Chrysostomos Loizos "Max" Nikias is a Cypriot-American academic, and served as the 11th University of Southern California president, a position he held from August 3, 2010, to August 7, 2018. He holds the Malcolm R. Currie Chair in Technology and the Humanities and is president emeritus of the university. He had been at USC since 1991, as a professor, director of national research centers, dean, provost, and president. He also served as chair of the College Football Playoff (CFP) Board of Managers (2015-2018) as chair of the board of the Keck Medical Center at USC (2009-2018), as member of the board of directors of the Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering (2001-2018), and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Chadwick School, an independent school in Palos Verdes Peninsula, Calif. (2001-2010). He is currently a tenured professor in electrical engineering with a secondary appointment in classics, and the director of the USC Institute for Technology Enabled Higher Education.

The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880 by Robert Maclay Widney, it is the oldest private research university in California. The university is composed of one liberal arts school, the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and 22 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, enrolling roughly 21,000 undergraduate and 28,500 post-graduate students from all fifty U.S. states and more than 115 countries. It is a member of the Association of American Universities, which it joined in 1969.