{"id":457947,"date":"2026-09-09T05:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T05:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/457947\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T05:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T05:16:08","slug":"usc-marshall-appoints-kimon-drakopoulos-as-vice-dean-of-ai-initiatives-annenberg-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/457947\/","title":{"rendered":"USC Marshall appoints Kimon Drakopoulos as vice dean of AI initiatives \u2013 Annenberg Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

USC Marshall School of Business appointed Kimon Drakopoulos as vice dean of AI initiatives, the school announced<\/a> Tuesday. Drakopoulos will be responsible for advancing the school\u2019s strategic direction in artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI will stay as a tool, but AI will not be a defining factor of how we think and how we add value as a society,\u201d Drakopoulos said in an interview with Annenberg Media. \u201cIt will be an enabler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drakopoulos is the Ronald N. Tutor Chair in Visionary Business and an associate professor of data sciences and operations at Marshall. In 2023, he co-founded the AI for business program<\/a>, an undergraduate major jointly offered by Marshall and USC Viterbi School of Engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cKimon brings experience at the highest levels of government, industry, and academia, along with a demonstrated ability to translate strategy into action at scale,\u201d said Andy Call, interim dean of USC Marshall School of Business. \u201cThat combination will be instrumental in defining how USC Marshall leads in AI and shapes what comes next.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drakopoulos has experience in AI strategy in government, formerly serving as chief data scientist of Greece\u2019s COVID-19 task force. In the private sector, he served as executive advisor for AI and Innovation at PwC Greece.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of which angle you approach it from, it is something that everyone is thinking about and is debating about,\u201d he said. \u201cThe market seems to require AI related skills. That\u2019s partially why we\u2019re building these programs and these initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 350 universities offer degree programs in AI<\/a>, with USC adding to the smaller pool of institutions that combine business and AI into one program. Drakopoulos said his initiative pushes Marshall students to utilize the bridge between business and the changing AI ecosystem.<\/p>\n

The inaugural class of the BUAI program graduates this year with \u201ca very solid technical background,\u201d he said. As vice dean of AI initiatives, Drakopoulos said he hopes to teach Marshall students how best to use AI as a tool.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not about integrating AI. I\u2019m actually very much against the \u2018AI everywhere\u2019 message because it is the wrong message,\u201d Drakopoulos said. \u201cI am all about introspection and thinking about okay, \u2018why do we offer it to students?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Drakopoulos said he wants students to have the \u201cdrive to try to make your decisions data-driven,\u201d and to use AI as one tool in a larger picture of business leadership.<\/p>\n

However, he said \u201cnothing is set in stone\u201d yet in regards to Marshall\u2019s overall AI strategy. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are preparing business leaders across the board, and that\u2019s where we need to focus,\u201d Drakopoulos said. \u201cThat\u2019s our strength. So whatever we decide to pursue around AI should respect that uniqueness of Marshall.\u201d <\/p>\n

Edited by Scott Hills<\/a> and Katherine Contreras Hernandez<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USC Marshall School of Business appointed Kimon Drakopoulos as vice dean of AI initiatives, the school announced Tuesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2007,180658,48,52,51,47,50,49,65756,3533],"class_list":["post-457947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ai","tag-ai-for-business","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-marshall","tag-usc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}