In the early 1940s, Robert Vivian, second dean of the future USC Viterbi School of Engineering, had a meeting with Dr. Seeley G. Mudd, one of the USC trustees.

The purpose? To discuss government-funded research at USC.

Mudd’s response, according to Vivian’s “USC Engineering Story,” was blunt: Stick to teaching engineering courses. Leave the research to Caltech.

World War 2 promptly changed that.

In 1944, the USC College of Engineering had its first research contract: a $10,000 agreement with Lockheed Aircraft Company to research the spot welding of aluminum alloy sheets used in manufacturing aircraft.

In truth, if Vivian had taken Mudd’s advice, both the world and the USC Viterbi School would be very different. Here are 10 research breakthroughs enabled by USC Viterbi research.

 

1

Designing and managing the early internet

From its founding in 1972, USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI) played a pivotal role in conceiving, designing and managing the internet.

Home to many internet pioneers — Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, Danny Cohen, Paul Mockapetris, Dan Lynch, and Bob Braden — ISI designed an interface for ARPANET, which later became the basis of the internet. Over the next several decades, ISI played a pivotal role in creating and managing the internet’s core concepts, technical standards and ongoing functionality.

January 1, 1983, is a significant date in internet history. On this day, the ARPANET, the predecessor to the internet, officially transitioned to the TCP/IP protocol, marking the birth of the modern internet. This transition allowed different computer networks to communicate with each other using a common language. Postel and USC ISI were so involved in developing these protocols that the final TCP/IP documents published in 1981 were “prepared for DARPA by ISI,” with Postel listed as the editor.

For 20 years, he maintained and edited the Request for Comments papers (RFCs), essentially the internet’s operating manual. in 1997, The Economist magazine proclaimed: “If the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel.”

 

2

Restoring sight to the blind

After 25 years of research, Professor Mark Humayun’s Argus 2 device became in 2013 the first FDA-approved artificial retina in the United States to restore sight to the blind.

The system included a small video camera mounted on a pair of eyeglasses, a video-processing unit that transforms images from the camera into wirelessly transmitted electronic signals, and an implanted retinal prosthesis (artificial retina) to stimulate visual neurons.

With the advent of the Argus 2, patients who had been blind for up to 50 years experienced restored vision. They saw everything from Fourth of July fireworks to silhouettes of their children and grandchildren.

Later, in 2022, Humayun’s team demonstrated a stem-cell-derived implant designed to aid patients with age-related macular degeneration — one of the most common forms of blindness in adults over 40.

 

3

Invention of the .com: Domain Name System for the internet (1983)

While working at ISI, Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel pioneered the Domain Name System, which introduced the .com, .edu, .gov and .org internet naming standards.

As Wired magazine noted on the 25th anniversary: “Without the Domain Name System, it’s doubtful the internet could have grown and flourished as it has.”

The DNS works like a phone book for the internet, automatically translating text names, which are easy for humans to understand and remember, to numerical addresses that computers need. For example, imagine trying to remember an IP address like “192.0.2.118” instead of simply “usc.edu.”

In a 2009 interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Mockapetris said he believed “the first domain name he ever created was ‘isi.edu’ for his employer, the (USC) Information Sciences Institute. That domain name is still in use today.”

 

4

Developing the JPEG: For sharing nearly all digital images on the internet (1972)

The USC Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI) is where coding research began for the JPEG and MPEG standards used for digital image compression, enabling today’s selfies and YouTube videos.

In 1972 — a time when Americans were taking pictures with Polaroids and home movies with Super 8 cameras — a remarkable group of researchers at USC glimpsed the future. Led by alumnus William Pratt (M.S. EE ’61, Ph.D. ’65), the group established the USC Signal Image Processing Institute (IPI) that year to solve three problems related to electronic images and videos: image coding, image restoration and image data extraction.

SIPI conducted much of the early work on transform coding, now the basis of the JPEG and MPEG standards for still and video image compression and transmission.

 

5

First brain implant to restore lost memory function (2011)

In 2011, Professor Ted Berger first made international headlines by demonstrating the ability to turn memory on and off — literally at the flip of a switch.

Berger and Dong Song, both USC Viterbi biomedical engineers, had an audacious plan to bypass the damaged brain circuitry in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. A very-large-scale integration (VLSI) memory chip, or cognitive prosthetic, embedded under the skin at the crown of the skull would essentially mimic the function of the Alzheimer’s-ravaged hippocampus. MIT Technology Review named it one of the “Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies” of 2013.

Between 2016 and 2021, patient volunteers completed 100 to 150 short tasks to test their short-term memory while allowing researchers to gather critical information. Researchers noted an 11% to 54% improvement on memory tests from the volunteers using the memory prosthesis.

