Cypriot elected as next president of USC

C. L. "Max" Nikias, provost and second-in-command at the University of Southern California, will become its next president, succeeding Steven B. Sample on August 3 at the helm of the 34,000-student university, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Nikias, a Cypriot-born electrical engineer from Komi Kebir with expertise in radar and sonar, was long mentioned as the leading candidate to become USC's 11th president, so much so that some trustees reportedly argued against conducting a national search. But the board went ahead, considering 75 other educators before returning to a man well-known and well-liked on campus.
A former dean of USC's school of engineering, Nikias, 57, said that he hopes to intensify fundraising efforts and plans to announce a major campaign aimed at doubling USC's endowment in the next ten years.
"It's not a change of direction but an acceleration," he said. "We can move the needle and move this university into what I call the pantheon of undisputed elite universities." Among other goals, he said, was improving the academic standings of USC's medical school and hospitals.
He also said he plans to strengthen USC's already extensive ties to Asian nations and colleges, beyond the large number of Indian and Chinese graduate students the university enrolls.
"Our vision is that we want USC to become the university of the Pacific Century, the intellectual and cultural center of this world tied to the Pacific Century," Nikias said, his Greek Cypriot accent still strong.
But the campus' new leader will have big shoes to fill. Sample has been president for 19 years, a longevity rare in American academia, and he boosted the university's academic prestige and financial resources significantly. Since 1991, USC has risen from 51st to 26th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings of national research universities.
USC's endowment also increased dramatically, to a pre-recession peak of $4 bln, but then fell to about $3 bln, relatively small for such a large research university.
Nikias holds co-authorship to eight patents, mainly in digital signal processing for radar and sonar communications used by the Navy. A U.S. citizen since 1988, he joined USC's faculty in 1991 and was engineering school dean from 2001 to 2005, during which time he helped garner more than $200 mln in donations.
Named provost in 2005, Nikias negotiated USC's $275 mln purchase last year of the University Hospital and Norris Cancer Center from Tenet Healthcare Corp. after years of disputes over control. He was also instrumental in USC becoming home to the Shoah Foundation, the archive of Holocaust survivors' testimony established by filmmaker and USC trustee Steven Spielberg.
After earning his undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens in 1977, Nikias received his master's and doctorate degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo where his wife also studied. Both their daughters attend USC.
He and his wife, Niki, live in Palos Verdes, which reminds them, he said, of a Greek island. They will move later this year to USC's presidential residence in San Marino.