Andrew J. Viterbi

University of Southern California Trustee, Presidential Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Title: A Tale of Two Careers: "It was the worst of times, it was the best of times" (with apologies to Mr. Dickens)

The last two thirds of the 20th Century was a period of tremendous upheaval and progress, social, political and especially technological. This was the period during which I pursued two careers which were tightly intertwined. Curiously both were also influenced by our nation’s most threatening competitor, Russia. The first was my academic career and the second my entrepreneurial career, both of which covered over thirty years, with considerable overlap. Though unrecognized at the time, my academic research had roots in the work of the Russian mathematician Andrei Markov, while with full recognition, my entrepreneurial career was launched and initially supported by our Defense research efforts to counter the Soviet threat...