"For the Fall 2021 edition of USC Viterbi magazine, we themed our entire issue around the multiverse. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dean Yannis Yortsos said: “On March 15, 2020, in the vocabulary of the many-world theory of quantum mechanics, the ‘wave function’ collapsed, and essentially, we collectively moved overnight to another world--the COVID world.”
This idea of many worlds--different worlds, each freighted with consequence and possibility--felt like an ideal vehicle to explore the present moment. Indeed, as our own world seemed stranger and more nightmarish by the day, the idea that engineers might be ideally suited to imagine and create new and better worlds spoke to the very proudest ideals of the profession.
Given that ours is a publication for alumni of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, it was also deeply meaningful that the magazine’s concept was rooted in actual science--from the weird, quantum realm of the multiverse (see page 56) to the quantum steganography puzzle that spans the entire issue (see page 13 and back cover)."
From the Judges
The color, design imagery, and storytelling of this issue were mind blowing. This issue worked well on every level and is deserving of the highest honor in the sector.
