prodigious fundraiser.” His first year as president was highlighted by seven transformative gifts to USC, including the largest donation in its history from Dana and David Dornsife. This allowed USC to raise an unprecedented total of $1 billion in Dr. Nikias’ first year. He also brought the nation’s largest literary festival, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, to USC.  The university broke ground on a major new student health center, a state-of-the-art athletics complex, and other new facilities.

In recognition of his efforts to renew USC’s athletics heritage, the New York Times selected Dr. Nikias as one of a small number of national figures “who make sports’ little corner of the world a better place.”

Dr. Nikias served from June 2005 to August 2010 as USC’s provost and chief academic officer, in which role he was charged with accelerating the academic momentum that USC had experienced in recent years. He was instrumental in bringing USC trustee Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation Institute and its vast video archive to USC. Dr. Nikias also established the Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging the Stevens Institute for Innovation, the U.S.-China Institute, and the Levan Institute for Humanities and Ethics. He launched Visions and Voices, USC’s acclaimed campus-wide arts and humanities initiative, as well as a grant program to advance scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Dr. Nikias spearheaded the integration of the Keck School of Medicine’s faculty practice plans, oversaw the transfer of University Hospital and Norris Cancer Hospital from Tenet Healthcare Corporation to the university, and recruited a new leadership team for USC’s medical enterprise.

Dr. Nikias served as dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, solidifying its position as a top-tier engineering school. He directed the expansion of the school’s biomedical engineering enterprise and developed its distance-learning program into one of the largest in the country. He oversaw the development of the school’s cutting-edge Tutor Hall of Engineering.  He also established key partnerships with corporations, among them Pratt & Whitney, Airbus, Boeing, Chevron, and Northrop Grumman, and led an unprecedented fundraising campaign that brought in more than $250 million, capped by a historic $52 million school-naming gift from Andrew and Erna Viterbi.

Over his two-decade career as an active scholar, Dr. Nikias was internationally recognized for his pioneering research on digital signal processing, digital media systems, and biomedicine. He was founding director of two national research centers at USC: the NSF-funded Integrated Media Systems Center and the Department of Defense (DoD)-funded Center for Research on Applied Signal Processing. The DoD has adopted a number of his innovations and patents in sonar, radar, and communication systems.

Dr. Nikias graduated with honors from Famagusta Gymnasium, a school that emphasizes sciences, history, and Greco-Roman classics. He received a diploma from the National Technical University of Athens, also known as National Metsovion Polytechnic, the oldest and most prestigious higher education institution of Greece, and later earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He holds honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College and the University of Cyprus, and was awarded the Aristeia medal, representing the Republic of Cyprus’s highest honor in the letters, arts, and sciences.  He received the USC Black Alumni Association’s Thomas Kilgore Service Award, and also earned a commendation for cutting-edge research from the governor of California.

His wife, Niki C. Nikias, received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the Athens University of Economics and Business in Greece and a master’s degree in business administration with a specialization in finance from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She worked as a corporate accountant in Athens and London and as an accountant and finance consultant in the United States before taking leave to raise their two daughters, Georgiana and Maria.

The USC Alumni Association named Dr. and Mrs. Nikias honorary alumni of USC.

The family has kept a home in the Palos Verdes Peninsula since 1991. Georgiana graduated from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences with a double major in English and archaeology and later earned a master’s degree in world archaeology from Oxford University and a J.D. degree from the USC Gould School of Law. Maria earned her B.A. degree in broadcast journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism with a minor in entrepreneurship.