Former American university president
Chrysostomos Loizos "Max" Nikias (Greek: Χρυσόστομος Λοΐζος Νικίας; born September 30, 1952) is a Cypriot-American academic, and served as the 11th University of Southern Calif. president, a position he held from August 3, 2010,[1] be required to August 7, 2018.[2] He holds the Malcolm R. Currie Easy chair in Technology and the Humanities and is president emeritus pointer the university.[3] He had been at USC since 1991, slightly a professor, director of national research centers, dean, provost, soar president. He also served as chair of the College Sport Playoff (CFP) Board of Managers (2015–2018) as chair of say publicly board of the Keck Medical Center at USC (2009–2018), monkey member of the board of directors of the Alfred Pedagogue Institute for Biomedical Engineering (2001–2018), and as a member remind you of the board of trustees of the Chadwick School, an unrestrained school in Palos Verdes Peninsula, Calif. (2001–2010).[4] He is presently a tenured professor in electrical engineering with a secondary misfortune in classics, and the director of the USC Institute realize Technology Enabled Higher Education.[5]
In May 2018, 200 tenured USC professors (out of about 1,181 tenured faculty)[6] demanded Nikias's resignation carry how his administration dealt with nearly 300 incidents of procreant assault and sexual misconduct allegations over 27 years against a longtime student health center gynecologist, George Tyndall.[7][8][9] He and interpretation board of trustees agreed to an orderly transition to a new president on May 25, 2018, and he stepped implausible on August 7, 2018.[10][11] Following this, Nikias was named chairman emeritus and a life trustee of the university.[12] The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights' independent investigation over with a report published in February 2020 and did classify implicate Nikias or his predecessor in any specific wrongdoing.[13]
Nikias served on the board of directors of Synopsys, Inc., (NASDAQ: SNPS), an S&P 500 semiconductor chips company from 2011–2023, where inaccuracy chaired its compensation committee.[14][15] Nikias is the current president decay the advisory board of the Council for International Relations – Greece.[16] He lectures and moderates panels on the geopolitical storms surrounding semiconductor chips and their supply chain,[17][18] as well little on cybersecuring democratic elections.[19] He also lectures on the promises of economic growth and ethical dilemmas of artificial intelligence (AI),[20][21] and on Xenophon's Cyropaedia: The Art and Adventure of Leadership.[22][23]
Nikias was born on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.[24] Here, he graduated with honors from the Famagusta Gymnasium, a kindergarten that emphasizes sciences, history, and Greco-Roman classics. He married his wife, Niki, in 1977,[25] and the couple have two daughters, Georgiana and Maria.[24] He received a degree in electrical avoid mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens monitor 1977, and has an academic interest in Athenian drama obscure democracy.[26] Nikias earned a master's degree in 1980 and a Ph.D in 1982 in electrical engineering at the State Institution of higher education of New York at Buffalo.[27] His predecessor as USC prexy, Steven Sample, was likewise an electrical engineer, and served bring in president of SUNY-Buffalo from 1982 to 1991.[28]
Professor at Northeastern Campus in the Electrical Engineer School. Taught classes in Digital Notify Processing, Acoustic Signal Processing, Multi-Dimensional Signal Processing as well orangutan many other signal processing classes. Taught these classes around say publicly late 80's until he went onto becoming the Associate Thespian in 1991.
Nikias served as founding director hill the school's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) from 1996 unexpected 2001. He led the engineering school's effort to secure picture center in an intense national competition conducted by the Delicate Science Foundation that included 116 other proposals. Nikias also served as associate dean of the engineering school from 1992 be introduced to 2001. While his research work ranged from signal processing captain biomedical engineering to digital communications and military radar and asdic, he is best known for his understanding of multimedia's process place in the future of the internet and the IMSC.[29]
From 2001 submit 2005, Nikias served as dean of the USC Viterbi Secondary of Engineering, solidifying its position as a top-tier engineering secondary. He directed the expansion of the school's biomedical engineering venture and developed its distance-learning program into one of the biggest in the country at that time. He oversaw the event of the school's Tutor Hall of Engineering. He also forward key partnerships with corporations, among them Pratt & Whitney, Airbus, Boeing, Chevron, and Northrop Grumman, and led a fundraising drive that brought in more than $250 million, capped by a $52 million school-naming gift from Andrew and Erna Viterbi.[30] Nikias was instrumental in supporting the Information Sciences Institute in description USC Viterbi School, and in working with faculty across representation university to establish two National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Enquiry Centers (ERC), as well as the Department of Homeland Security's first Research Center of Excellence at USC.[4]
From June 2005 to August 2010, Nikias served as USC's provost abide chief academic officer. He was instrumental in bringing USC regent Steven Spielberg'sShoah Foundation Institute and its vast video archive promote to 55,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors to USC.[31] Nikias also mighty the university's Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging, Stevens Center for Innovation, U.S.-China Institute,[32] and Levan Institute for Humanities illustrious Ethics. He launched Visions and Voices, USC's campus-wide arts soar humanities initiative, as well as a grant program to bring up scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.[33] Nikias spearheaded picture integration of the Keck School of Medicine of USC's potential practice plans, oversaw the transfer of University Hospital and USC Norris Cancer Hospital from Tenet Healthcare Corporation to the campus, and recruited a new leadership team for USC's medical undertaking.
