Andrew Viterbi always knew he wanted to be an engineer when he grew up. Born in Bergamo, Italy Viterbi came to the United States when he was just a small boy. Settling in Boston, the young Andrew Viterbi attended renowned public schools there, including the Boston Latin School. Before he was even a teenager, Andrew Viterbi pursued his interest in electrical engineering and he went on to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After graduating from MIT, the young Andrew Viterbi became Dr. Andrew Viterbi at the University of Southern California (USC) where the School of Engineering has been renamed in his honor. Dr. Viterbi earned his Ph.D. in digital communications and went on to teach at both the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
But getting to the part you are most interested in: How did a young boy from Italy grow up to be the inventor of critical cell phone technology and one of America's most admired and successful businessmen and philanthropists?

Short answer: Ingenuity, blood, sweat, tears, good timing, a wonderful wife and investing in the future not only through venture capital projects but through non-profit organizations.

The opportunity:

In the 1960s, the young Andrew Viterbi began his work in the engineering field while at MIT. He was eventually attracted to California and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His timing was fortuitous as Sputnik, the famous Russian satellite, launched just three months after he arrived at JPL. Almost instantly, the U.S. Army gave JPL a big contract to fund what would later become a new satellite industry for the United States. The project was called Explorer I. This was the beginning of the satellite revolution.

The Viterbi Algorithm:

It was not clear at first that an algorithm for efficient transmission of information from large distances would have wide applicability in the industry. It was simply a step in the proof of certain theories. The possibilities, however, materialized once people saw the algorithm as a search for the most likely path through a Markov Chain. A Markov Chain is a random sequence of events, each of which depends only on the previous event. Magnetic and optical recordings, speech recognition and even DNA sequencing could be so represented. This was a revolutionary discovery.

By the end of the 1960s, to further expand upon this discovery, Viterbi and two colleagues created Linkabit. This startup was located on the outskirts of the UCLA campus, in a dental office. In 1980, after working with companies like Wal-Mart and Holiday Inn and developing satellite products for oil exploration companies, Linkabit was sold. In 1985, Viterbi and his colleagues formed Qualcomm, which is now a Fortune 500 corporation that designs and supplies a wide range of communications products and services from low orbiting satellites to mobile phones and email systems.

By the end of the 1980s, a young Qualcomm was benefiting from Viterbi's work with CDMA or Code Division Multiple Access. This was the dawn of digital cellular technology. Today, over 400 million cell phones use this CDMA technology.

Satellite television broadcasting, cell phones and many other realities we take for granted started as research papers on Dr. Viterbi's desk.

Moore's Law ' the doubling of data density every 18 months is a sign that the world will see unprecedented growth in technological capabilities. The big question is: How big a role will we in the United States play?

The future:

Dr. Viterbi contributes to educational causes because he is concerned about the future of science and technology here in the United States. As a youth, Andrew Viterbi recalls Sputnik, the Cold War and competition with the Soviet Union as significant incentives for bright, young people to enter into the fields of math and science. The current state of affairs is a nation where motivating factors are absent, students are not choosing courses or careers in math and science and the brain drain that once was to the benefit of U.S. science has reversed course. Dr. Viterbi, like many other leaders in business, is worried that the United States risks losing its role as a leader in innovation.

One of the reasons Andrew Viterbi and his family have become benefactors to USAY Foundation is to engage young Americans with their leaders in both politics and business. By helping foster and inspire talent and encouraging you, the future leaders of this nation, to positive action Dr. Viterbi hopes he has once again crafted a formula for success.

A personal note from Angelo Turner of USAY Foundation:

I hope this profile in leadership serves to help you understand that there is so much more to being a star than the popular culture ads and shows would have us believe. Discover your passion in college for the career you want and the path you wish to take in your life. Dare to believe in yourself and pursue that which interests you most. And you will excel. And great things will happen for you. Some of our greatest minds and most wonderful citizens are people you will never see on MTV or in a teen magazine. They are quiet visionaries who believed in themselves, focused on their goals, worked hard towards them and now, having achieved them, help others do the same.

The greatest accomplishment in our lives lies in what we do for others. Dr. Andrew Viterbi is helping a whole planet stay in touch with one another, make calls for help that much faster and he is also giving back to you, the youth of America, through this forum.

Three cheers for science and math!

In 2004, young people voted in the highest percentage they had since 1992, and in the third-highest percentage in the nine presidential elections since a constitutional amendment in 1971 lowered the voting age to 18.
In 2005, overall voter turnout declined in the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, except for the student-dense precincts with big voter turnout projects.

Because of numbers like this, political parties and campaigns this year are lavishing attention on a new generation of young voters. They are investing in staff, studying ways to use new technology and promoting legislation geared toward young people's interests. And while young people currently favor Democrats, analysts say they are not yet anchored long-term to any political party.

