All Faculty
USC Dornsife College
Biological Sciences – Human and Evolutionary Biology
Jill McNitt-Gray
Lloyd Armstrong, Jr. Chair in Science and Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Email: mcnitt@usc.eduDr. McNitt-Gray is the Director of the USC Biomechanics Research Laboratory and is a Fellow of the American Society of Biomechanics (ASB), International Society of Biomechanics (ISB), and the National Academy of Kinesiology. Dr. McNitt-Gray’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the neuromuscular control and dynamics of movement. She uses both experimental and dynamic modeling approaches to test research hypotheses specific to control priorities during well-practiced, goal-directed tasks.
Lorraine Turcotte
Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: turcotte@usc.eduProfessor of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, 2013 –
Chair, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2017-2020)
Lorraine Turcotte received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and was awarded post-doctoral fellowships to pursue her research at the August Krogh Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since coming to USC, her research has focused on unraveling the mechanisms that regulate metabolism and that optimize human performance. She has received the Southwest American College of Sports Medicine Recognition Award as well as the Hanna Reisler Mentoring Award, the Inaugural WiSE Architect of Enduring Change Award and Melon Mentoring Awards for mentoring undergraduate and graduate students from USC.
Biological Sciences – Marine and Environmental Biology
Naomi M. Levine
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and Professor of Biological Sciences, Quantitative and Computational Biology and Earth Sciences
Email: n.levine@usc.eduDr. Levine received her BA in Geosciences from Princeton University and her PhD in Chemical Oceanography from the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. Her research focuses on understanding the interactions between climate and marine microbial ecosystem composition and function. The Levine Lab is developing innovative, interdisciplinary numerical models that allow them to understand how dynamics occurring at the scale of individual microbes impact large-scale ecosystem processes such as rates of global carbon cycling.
Julia Schwartzman
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: julias21@usc.eduJulia Schwartzman is an Assistant Professor in the Marine and Environmental Biology Section of BISC. Julia received her PhD in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison studying how marine bacteria persist as animal symbionts. She subsequently trained as a Ruth Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School where she investigated the evolutionary diversification of animal-associated bacteria, and as a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT where her work focused on the ecological consequences of collective behaviors in marine bacteria that decompose organic matter. At USC, Julia’s lab studies the how cellular-scale behaviors shape the ecological dynamics of marine environments.
Noelle Held
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: nheld@usc.eduNoelle Held is a microbial biogeochemist and oceanographer. Through proteomics and quantitative microscopy, Held studies the inner workings of microbial cells, and how this scales up to ecological function and global scale processes. Held received her Ph.D. in Chemical Oceanography and Microbial Biogeochemistry from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and was a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences. She is also a registered yoga teacher.
Carly Kenkel
Wilford and Daris Zinsmeyer Early Career Chair in Marine Studies and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: ckenkel@usc.eduThe Cnidarian Evolutionary Ecology Lab studies how organism-environment interactions induce or select for different phenotypes and how these ecological interactions influence and are influenced by the evolutionary trajectories of populations and species. We use a variety of methods to address these questions, ranging from field experiments to ecophysiology to genomic analyses. We also have a strong interest in “translational ecology” and prioritize questions with conservation and restoration applications.
Suzanne Edmands
Professor of Marine and Environmental Biology and Biological Sciences
Email: sedmands@usc.eduThe Edmands Lab is broadly interested in conservation, population and evolutionary genetics. Much of our work uses the crustacean Tigriopus californicus (“the Drosophila of the Sea”) as a model for understanding the genetic basis of fundamental biological processes including reproductive isolation, environmental stress tolerance and aging. Our lab also studies temporal and spatial genetic variation in organisms of concern for conservation and management, including current work on genetics and evolution of the island fox.
