From the Nominator

"For the Fall 2021 edition of USC Viterbi magazine, we themed our entire issue around the multiverse. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dean Yannis Yortsos said: “On March 15, 2020, in the vocabulary of the many-world theory of quantum mechanics, the ‘wave function’ collapsed, and essentially, we collectively moved overnight to another world--the COVID world.” 

This idea of many worlds--different worlds, each freighted with consequence and possibility--felt like an ideal vehicle to explore the present moment. Indeed, as our own world seemed stranger and more nightmarish by the day, the idea that engineers might be ideally suited to imagine and create new and better worlds spoke to the very proudest ideals of the profession. 

Given that ours is a publication for alumni of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, it was also deeply meaningful that the magazine’s concept was rooted in actual science--from the weird, quantum realm of the multiverse (see page 56) to the quantum steganography puzzle that spans the entire issue (see page 13 and back cover). 

For our spring 2021 magazine, we celebrated the groundbreaking of a new computer science building at USC. To show the types of research and technology that would be enabled by this, many stories were centered around human impact. For example, one feature was an illustrated timeline of a person's life and all the points at which they may come in contact with technology developed at USC Viterbi (see page 32)."

From the Judges

One of the most creative entries. Lots of great stuff in these issues. Fall '21 has a great cover and the back cover is a fun way to tease the game inside. The game is genius in and of itself, as it gets readers to look at every page. The inside cover split image is good. "Infinite Versions of Us" is interesting--a trip down the rabbit hole based on the oft-asked question, "what do you think you'd be doing if it wasn't this?" but taken to the nth degree. The stories are short and digestible.