{"id":18094,"date":"2024-01-16T09:06:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T17:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/?p=18094"},"modified":"2024-06-13T09:02:44","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T16:02:44","slug":"alum-neil-siegel-national-medal-technology-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/stories\/alum-neil-siegel-national-medal-technology-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumnus parlays USC Dornsife math degrees into society-changing technologies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n    \n                                          \n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-hero \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-hero\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n<div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--image\">\n\n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n    \n              \n      <img\n                            data-src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/siegel_honor_top-768x432.png\"\n          data-srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/siegel_honor_top-1920x1080.png 1920w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/siegel_honor_top-1280x720.png 1280w,https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/siegel_honor_top-768x432.png 768w\"          data-sizes=\"(min-width:1200px) 75vw, (min-width:768px) 83vw, 100vw\"          class=\"lazyload\"\n        \n                  role=\"none\"\n        \n        \n                                      \/>\n\n    \n    \n  \n  \n\n<\/div>\n  \n      <div class=\"image-caption\">\n          \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  USC Dornsife alumnus Neil Siegel receives the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Joe Biden at the White House on Oct. 24, 2023. (Photo: Ryan K. Morris.)\n\n\n<\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  \n  <div class=\"text-wrapper\">\n          <nav aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\" class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n        <ul>\n                      <li><a href=\"\/news\/stories\/\">News<\/a><\/li>\n                      <li><a href=\"\/news\/stories\/\/?category=alumni\">Alumni<\/a><\/li>\n                  <\/ul>\n      <\/nav>\n    \n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--page-title\">\n\n    \n  <h1>Alumnus parlays USC Dornsife math degrees into society-changing technologies<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n          <div class=\"subtitle\">\n            \n<div class=\"f--field f--description\">\n\n    \n  From GPS to touch screens, Neil Siegel put his USC Dornsife education to work building the technology of tomorrow, earning him one of the nation\u2019s highest prizes.\n\n\n<\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    \n           <strong class=\"author-field\"><span >By<\/span><a href=\"mailto:communication@dornsife.usc.edu\">Margaret Crable<\/a><\/strong>\n    \n          <span class=\"post-date-field\">January 16, 2024<\/span>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--social-share \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--social-share\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"content-wrapper\">\n    <span class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list\" style=\"line-height: 32px;\">\n      <span class=\"title\">\n        Share\n      <\/span>\n                        <a class=\"a2a_button_copy_link\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"\/#copy_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Link\">\n            <span class=\"a2a_svg a2a_s__default a2a_s_copy_link\">\n              <svg height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 19 19\" width=\"19\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path d=\"m7.43475275 9.52380952-2.17490843 2.26076008c-1.08745421 1.058837-1.68841575 2.518315-1.68841575 4.0350275 0 1.5167124.60096154 2.9475732 1.68841575 4.0350274 1.058837 1.0874543 2.51831502 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you\u2019ve swiped on a tablet to order a coffee, watched a movie on the big screen, or tracked down your phone\u2019s location via the \u201cFind my iPhone\u201d app, then you\u2019ve benefited from the ingenuity of <a href=\"https:\/\/viterbi.usc.edu\/directory\/faculty\/Siegel\/Neil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Neil Siegel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Siegel, who received both his bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/mathematics\/\">mathematics<\/a> from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Art and Sciences, led early efforts to bring digital technology to the United States military, work that drove technological advancements we now use on a regular basis, including wireless internet and GPS-based vehicle tracking.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_18151\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18151\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-18151 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/InStoryB-1-500x375.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/InStoryB-1-500x375.png 500w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/InStoryB-1-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/InStoryB-1.png 980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-18151\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left: Robyn Friend; Siegel; President Joe Biden; Kathy Warden, CEO of Northrop Grumman; Yannis Yortsos, dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, at the White House. (Photo: Adam Schultz.