USC GLOBAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT 2016

Government Financial Transparency, Accountability, & the European Economic Crisis: Paths to Prosperity
(29-30 April 2016, Los Angeles, CA)
NIKIAS, C.L. Max
former President, University of Southern California

Welome Address

  1. Transcript

C. L. Max Nikias is the eleventh president of the University of Southern California. He holds the Robert C. Packard President’s Chair and the Malcolm R. Currie Chair in Technology and the Humanities, and chairs the USC Health System 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, and currently teaches an undergraduate course on the culture of the Athenian democracy. In addition, he currently chairs the College Football Playoff Board of Managers and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities.

The University of Southern California (USC) is one of the world’s leading private research universities. USC is a private, not-for-profit, and nonsectarian research university founded in 1880 with its main campus in the city area of Los Angeles, California. As California’s oldest private research university, USC has historically educated a large number of the region’s business leaders and professionals. In recent decades, the university has also leveraged its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim. An engine for economic activity, USC contributes approximately $5 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles county area. As of 2014, the university has produced the fourth largest number of billionaire alumni out of all undergraduate institutions in the world.

For the 2015-2016 academic year, there were 18,740 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC is also home to 23,729 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, and medicine. The university has a “very high” level of research activity and received $687 million in sponsored research from 2014 to 2015.

USC counts five Nobel Laureates on staff, eight Rhodes Scholars, three MacArthur Fellows, 181 Fulbright Scholars, one Turing Award winner, 78 Academy Award winners, 119 Emmy Award winners, three winners of the National Medal of Arts, one winner of the National Humanities Medal, three winners of the National Medal of Science, and three winners of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation among its alumni and faculty. Additionally, of its current faculty, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 are members of the Institute of Medicine, 34 are members of the National Academy of Engineering, 92 are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 32 are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities.

Dr. Nikias graduated with honors from Famagusta Gymnasium, a school that emphasized 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 was awarded the Aristeia medal, the Republic of Cyprus’s highest honor in the letters, arts, and sciences. In addition, he received the USC Black Alumni Association’s Thomas Kilgore Service Award, the Los Angeles Police Department’s Jack Webb Award, and earned a commendation for cutting-edge research from the governor of California.