He attended the 1st Lyceum Venetokleion of Rhodes[10] and in 1968 he enrolled in the National Technical University of Athens, where he obtained his B.S.

In 2011 he helped establish the first Academic Center to host a Quantum Computer (D-Wave)[18] and in 2013 the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship program in Engineering.

In this capacity, he led in 2015 a diversity initiative, highlighted at the White House in August 2015, that today has resulted in a diversity pledge signed by more than 250 engineering schools in the U.S.[23] In 2017, in recognition of this effort, the ASEE honored the Viterbi School under Dean Yortsos with its President's Award.

[24] Yortsos was also awarded the 2014 Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his contributions as a first-generation American to engineering education and research.

As a result of this narrative, USC Viterbi attracts a large number of previously under-represented demographic groups in engineering and since 2019 each entering fall class has been gender-balanced.

[27] In advancing human-centric engineering solutions under Yortsos's Engineering+ principle, USC Viterbi offered a number of classes in addressing global humanitarian challenges.

A specific class offered through the Civil Engineering curriculum, also included the journey of USC students to refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesvos to apply real-world technology solutions to help thousands of refugees from the wars in the Middle East.

[28] A resulting PBS documentary "Lives Not Grades" that documented this effort and journey won a Los Angeles-area Emmy in 2022.

This school will be one of three components of the initiative Frontiers in Computing, enabled by a 2019 grant of $260 million from the Lord Foundation of California, the largest educational gift in USC history.

[34] Since November 2022 Yortsos has served as Editor-in-Chief of PNAS Nexus, founded in 2021, as the only new scientific journal of the National Academies in more than 100 years.