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>His innovations recently won him the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uspto.gov\/learning-and-resources\/ip-programs-and-awards\/national-medal-technology-and-innovation-nmti\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Medal of Technology and Innovation<\/a>, the United States\u2019 highest honor for technological achievements. He <a href=\"https:\/\/viterbischool.usc.edu\/news\/2023\/10\/neil-siegel-receives-the-2023-national-medal-of-technology-and-innovation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">accepted his award during a White House ceremony<\/a> in October 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Siegel, currently on the faculty at the <a href=\"https:\/\/viterbischool.usc.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">USC Viterbi School of Engineering<\/a>, says his early study of mathematics helped set a helpful foundation. \u201cLearning the value of rigor and completeness, understanding how to tell if an argument is in fact rigorous (or not), and other types of general principles that we learn in mathematics has been fantastically helpful to everything that I have done in my career,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<h2>Mathematics and music<\/h2>\n<p>Siegel grew up in Los Angeles. His mother, Judith Love Cohen, completed her bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees at USC Viterbi and was an aerospace engineer at Space Technology Laboratories. She worked on projects like the Abort-Guidance System for the Apollo mission lunar lander, which eventually played a crucial role in the safe return of the Apollo 13 crew.<\/p>\n<p>As a teen, Siegel wasn\u2019t all that thrilled about academics: \u201cI hated high school \u2014 I was bored to tears.\u201d His college years at USC would prove to be much different. \u201cUniversity was wonderful, with a lot to learn. I found that I could get as much as I wanted out of my classes, whether large or small,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Math was on Siegel\u2019s schedule, but also courses in Russian literature, logic, and communications and media. Siegel was particularly inspired by the late <a href=\"https:\/\/ui.adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2005BAAS...37.1556R\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gibson Reeves<\/a>, an astronomer who conducted important research on dwarf galaxies and who taught at USC Dornsife for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>Siegel paid for his studies by working a variety of odd jobs, at everything from a law office to a manufacturing plant. He watched the historic Apollo moon landing while flipping burgers, on a tiny television brought in by a colleague.<\/p>\n<p>He primarily paid for college through his work as a musician (an aptitude he shares with his half-brother, actor Jack Black). Siegel began playing the flute at age 7 and started performing at 12. In his 20s, he became interested in Persian music and studied under the accomplished Iranian musician Mortez\u00e2 Varzi. He learned how to play the t\u00e2r and the ney, traditional instruments from the region, as well as the Bulgarian kaval.<\/p>\n<p>These talents saw him called upon to add a little \u201cMiddle Eastern flavor\u201d for movie soundtracks and records while in college, in addition to his core repertoire of Baroque flute.<\/p>\n<p>His musical ability also introduced him to his wife, Robyn Friend, an expert in Middle Eastern dance. They met backstage after a performance at the Southern California Renaissance Faire, when Siegel was at USC and Friend was at UCLA, studying linguistics. The two have performed together more than 1,000 times, all around the world, Friend singing and dancing and Siegel accompanying her on a variety of instruments.<\/p>\n<h2>The next frontier<\/h2>\n<p>After completing his degrees at USC Dornsife, Siegel took a job at Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc. (TRW), where he was trained in systems engineering. He essentially never left. Northrop Grumman acquired the company in 2002, and Siegel eventually became vice-president and chief technology officer of the mission systems and information systems sectors.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_18099\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18099\" style=\"width: 388px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/instoryc.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-18099\" src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/instoryc-388x550.png\" alt=\"Siegel with his mother, Judith Love Cohen.\" width=\"388\" height=\"550\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/instoryc-388x550.png 388w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/instoryc-722x1024.png 722w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/instoryc-768x1089.png 768w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/01\/instoryc.png 980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-18099\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Siegel with his mother, Judith Love Cohen. (Photo: Northrop Grumman.