Dr. Stephen C-Y. Lu is the permanent holder of the David Packard Endowed Chair Professor in Manufacturing Engineering at the School of Engineering at the USC. He directs the Viterbi iPodia (ViP) global education Program and the Master of Science in Product Development Engineering program at USC. Before joining USC in 1995, he was a tenured, full professor of Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the founding director of UIUC’s Knowledge-based Engineering Systems Research Laboratory.
He was a visiting professor at MIT, and the Technical University, Berlin, Germany, in 1993, at Shanghai Jiao-tong University in 2001, and at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea, 2007. Dr. Lu was the Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of the SAVE/JAST (Joint Advanced Striking Technology) program at the Lockheed-Martin Company that designed and developed the next generation fighter aircrafts for the U.S. military. He is the Chief Editor of the International Journal of Collaborative Engineering. For his scientific and technical contributions, he has received prestigious recognitions from many national and international organizations, including two Presidential (USA and Germany) awards, six honorary professorships, and one founding Dean honor from foreign universities. Dr. Lu’s current research and teaching interests are in design thinking, collaborative engineering, and technological innovation.
Elisabeth Arnold Weiss is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication Practice at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering- Engineering in Society Program. She has served as Associate Director for Partnership and Outreach for the USC Viterbi iPodia Program since 2021, where she has led the USC iPodia Faculty Fellowship initiative to expand the iPodia model across disciplines, and grown the iPodia Alliance by forming new partnerships that enhance USC’s global outreach.
Jenny Visapattana is the USC iPodia Program Manager who oversees the program’s day-to-day operations, ensuring all activities run smoothly and efficiently, including the Faculty Fellows program. She also provides classroom support to faculty, including troubleshooting Microsoft Teams as needed. In addition to managing iPodia logistics and administrative tasks, she offers ongoing assistance to partner universities throughout the courses.