It is a shift from years past, when young people tended to be the first group cut from target lists of potential voters. In some ways, that made sense: Despite organizations pouring millions of dollars each cycle into registering these voters -- often using techniques such as melding politics and rock concerts -- the number of young people voting went steadily down.

But in the 2004 presidential election, when the overall electorate showed a four-percentage-point increase in turnout from 2000, the turnout rate among people ages 18 to 24 increased by 11 points -- to 47 percent from 36 percent.

The spike was attributed, in part, to intense voter turnout efforts and a highly polarized election. But people who study this generation -- known as Generation Y, millennials and even DotNets -- say it is also disposed to be more politically active and passionate.

"The millennials are quite idealistic and concerned about a whole range of issues, compared to the Xers, which tend to be pessimistic and detached," said Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Maryland, and a member of Generation X.

Heather Smith, 30, a veteran of youth mobilization efforts, has seen this budding interest in young voters. In 2004, she helped run a $9 million project to register and turn out young voters that contributed to the voting spike that year. The project's successor, Young Voter Strategies, at George Washington University, tries to convince political parties and candidates that young people are a crucial constituency and then teaches the groups how to reach them.

While research shows that young people use cellphones, the Internet and e-mail every day, it also shows that peer-to-peer efforts in the offline world and reminders to vote on Election Day are most effective.

Since January, Smith's group -- working with Democratic and Republican pollsters and consultants -- has met with nearly 100 campaign managers, consultants and staffers from different campaigns nationwide.

The group has also briefed national party officials and congressional staffers in Washington, and Smith and colleagues say they have received queries from advisers to two top potential 2008 candidates, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

"Campaigns and the political establishment are learning from what we're doing. Young voters could make a difference in a close election and could build a party for the future," Smith said. "There's certainly some effort to figure out how to reach out to them."

Recently, the group has been showcasing the results of a poll on young voters done with prominent pollsters Ed Goeas, a Republican, and Celinda Lake, a Democrat. The poll found that young people believe Democrats are better equipped to handle their top concerns -- gas prices, education and the economy -- by a wide margin.

The Democratic advantage extends from 2004, when young people were the only age group Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) won in his presidential bid. The question for Democrats now is whether the youth advantage can turn into the margin of victory in close races that will decide control of Congress this November.

Ivan Frishberg, a Democratic consultant who works with Young Voter Strategies, said that Democrats this year "anticipate something's coming and they are starting to plan for it."

In that light, Democrats last month announced that college affordability would be a top issue on their agenda if they regain control of the House -- a move applauded by nonpartisan youth voter groups. "They're very important," said Rep. George Miller (Calif.), House Democrats' point man on college affordability. "We're trying to address issues of their concern."

Lake said she has told Democrats they have "a major opportunity" to nurture the future of the party. "The long-term studies show that if you capture a cohort in their youth three times in a row, then you hold their party identification for the rest of their life," she said.

At the Democratic National Committee, youth outreach has become a part of Chairman Howard Dean's 50-state strategy of investing in the party for 2006 and beyond. "With the new changes in the DNC, a lot of people woke up to the fact that we were the only age demographic that Kerry won," said Grant Woodard, 22, the president of the College Democrats of America, which is structurally a part of the DNC. In April, 45 young Democratic leaders convened at the DNC's convention in New Orleans to share tips on party building.

Republicans, meanwhile, seek to maximize the advantage they have in one subgroup: young people who already affiliate as Republicans. In an analysis, Goeas noted that "young Republican voters enjoy a seven-point intensity advantage over young Democratic voters," meaning they are more likely to participate and vote.

"Demographics are one thing, but nobody has a voter mobilization machine like we do on college campuses," said Paul Gourley, 24, chairman of the College Republicans National Committee.

The Republican National Committee is trying to get into youth communities at the beginning of the cycle. "This isn't about the last two weeks before an election," said David Rexrode, RNC national director of coalitions.

"We're using technology to allow youth to talk to other youth," he said, noting the creation of MyGOP, a social networking Web site for conservatives. "The way we influence voters and the way we influence our communities is to have people in the communities talking about our message."

Hugh Weber, a Republican consultant who works with Young Voter Strategies, said Republicans know that young voters lean Democratic, but "to square off 25 percent of the voting electorate is to ensure failure and defeat, and I think that's starting to resonate with the party."

The classic problem with mass voter registration drives, for all their fanfare, is that they simply don't produce voters when Election Day rolls around. People are registered but they don't exercise their right to vote. If someone is apathetic or cynical, we believe it is because they are misinformed. Our great nation is full of examples of one woman or one man making a huge difference for our society. Educating young people about the lasting value of civic activism is our goal.

Registering voters is a part of that goal, and we applaud every organization registering new voters. But it cannot stop there. We must have an ongoing dialogue with young Americans to keep them interested and motivated. Please consider helping us do just that. It will take the support of numerous companies, foundations and private citizens to reach the goal of our tour, which ends one day before Election Day 2008.