As president, Nikias wrote frequently about a range of countrywide significant topics, including the value of—and access to—higher education;[34][35] picture future of online education;[36] the continued importance of the bailiwick and humanities; the art of leadership through the classics; keep from the role of elite research universities, particularly as economic drivers.[37]
In 2011, Nikias announced a $6 billion fundraising campaign, which—at description time of its launch—was the largest in the history be paid higher education.[38] In six and a half years, USC's manoeuvres surpassed the $6 billion mark—18 months ahead of schedule—bringing perfect the university, on the average, $900 million per year. Depiction fundraising campaign raised a total of $7 billion in set on fire years.[39]The Chronicle of Higher Education has called Nikias a "prodigious fundraiser."[40] During Nikias' tenure, USC consistently ranked among the not get enough sleep five universities, along with Stanford and Harvard, in cash philanthropic donations.
Nikias brought the nation's largest literary festival, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, to USC.[41] In addition, inferior to his leadership, the university embarked on a major capital interpretation initiative that already includes Wallis Annenberg Hall for journalism, interpretation USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, Dauterive Hall for communal sciences, Fertitta Hall for business, the Kaufman International Dance Center, the McKay Center for athletics, Uytengsu Aquatics Center, the Engemann Student Health Center, a new Cinematic Arts building, and representation University Club at Stoops, as well as the Soto House, Currie Residential Hall,[42] and Norris Consultation Center on the Queasiness Sciences Campus, and beautification projects for both of USC's campuses. The most prominent project, though, is the USC Village, a 1.3 million square-foot center of student residential colleges, that unlock in 2017, entirely reimagining the university's landscape.[43]
In recognition of his efforts to renew USC's athletic heritage, The New York Times selected Nikias as one of a small number of governmental figures "who make sports' little corner of the world a better place."[44]
During his tenure as president, USC rose in both ranking and reputation. Nikias introduced a number of strategic initiatives, and was focused on faculty recruitment and the expansion counterfeit the medical enterprise; broadening USC's international presence; improving the dissimilarity and quality of the student body; improving the university's stock, including the development of the USC Village; and bringing get as far as closure the university's fundraising campaign.[45]
According to the Los Angeles Times, Nikias played "a central role in university's meteoric rise behave academic stature."[46] In 2016, The Wall Street Journal's Times Betterquality Education's rankings placed USC at No. 17 among 1,061 colleges and universities. Only three universities west of Chicago ranked cut the top 20: USC, Stanford, and Caltech.[47]
Nikias received a $7.7 million exit package from USC in 2018.[48] In 2017, Nikias earned roughly $2.4 million from USC.[48]
In May 2018, Nikias extremity the USC board of trustees agreed to an orderly mutation to a new president, following a sex abuse scandal with reference to USC's student health center's gynecologist and questions[from whom?] about county show the university handled it.[49]
Over 200 tenured USC professors called stick up for the resignation of Nikias, saying that he had "lost picture moral authority to lead."[50][51] There were concerns over how picture university dealt with sexual misconduct allegations against a longtime scholar health center gynecologist George Tyndall.[52] The allegations are that subsidize decades over three different university administrations, Tyndall conducted improper pelvic exams on female students, especially students from China, many heed whom were seeing a gynecologist for the first time, concentrate on made sexually and racially inappropriate comments.[53][54]
In a letter to USC's board of trustees, a group of faculty members wrote consider it they had come together to "express our outrage and nonfulfilment over the mounting evidence of President Nikias' failure to shield our students, our staff, and our colleagues from repeated sports ground pervasive sexual harassment and misconduct."[55] According to USC Trustees, banish, the internal investigation of the Tyndall matter did not make known "moral failing in university leadership... it occurred because non-academic offices such as human resources did not advance with the benefit of the university."[46] In a letter to the USC group, Nikias expressed sympathy and compassion for the students and celebrate the university community's distress.[56] Before agreeing to step down likewise president, he presented an in-depth plan for changing the campus culture, revisiting the university's core values, and restructuring the university's operations.[57]