Feixue Fu
Associate Professor (Research) of Biological Sciences
Email: ffu@usc.edu
Karla Heidelberg
Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences and Environmental Studies
Email: kheidelb@usc.eduBiological Sciences – Molecular and Computational Biology
Judith Kribelbauer
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: kribelba@usc.eduJudith received her PhD from Columbia University in 2018 where she developed tools to quantify the binding preferences of transcription factor (TF) complexes to both native and epigenetically modified DNA. She worked as an HHMI student fellow under the supervision of Harmen Bussemaker and Richard Mann. After graduation, she worked as an EMBO and Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in Bart Deplancke’s lab at EPFL (Switzerland). Her research focused on developing new strategies to identify the mechanisms by which transcription factors mediate gene expression in native contexts, including TF cooperativity and the establishment of communication between TF-bound enhancers and promoters.
Irene Chiolo
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: chiolo@usc.eduWe study how DNA is repaired in heterochromatin, which contains extensive repeated sequences prone to trigger aberrant recombination, chromosome rearrangements, and genome instability. We discovered that heterochromatin repair requires surprising nuclear dynamics, including a dramatic relaxation/expansion of the entire heterochromatin domain and relocalization of repair centers to the nuclear periphery. Our goal is to identify the mechanisms responsible for these dynamics and to understand how their disfunction contributes to human diseases, including cancer and several aging-related disorders.
Susan Forsburg
Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: forsburg@usc.eduGabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2016-2019)
Susan Forsburg did her AB at UC Berkeley, her PhD at MIT, and her postdoc at ICRF/Oxford. She started her lab at the Salk Institute in 1993, and moved to USC in 2004. Her research uses a yeast model system to investigate genome instability following DNA replication stress. Forsburg is an expert in the genetics of the fission yeast S. pombe, a model organism particularly useful for fundamental studies in chromosome biology, genome stability, and the cell cycle. Her work examines mechanisms that maintain genome stability during DNA replication, using molecular and cell biology and genetics approaches. A feature of her work is the use of extensive live-cell imaging. In addition to her research in this field, she built and maintains the primary S. pombe web site, pombe.net. Forsburg has over 30 years experience as a PI, leading a team of postdocs, PhD students, technicians, and undergraduates. She has a strong record of continuous independent funding from NIH, NSF, the American Cancer Society, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and over 100 publications in the literature. Complementing her research, Forsburg is a highly rated lecturer and recipient of the USC Associates Award for Teaching (the university's highest teaching honor). She served as head of the USC graduate program in Molecular Biology and now directs a progressive MS degree. She was also program director of an NIH T32 Training Grant in Chemical Biology.
In external service, Forsburg is a senior editor of the journal G3: Genes, Genomes, and Genetics. She is active in several professional societies. She has served as a regular panelist for NIH, The American Cancer Society, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society grant review panels, and on council for the ACS. Forsburg is a tireless advocate for women in science and has received numerous awards for her service and mentorship, including the Nature Publishing Mentoring Award in 2016. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Women in Science, the California Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology.
Carolyn Phillips
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: cphil@usc.eduCarolyn was a PhD student with Abby Dernburg at UC Berkeley and a post-doctoral fellow with Gary Ruvkun at Harvard Medical School and Mass. General Hospital. She started her position at USC in January 2015, where the Phillips lab studies the role of small RNAs in the regulation of gene expression. Specifically, the Phillips lab is interested in how small RNA pathways are organized spatially, how they are regulated, and how they derive their specificity - all key factors in ensuring that essential genes are expressed and detrimental genes are silenced. Ultimately, these pathways are essential to promote organismal viability and fertility.
Le Trinh
Associate Professor (Research) of Biological Sciences
Email: letrinh@usc.eduLe A. Trinh received her PhD from the University of California, San Francisco and performed postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology. Her research at the University of Southern California focuses on defining interactions between gene regulatory networks and the cellular dynamics that drive morphogenetic processes in embryonic development, health, and disease. Her work combines genetic engineering, genome-scale approaches with emerging imaging techniques to understand the gene regulatory mechanisms underlying developmental patterning and organogenesis in vertebrates.
