Dear Iovine and Young Academy Community,
I write today to share that Dean Thanassis Rikakis has informed me that he will be stepping down as the Dean of the USC Iovine and Young Academy, effective July 12, 2025.
Throughout the course of Dean Rikakis’s tenure, he has worked closely with the IYA faculty and staff, as well as industry partners, to advance a unique alignment of IYA’s transdisciplinary curriculum with emerging and future industry needs in product and process innovation. These innovations have significantly increased visibility and resources for the school and advanced programmatic and academic excellence. Dean Rikakis also partnered with the faculty to structure and implement a transdisciplinary peer-review process and related faculty handbook. During his tenure, IYA expanded its internal collaborations and now has joint programming with 10 other USC schools.
Dean Rikakis has also served as a courtesy professor of Bioengineering at USC Viterbi, where he leads the Interactive Neurorehabilitation Lab. He will continue to serve on the faculty of IYA as Professor of Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation and will continue his foundational involvement in the Human Technology Interaction program being developed by IYA in partnership with other USC schools.
Josh Kun, Vice Provost of the Arts, has generously agreed to serve as interim dean, effective July 13, 2025. Josh has been an integral leader in USC’s many prestigious arts enterprises. In his first two years as Vice Provost, he has hosted multiple faculty retreats exploring the relationship between AI and interdisciplinary work, successfully hosted two live art symposiums, and launched the USC Arts Now residential initiative. His wide breadth of knowledge and connections to innovators across multiple disciplines make him an ideal leader for IYA. I am grateful for his willingness to take on this role.
A search for the next dean of IYA will be launched later this summer with an announcement from my office to the community requesting your nominations for search committee members.
Please join President Folt and me in thanking Dean Rikakis for his leadership and dedication to IYA and to the university. We wish him much success in his future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Andrew T. Guzman
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs