ECE Pioneer - Ming Hsieh

Yeah, doesn't matter because it's very... I can, I can, you can take a seat. I will invite you. Okay, there anywhere. Yeah, come on in. There are some seats here too, the front. Don't be shy. Yeah, nice.

Good, give a couple more minutes as people wander in. We're on time.

Sit, sit there. Sit. There, where's Bob? Where's Bob Schultz? Is he okay? Ask Bob if he wants to come up front. Ask. We'll give a couple more minutes for people to come in so that we can start the proceedings.

Yeah, all right. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome. I'm really thrilled to welcome all of you to the Ming Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and it's the Ming Institute where we are all seated. Special welcome to a lot of our colleagues, our leaders, and everyone. We have some of our past pioneers also. I'll tell you a little bit more about what we mean by that. My name is Shriram. I'm a faculty member here in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and also been the director of the Ming Hsieh Institute since its inception in 2010. And so you may ask, what is this Pioneer Lecture all about? Right. What is it? So it's basically a lecture that honors and celebrates the people who have made a huge impact on the department, on our school, but as a matter of fact, on the world through their professional work, their mentoring, and their outreach to the community in the field of electrical and computer engineering. So we have celebrated a dozen pioneers before. Sal Goolam, Andy Viterbi. A couple of our pioneers are here with us today: Bob Schulz, Sandy Saek, and so on, who have all made huge impact on the field. So why are we doing this? We want to actually know their journeys, their personal and professional journey, what made them do what they did, how they did it, all the challenges they faced, and the hope and the promise that they see for the field and how it can change the world. Right. So in that process, we also wanted to hear the story to educate and inspire the next generation of engineers here. And as you know, this field, electrical and computer engineering, cuts across all kinds of domains, right, from the submolecular materials to space systems and everything in between, impacting health and well-being of the people and the world we occupy. And so today we have another pioneer to celebrate. I'll say a little bit more about this pioneer in a moment, but I want to also take a moment to recognize and remember a pioneer we celebrated a few years ago, University Professor George Bekey, who passed away last year. He was a chairman of this department, he created the Biomedical Engineering Department, he started Future Science, he was influential in bringing in ISI, Information Sciences Institute, here. He was 96. He was a stellar human, mentor to many of us. In fact, I remember him walking into my office when I started here as an assistant professor with a how-to manual on how to navigate academia because he said... So amazing person. And so we remember him. So it is a very special day for us for many reasons. The first one, October 23rd is actually a special day for this department. 18 years ago we named it after Ming. You know, his foresight and generosity actually... It's the first time ever an electrical engineering department being named in the country. So Ming did that, you know. And there was this big sign of fingerprint here in front of this building. It was very inspirational and many things have happened since then in this department. 18 years, you know, we have over almost 400 PhD students, over a thousand master students, about 400 undergraduates. Many people doing award-winning work in this department. The most recent, you know, our colleague Yash Khas just got a Packard Fellowship, the third in this department and at USC. Many members of the National Academy and so on, including from our pioneers. So that's one. And in fact, the day after our department was named and given birth to, our pioneer of today, Ming Hsieh, he also had his new baby boy, Jeremy Hsieh, was born on the 24th. I remember that. A lot of happy things were happening around that time. And so today, you know, we are very honored and thrilled to host Ming as our Pioneer speaker. As you all know, he's a proud alum of our ECE department. He's a very dedicated member of the Trojan family in so many ways. He is an entrepreneur. He, from Ax to Cogent to Fulgent, he's crossed many areas, bringing the ideas from engineering to solving world's problems. Right. Whether it was biometrics... I had a chance even before, you know, to work together on a DOJ project with Ming and his team a long time ago. To now, you know, solving, trying to understand and solve cancer challenges. So this is very inspiring and all through the lens of engineering. And we want to hear about that from him. He's a life trustee and an invaluable member of our community. So we are very honored to celebrate Ming and his professional journey and keep this as a treasure for current and future students. I think it's fantastic. I'm so thrilled to see all of you, including I'll give a shout out to my boss, President Carol is here too, hiding there, and my other boss Dean, and the third boss Richard Leahy, the chairman of our Ming Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, unified with new energy and under one administration. We're very thrilled about what the future holds. So today's run of show, okay. So we're going to have a lecture by Ming sharing his journey, followed by a fireside chat that will be hosted by our chairman, Professor Richard Leahy, just asking questions. Then we'll have a small celebration, unveiling the plaque which we've done honoring the Pioneer wall there. And then we'll have a reception. So super thrilled all of you are here and we're excited. Ming, thank you for doing this and for what you have done for USC and what you're doing for USC. Here we are. Thank you.