USC Marshall School of Business has appointed Kimon Drakopoulos as vice dean of AI Initiatives, a newly created leadership position responsible for advancing the school’s strategic direction in artificial intelligence.
Drakopoulos will lead USC Marshall’s approach as AI transforms how companies compete, innovate, make decisions, and create value. His appointment establishes dedicated leadership for the school’s academic, research, and industry initiatives in AI.
“Artificial intelligence is no longer simply an emerging technology; it is becoming fundamental to how business is conducted,” said Andy Call, interim dean of USC Marshall School of Business and dean of the USC Leventhal School of Accounting. “Kimon brings experience at the highest levels of government, industry, and academia, along with a demonstrated ability to translate strategy into action at scale. That combination will be instrumental in defining how USC Marshall leads in AI and shapes what comes next.”
Drakopoulos is the Ronald N. Tutor Chair in Visionary Business and an associate professor of data sciences and operations at USC Marshall. He co-founded and directed USC’s AI for Business program, a first-of-its-kind undergraduate major offered jointly by USC Marshall and USC Viterbi School of Engineering, whose inaugural class graduates this year.
In Greece, Drakopoulos helped shape AI strategy and its deployment at a national level as chief data scientist of the country’s COVID-19 task force and an advisor to the prime minister. He co-led, with Hamsa Bastani of Wharton and Vishal Gupta of USC Marshall, the development of Eva, a reinforcement-learning system that guided COVID-19 testing at Greece’s borders — one of the first national scale applications of AI for public health. He later served on the prime minister’s High-Level Advisory Committee for Artificial Intelligence and helped author “A Blueprint for Greece’s AI Transformation,” a national AI strategy guiding the country’s approach to AI innovation, education, regulation, and public-sector transformation.
Drakopoulos also brings valuable industry experience. During his recent sabbatical, he served as executive advisor for AI and Innovation at PwC Greece, where he developed the firm’s AI go-to-market practice, led AI transformations for major clients, and advanced PwC’s internal adoption of AI.
As vice dean, Drakopoulos will focus on strengthening AI fluency, data literacy, analytical and systems thinking across USC Marshall’s curriculum, while also emphasizing human capabilities such as judgment, creativity, communication, collaboration, and leadership that will become more important as AI reshapes the workplace.
A central part of the role will be building a dynamic AI ecosystem around the wide-ranging research and applied work already underway across USC Marshall. Drakopoulos will connect faculty, students, industry, government, and peer institutions to amplify the reach, visibility, and real-world impact of the school’s AI research.
“USC Marshall's strength in AI is its people,” said Drakopoulos. “My focus is to bring that talent together around a common goal, grounded in rigorous research and informed by what we've learned launching the first AI for Business joint degree. USC Marshall graduates are leaders across industries worldwide, and together we will prepare the next generation to lead through the opportunities and challenges AI will bring.”