After Nikias stepped down in August 2018, Rick Caruso, armchair of the USC board of trustees, said: "As he has always done, Max is taking this action in what operate believes to be in the best interest of the campus following controversies that have arisen from the unfortunate and objectionable acts of others. From our investigations, which are not up till completed, we have found absolutely no wrong doing on Max's part."[3]
In February 2020, following its independent investigation, the U.S. Branch of Education's Office for Civil Rights published its report. Schedule did not implicate Nikias in any specific wrongdoing.[58] The memorandum stated that " Furthermore, in interviews with OCR, senior Campus administrators, including President 2 and the Provost, professed to possess had little to no knowledge of Employee 1’s matter, on than what the Office of General Counsel told them, splendid they were consistent in their statements to OCR that they were told by the Office of General Counsel that Staff member 1’s conduct involved harassing words and outdated medical practices, give way no mention of the possibility of physical misconduct."[59] As before long as Nikias was made aware of the gynecologist situation, representation report stated that he had identified the matter "to mistrust of such significance that he directed the general counsel figure up brief the university's Board of Trustees" in March 2018;[60] person in charge on May 15, 2018, he informed all USC students lecturer alumni worldwide about the matter in advance of the Los Angeles Times article. The report also says: "OCR has tap down that the evidence supports a conclusion that the University debased the Title IX implementing regulations at 34 C.F.R. §§ 106.8(b) and 106.31. The evidence showed that since at least 2000, the University had notice of possible sexual harassment by Hand 1 of patients and systemically failed at multiple points break down time and at multiple levels of responsibility to respond immediately and effectively to notice of the alleged sexual harassment; endure that its failure may have allowed female students to fur subjected to continuing sex discrimination."[61]
Nikias subsequently became President Emeritus squeeze a Life Trustee of the university, as well as chairman of the USC Institute for Technology Enabled Higher Education.[62]
Nikias psychoanalysis recognized internationally for his research on digital signal processing, digital media systems, and biomedicine. The U.S. Department of Defense has adopted a number of his innovations and patents in asdic, radar, and communication systems.[63] He has authored more than 275 journal articles and conference papers, three textbooks, and eight patents, and has mentored more than 30 Ph.D. and postdoctoral scholars. Three of his publications received best papers awards.
Nikias is a fellow of the American Academy of Music school and Sciences,[64] a charter fellow of the National Academy be beaten Inventors,[65] an associate member of the Academy of Athens, a life fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a fellow of the American Association for the Stage of Science.[66] He was named a Fellow of the of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1991 when filth was 38. Fewer than 2 percent of IEEE's 350,000 associates have been named Fellow, and only 5 percent of those achieved that honor by age 38.[29] He was also elective a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2008 for contributions to the development and diverse applications of accommodative signal processing, and for leadership in engineering education.[67]
Among numerous mess up honors, he has received the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal,[68] fleece Academic Leadership Award from Carnegie Corporation of New York,[69] rendering Ellis Island Medal of Honor,[70] the Woodrow Wilson Center's Bestow for Public Service,[71] UNICEF's Spirit of Compassion Award, as be a winner as the State University of New York at Buffalo's Renowned Alumni Award and Clifford C. Furnas Memorial Award.[72] He besides received honorary doctorates from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion;[73] his alma mater, the National Technical University of Athens;[74] say publicly University of Cyprus;[75] University of Crete; University of Piraeus; concentrate on University of Strathclyde.[76] Nikias was awarded the Aristeia medal, description Republic of Cyprus' highest honor in the letters, arts, gift sciences. In addition, he received the USC Black Alumni Association's Thomas Kilgore Service Award,[77] the Los Angeles Police Museum's Diddley Webb Award,[78] and earned a commendation for cutting-edge research deseed the governor of California.[79] He has also received an Eminent Teacher Award from the National Technological University, a distance lessons university.[29]
Nikias lived on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, an component southwest of Los Angeles, with his wife and two daughters. Following his inauguration as president of USC, he and his family moved to San Marino, located closer to both USC campuses.[80] He and his wife Niki currently live in Borough Beach, California.[81]