Nancy Castro
Associate Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences
Email: ncastro@usc.edu
Raffaella Ghittoni
Associate Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences
Email: rghitton@usc.eduI am an Associate Professor of Teaching at the Department of Biological Sciences, Molecular and Computational Biology section, with a courtesy appointment at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at USC Keck Medical School. Born in Rome, Italy, I received my PhD in Clinical and Experimental Allergology and Immunology from the University of Siena in 2005. Before joining the University of Southern California in 2014 as teaching professor, I conducted research in the field of immunology at the University of Arizona, Tucson and different national (INSERM) and international (WHO- IARC) institutes in Lyon, France. At USC over every academic year, I teach courses and educational laboratories on areas such as immunology, cancer, health promotion and aging biology. I actively collaborate with the Davis School of Gerontology as co-instructor of undergraduate and master courses and with the undergraduate students Biology Club as Faculty advisor. I am an active member of the USC Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Program. For WiSE I am in charge as Faculty Coordinator of the Undergraduate Students Research Program, and I am also member of the Advisory Board.
Biological Sciences – Neurobiology
Lauren McElvain
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Neurobiology
Email: mcelvain@usc.eduLauren McElvain received a Sc.B. in Neuroscience from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Neurosciences from the University of California, San Diego and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. McElvain completed postdoctoral training as an international collaboration between the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego and the Neurosciences Programme at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. Her research group investigates the neural circuits that control movement using multidisciplinary cellular and systems neuroscience approaches, including molecular biology, electrophysiology, behavior, and computational modeling. Her current research focuses on the organization and function of the basal ganglia and the circuit basis of common movement disorders, including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.
Sarah Bottjer
Professor of Biological Sciences and Psychology
Email: bottjer@usc.eduProfessor Sarah Bottjer is a professor in the Biological Sciences department as well as the Psychology department. Her research focuses on vocal learning in songbirds as a model system for understanding the basic mechanisms of neural development, learning and memory.
Emily Liman
Harold Dornsife Chair in Neurosciences and Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: liman@usc.eduEmily Liman is a cellular physiologist working at the interface of ion channel biophysics and sensory biology. Liman earned a BA in Biology from Princeton University and a PhD in Neuroscience from Harvard Medical School. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School with Linda Buck and David Corey before joining the faculty at the University of Southern California where she is currently the Harold Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience. Liman is known for her work on sensory TRP channels and more recently for the discovery of the OTOP proton channels, one of which functions as a sour receptor. Among her honors, Liman is the 2023 recipient of the Cole award from the Biophysical Society. Liman has been active in a number of scientific organizations, including service as the 2024 program chair for the annual meeting for the Association for Chemoreceptive Sciences.
Judith Hirsch
Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: jhirsch@usc.eduNeurobiology Section Head, University of Southern California
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2017-2020)
Judith Hirsch received her PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a Professor of Biological Science here at USC and is currently section head of Neurobiology. She has been awarded a Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering.
Quantitative and Computational Biology
Jazlyn Mooney
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: jazlynmo@usc.eduJazlyn is a Gabilan Assistant Professor in the Quantitative and Computational Biology (QCB) Department within the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at USC. Her research combines computational approaches with population genetics theory to better understand genetic variation, medical genetics, and human evolution. Jazlyn completed her undergraduate degree at the University of New Mexico where she studied human evolution with Jeffrey Long in the department of Anthropology. She completed her PhD in Human Genetics at UCLA in 2020 under the advisement of Kirk Lohmueller. At UCLA, Jazlyn studied genetic variation in admixed populations, complex traits in dogs, and conservation genomics. Afterward, she moved to Stanford’s Biology department for postdoctoral research with Noah Rosenberg; where she continued to study admixed populations with a focus on inference method development.
