The University of Southern California has named Anijo Mathew, an Indian-American designer, researcher and entrepreneur, as the new dean of the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, effective August 1. Mathew arrives at USC from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he had served as dean since 2022 and as a faculty member since 2008, and takes the helm of a school whose explicit mission is to train students to operate simultaneously as technologists, designers and entrepreneurs.
The appointment followed what USC described as a national search that attracted an outstanding pool of candidates before Mathew emerged as the choice. USC President Beong-Soo Kim, announcing the appointment, described Mathew as a visionary researcher, entrepreneur and educational leader whose work is informed by the humanity at the heart of technology, adding that his career embodies many of the qualities that define the Academy itself: creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration and a commitment to preparing students to lead in a changing world.
Founded in 2013 through a gift from music industry figures Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young, known professionally as Dr. Dre, the Academy is USC's twentieth professional school and has built its reputation on a deliberately iconoclastic model that fuses technology, design and business education rather than treating them as separate disciplinary tracks. Students in the programme are expected to move fluidly between coding, design thinking and commercial strategy, with many launching startups or entering product-development roles well before graduation — an approach the Academy's own motto distills to the phrase, the degree is in disruption.
Mathew's own path to the role reflects a similarly interdisciplinary trajectory. He initially trained as an architect before concluding that he was more interested in how people actually experienced buildings than in how those buildings were constructed, a realisation that steered him toward design and computing more broadly. He went on to build startups of his own and to teach at the intersection of technology and human-centred design, eventually joining the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech as an assistant professor in 2008 before rising to become the school's dean in 2022, a position from which he oversaw graduate programmes in human-centred design and systems-based design for nearly two decades of combined faculty and leadership tenure.
Throughout his career, USC officials noted, Mathew has brought together design, technology, business and human-centred innovation, a combination that closely mirrors the Academy's own founding premise. In his new role, he will lead the Academy's interdisciplinary model as it confronts a rapidly shifting technological landscape, one increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, extended reality and advanced robotics — forces that are reshaping not only the industries the Academy's graduates enter but the very nature of the design and technology education the school is built to deliver.
According to USC's official reporting on the appointment, Mathew was drawn to the dean role specifically by the Academy's unconventional approach and the opportunity to help shape one of the university's newest professional schools during a formative period in its development. Juan Santizo, the Academy's associate dean of finance and administration, has said the search committee was looking for more than simply a candidate with a strong resume in entrepreneurship and design — the school wanted someone capable of collaborating effectively across a large and diverse university campus, a criterion Mathew's blend of academic leadership and startup experience appeared well positioned to satisfy.
Mathew's arrival also continues a broader pattern of Indian-origin academics and entrepreneurs assuming senior leadership positions at American design and technology schools, reflecting the diaspora's expanding footprint not only in Silicon Valley's technology companies but in the institutions training the next generation of designers, technologists and entrepreneurs who will go on to build them. For USC's Institute of Design counterpart at Illinois Tech, Mathew's departure prompted the appointment of Jennifer deWinter as interim director, ensuring continuity at the Chicago school even as its former dean begins reshaping one of USC's most distinctive academic offerings on the opposite coast.
As Mathew settles into the role this fall, the Academy's community of students, faculty and industry partners will be watching closely to see how his particular blend of architectural training, human-centred design philosophy and nearly two decades of design-school leadership translates into the next chapter of an institution explicitly built to produce disruptors rather than conventional graduates.
