Moving at the Speed of Light: USC Celebrates Stevens School Naming

A new name appeared on the wall of Olin Hall at Epstein Plaza Tuesday as streamers flew and the Trojan Marching Band played: the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.

The celebration recognized Mark and Mary Stevens' $200 million gift, one of the largest in USC history, and their belief in generations of students they may never meet.

"A name on a school or a building is also a promise," said Gaurav Sukhatme, dean (interim) of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and inaugural director of the USC Stevens School. "It tells every student who walks through the door, 'Someone believed in you before you got here.'"

At the culmination of the program, USC President Beong-Soo Kim, Mark and Mary Stevens and Sukhatme counted down together before the school's name was unveiled.

"We are here not just to mark one of the largest gifts in USC history, but one that is going to be absolutely transformational for the entire world," said Kim, USC's recently installed 13th president.

The gift will help USC recruit leading researchers and accelerate discoveries in health, medicine, business, security and the arts. It arrives as artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming nearly every field.

"The time to lead is now," Kim said.

Moving at the speed of light…and AI

Mark Stevens (B.S./B.A. '81, M.S. '84) graduated from USC just as the IBM personal computer was emerging. He watched the internet, cloud computing and mobile technology reshape society. AI, he told the crowd, will eclipse them all.

"The impact of AI is going to blow all of those away," Stevens said. "I think our society really doesn't appreciate the impact that AI will have."

A USC trustee and former partner at Sequoia Capital, Stevens made early-stage investments in Google, Yahoo, YouTube and NVIDIA. Drawing on NVIDIA's culture of moving quickly, he challenged USC to match the pace of the technology it seeks to shape.

"USC needs to move at the speed of light," he said. "Hopefully our gift will propel us to be a leader, not just in AI research, but in how AI is applied to many fields."

Mary Stevens thanked the crowd for its support.

"We are blessed to be able to do this," she said. "It is an honor."

The gift builds on the couple's long history of philanthropy at USC, including support for innovation, neuroimaging, orthobiologics and athletics.

One school, 22 connections

What distinguishes the USC Stevens School is not only its focus on computing and AI, but its reach across the university.

While many computing schools stand alone, Sukhatme said, the USC Stevens School is designed to connect with 22 other USC schools, from medicine and business to law, social work and the arts.

"This is the promise of the Stevens School," he said. "And it is a promise only USC can make."

Those connections are already visible across USC. The USC Institute on Ethics and Trust in Computing brings together philosophers, computer scientists, journalists, physicians and policymakers to consider the responsible development of technology. The USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society connects engineering and social work to apply AI to problems affecting vulnerable communities.

USC Games brings together game design, computer science, art, animation and production, while the Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence for Business, jointly offered by USC Marshall School of Business and USC Viterbi, combines AI with the foundations of business.

Across USC, more than 30 computing- and AI-related programs enroll thousands of students. A new Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence welcomed its first class this fall.

But Kim emphasized that moving quickly cannot mean losing sight of the people affected by the technology.

"It's not just about pushing frontiers," he said. "It's about making sure our progress is responsible, ethical and human-centered."

A new school with a long history

The naming marks a new chapter for the school, which launched in 2024. But Sukhatme placed the moment within a much longer USC legacy.

"The Stevens School may be new, but its story at USC is not," Sukhatme said. "Trojans have been building the future of computing for more than 50 years."

USC established the Information Sciences Institute in 1972 and its Department of Computer Science in 1976. In 1983, USC researchers Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel pioneered the Domain Name System, creating the architecture behind internet addresses ending in .com, .edu, .gov and .org.

USC professor Leonard Adleman later launched the field of DNA computing, demonstrating that biological molecules could perform computations traditionally handled by silicon-based machines. In 2011, USC became the first academic institution to operate a commercial quantum computing system.

For Sukhatme, the Stevens' investment is also personal. He arrived at USC from Mumbai as a graduate student in 1991.

"I found a place that gave a curious stranger room to explore and, eventually, a home," he said. "And 35 years later, I'm standing here."

Future students, he noted, will pass beneath the Stevens name on their way to classes, laboratories and late-night problem sets. Eventually, they will build things no one has imagined yet.

"It honors everything we have built," Sukhatme said of the gift. "And it is a bet on everything we have yet to see."

Published on October 21st, 2026

Last updated on October 21st, 2026