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In this role, he oversaw a $600 million annual research portfolio and managed thousands of scientists and engineers. It was rather like parenting, says Siegel. \u201cMy employees were all over the world, working in their own time zones and places with different work weeks. The phone would ring at all hours. My wife used to joke that we had 5,000 children,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n<p>Starting in the 1990s, Siegel led development on the U.S. Army\u2019s first \u201cdigital battlefield\u201d system, which enables the military to manage troop movements and issue commands via wireless internet and computer display, rather than old-fashioned radio calls and paper maps.<\/p>\n<p>The assignment sparked a number of revolutionary technological advancements. To allow the military to follow the location of troops, he and his engineers were among the first to build large-scale tracking systems that used GPS information. Since tanks and helicopters on the battlefield could not be connected by cables, they developed wireless internet protocols. And because helicopter pilots and tank drivers couldn\u2019t type on keyboards while in motion, his team built them touch screens.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, Siegel and his team hold patents for much of the wireless internet, GPS-based tracking, and touch-screen technology essential to consumer electronics like smartphones and tablets.<\/p>\n<p>Military technology wasn\u2019t Siegel\u2019s only focus. The organization that he led collaborated with Warner Brothers to enable movie distribution via digital means rather than film cans. \u201cWhen I last checked a few years ago, the system was still in use, serving something like 32,000 of the 35,000 movie screens in the country,\u201d says Siegel.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1980s, Siegel co-founded a start-up that developed a computer system to catch adverse interactions from medications, from which some 100,000 Americans were then dying annually. Systems like Siegel\u2019s enabled pharmacists to cross-check prescriptions for possible interactions and avoid those deaths.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the 40 years since then, our solution has, of course, been superseded by newer products, but all prescriptions in the U.S. and Europe are now processed through systems that do what we helped to create in the early 1980\u2019s,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<h2>The next generation<\/h2>\n<p>While at TRW in the 1970\u2019s, Siegel met the influential software engineer Barry Boehm, who would later become Siegel\u2019s doctoral advisor. The two were friends until <a href=\"https:\/\/viterbischool.usc.edu\/news\/2022\/09\/barry-boehm-a-living-legend-in-systems-and-software-engineering-dies-at-87\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Boehm\u2019s passing in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Siegel received his PhD in industrial and systems engineering from USC Viterbi. When Siegel retired from Northrop Grumman in 2015, he joined the faculty at USC Viterbi, where he\u2019s now the IBM Professor of Engineering Management.<\/p>\n<p>Siegel says he thinks his mother would be proud of the advancements in parity the school has made, since she was the only woman in her graduating class \u2014 now, at least half of the students in his classes are women.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s also still at work on larger, systemic problems. Siegel is helping power companies mitigate vulnerabilities in the electrical grid as well as creating protocols to help society rebound from massive power blackouts.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been a career that seems to have satisfied Siegel\u2019s initial impulse for majoring in mathematics. \u201cI always liked math, but I saw it as a tool for other things, rather than an end in itself. I never was serious about the idea of working as a research mathematician. I wanted to build things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n  \n        \n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--article-related-stories \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--article-related-stories\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n  <div class=\"inner-wrapper\">\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--section-title\">\n\n    \n  <h2>\n          Related Articles\n      <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n    \n                  <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/today.usc.edu\/mark-and-mary-stevens-give-200-million-to-power-ai-research-across-usc\/\" \n         target=\"_blank\"                 class=\"\" \n      >Mark and Mary Stevens give $200 million to power AI research across USC<\/a>\n      <\/h3>\n\n\n<\/div>\n        <\/article>\n              <article>\n              \n<div class=\"f--field f--cta-title\">\n\n    \n  <h3>\n          <a 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prizes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":18108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,16],"tags":[1909,94,96],"class_list":["post-18094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-science-and-technology","tag-math","tag-mathematics","tag-natural-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Alumnus parlays USC Dornsife math degrees into society-changing technologies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Neil Siegel, who won the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, helped create GPS devices, touch screens and more\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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