Biography and Contact
Dr. Thanassis Rikakis is the second dean of the USC Iovine and Young Academy (IYA) for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation. The IYA provides unique BS and MS degrees that cultivate expertise at the intersection of technology, design, business and creativity. Thanassis is also a professor at the IYA and a courtesy professor of Bioengineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He co-leads the USC Interactive Neurorehabilitation Lab. His research spans systems design, engineering and arts with a special focus on interactive neurorehabilitation, adaptive learning, experiential media and cyber-human intelligence. Before joining the Academy Thanassis served as founding director of the Calhoun Honors Discovery Program and director of the Calhoun Center for Higher Education Innovation. These initiatives focus on adaptive, transdisciplinary and trans-sector life-long learning. From 2015 until 2017 Thanassis served as executive vice president and provost at Virginia Tech. He led the development of transdisciplinary discovery communities (Destination Areas) and a new resource model (Partnership for an Incentive Based Budget) and co-led plans for the expansion of the VTC Health Sciences campus in Roanoke and for cross sector VT initiatives in Northern VA. From 2012 to 2015 he served as vice provost for design arts and technology at Carnegie Mellon University where he founded the Integrative Design, Arts and Technology (IDEATE) network. He has also served as founding director of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University and Associate Director for Research and Development of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University. He has led gift efforts from philanthropy and industry totaling more than $75,000,000. He has been PI or co-PI in research grants from NSF, NIH, NEA and industry totaling over $16,000,000. He has authored 45 publications spanning computing, engineering, health, education, design and the arts. He has composed 30 original music compositions performed internationally. He remains an active teacher of undergraduate and graduate courses and research supervisor of graduate students.
Contact at: rikakis at usc dot edu or through Linkedin