 

6

‘AI for Good’: AI programs to protect U.S. ports, airports and endangered animals (2006 and 2013) 

Imagine you have eight doors you need to protect. But you have only one cop. What if you could create the illusion that you actually have eight cops?

That’s the idea behind Professor Milind Tambe’s ARMOR, an AI program initially developed at USC that uses “intelligent randomness” to protect high-value targets.

In 2007, Los Angeles International Airport counterterrorism experts began using ARMOR to randomize the scheduling of police checkpoints for the six inbound roads to LAX. That project’s success led to the creation of a new version of the software, IRIS, to randomize the flight schedules of federal air marshals.

In 2011, the U.S. Coast Guard began using a version of Tambe’s software, called PROTECT, to help protect the Port of Boston. Today, the system operates at major American ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Recently, in collaboration with Professor Bistra Dilkina, this same technology was used to fight global poachers. In 2018, Cambodian rangers tested PAWS at Srepok wildlife sanctuaries with promising results. Twenty-four rangers patrolling areas identified by PAWS recovered more than 1,000 snares, more than double the number from before the deployment of the AI software.

 

7

Helping veterans with PTSD: VR exposure therapy

It may sound counterintuitive, but having someone gradually relive a traumatic experience can, in a controlled environment monitored by a therapist, allow the person to confront and reprocess the trauma, reducing its impact over time.

Enter a landmark VR therapy tool: BRAVEMIND. Developed by a team led by Albert “Skip” Rizzo, director for medical virtual reality at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, the tool helps assess and treat post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans. Since its introduction, BRAVEMIND has also supplemented traditional therapy for other sufferers of PTSD, including Ukrainian civilians and warfighters.

BRAVEMIND has been distributed to more than 170 clinical sites and continues to be used by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In fact, one early beneficiary of the tool is Chris Merkle, whose war-induced PTSD nearly ruined his marriage and caused other problems. He went on to earn a doctorate in psychology and is practicing at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

 

8

Movie Magic: Photorealistic digital humans

From the blue-skinned aliens of “Avatar” to the aged Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to Angelina Jolie in “Maleficent,” you can thank U.S. Army-funded technology for cutting-edge movie magic.

The Light Stage at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has been used to create photorealistic digital actors for nearly 50 Hollywood films, including “The Avengers,” “Furious 7” and “Blade Runner 2049.”

Pioneered by Professor Paul Debevec’s team at the USC Vision Graphics Lab, the technology has now received two Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 

9

Sending voice and video over the internet (1973)

In 1973, USC researcher Danny Cohen — working on transmitting flight simulators over the early internet — was the first person to send voice and video over a network in real time. The original webcast!

As Cohen’s team was working on that, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was looking for a way to send voice over the network in a quick, secure and encrypted way: They wanted to send voice messages to spies! They approached Cohen, and in 1973, he and his USC Information Sciences Institute team demonstrated the first version of “voice over IP” (VoIP), or real-time online voice communications. By 1974, they created two-way communications over IP; and by 1978, they completed the first conference call. In 1980, using a satellite on ISI’s roof, Cohen and ISI researcher Stephen Casner were the first to use satellite to transmit video over a network; and in 1986, the duo held the first real-time multimedia teleconference using packet video over the internet, including text and graphics displayed at both ends of the meeting.

Casner continued to research video over the internet at ISI and, in 1992, he co-created multicast multimedia transmissions over the internet (Mbone). Two years later, on November 18, 1994, Mbone was used to broadcast a live entertainment event — a Rolling Stones concert — worldwide via the internet for the first time. All this work paved the way for livestreaming, Skype, Zoom and more.

 

10

3D-printing homes: Making housing more affordable

Could you 3D-print a house in 24 hours?

In 2006, the History Channel selected Berok Khoshnevis’ Contour Crafting method of robotic 3D-printed construction as one of the top 25 inventions for its “Modern Marvels” program. The technology was selected from more than 4,000 candidates by the History Channel and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

A prolific inventor, Khoshnevis has over 100 U.S. and international patents and has paved the way for the dawn of more affordable 3D-printed houses that produce far less waste during construction.

His company, Contour Crafting, has a small fleet of three 3D-printing machines and seeks to build about 20 more machines over the next year.

Over his career, Khoshnevis has invented three major 3D-printing technologies. The other two are selective inhibition sintering (SIS), which allows for the fabrication of objects with a variety of polymers and metals at a lower cost than competing technologies, and selective separation shaping (SSS) for the fabrication of objects with metals that have a high melting point as well as for the fabrication of ceramic objects. SIS has been licensed to Hewlett-Packard, while SSS was conceived in a NASA-funded project for the construction of planetary landing pads.