Liang Chen
Professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: liang.chen@usc.eduMy long-term research goal is to develop statistical and computational methods to discover the underlying principles of gene expression regulation in eukaryotes, and to explore how variations or defects in gene regulation cause phenotypic variation or diseases. How a cell controls its gene expression is one of the most fundamental and interesting questions in various biological processes, from intrinsic developmental programs to responses to extrinsic stimuli. Meanwhile, a large majority of genetic variants reported in the genome-wide association studies of common human diseases lies in introns or intergenic regions, suggesting their roles in gene expression regulation instead of protein coding. Thus, it is not surprising that gene expression is tightly regulated and coordinated at multiple levels. At the transcriptional level, the interactions between transcription factors and DNA binding motifs play pivotal roles in transcription initiation. So do epigenetic effects, including histone modifications and DNA modifications. At the post-transcriptional level, mRNA processing, mRNA nucleus-cytosol transport, mRNA degradation, and translational control all increase the complexity of gene expression regulation. For example, alternative splicing generates multiple transcript isoforms from the same gene locus through different combinations of splice sites. RNA editing can change the genetic information encoded in mRNA by altering the nucleotide composition. The nucleus-cytosol transport determines the fraction of mRNA that can be translated to protein products. Accurate quantification and comparison of transcriptomes are needed for each of these steps. My current research focuses on transcriptome analysis (e.g., RNA-seq data analysis) and post-transcriptional regulation analysis (e.g., alternative splicing analysis). In addition, I am interested in genome-wide association studies to identify genetic variants underlying diseases or other quantiative traits.
Chemistry
Kate White
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Email: katewhit@usc.eduKate White is a cell biologist, structural biologist, and pharmacologist interested in developing experimental methods for 3-dimensional visualization of single cells to characterize the cellular ultrastructure to mesoscale organization. She is also interested in helping to develop integrative whole-cell modeling infrastructure to harmonize structural and mathematical representations of the cell across the scales of biology. Dr. White is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Chemistry. She received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 2014 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under the mentorship of Dr. Bryan Roth. After continuing her postdoctoral training in protein structural biology at the University of Southern California with Professor Raymond Stevens, she then took on the role of Associate Director of the Bridge Institute at USC. Now, Dr. White is the Director of the Pancreatic Beta Cell Consortium (PBCC), an interdisciplinary and collaborative team of scientists with the common goal of understanding beta-cell biology and its role in diabetes.
Hanna Reisler
University Professor, Lloyd Armstrong, Jr. Chair in Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry
Email: reisler@usc.eduHanna Reisler has been Professor of Chemistry at USC since 1987. Her research interests are in the area of chemical reaction dynamics. Specifically, she studies the photophysics, photochemistry and reaction mechanisms of molecules important in the atmosphere, combustion, and biology using sophisticated laser and imaging techniques often in collaboration with theory. Her recent work has focused also on the understanding bond breaking processes in networks of water and ice and the photochemical production of transient species relevant to atmospheric processes. She was appointed as University Professor at USC and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. In 2002 she was appointed the inaugural holder of the Lloyd Armstrong Jr. Endowed Chair in Science and Engineering in recognition of her leadership role in advancing the careers of women in science and engineering.
Anna Krylov
USC Associates Chair in Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry
Email: krylov@usc.eduAnna Krylov is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California. Born and raised in Donetsk, Ukraine (then USSR), Krylov received her M.Sc. from Moscow State University (1990) and her Ph.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1996, with Benny Gerber). Following postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley with Martin Head-Gordon, she joined USC's chemistry department in 1998. Krylov's research is focused on theoretical and computational quantum chemistry. She develops theoretical methods and software for open-shell and electronically excited species, including metastable states. Using computational chemistry, Krylov investigates the role of radicals and electronically excited species in combustion, solar energy, bioimaging, spectroscopy, and quantum information science. Krylov is active in the promotion of gender equality in STEM fields. She created and maintains the web directory Women in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Material Science, and Biochemistry. Krylov is also an outspoken advocate of freedom of speech and academic freedom. She is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance and a member of its academic leadership committee. Her paper "The Peril of Politicizing Science," which launched a national conversation among scientists and the general public on the growing influence of political ideology over STEM, has received over 100,000 views. Krylov’s writings have been translated into French, Polish, and Estonian.
Smaranda Marinescu
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Email: smarines@usc.eduSmaranda Marinescu grew up in Romania and moved to the US for college. She graduated from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2006. During her undergraduate studies, she did research in organometallic chemistry with Prof. John E. Bercaw on the synthesis and reactivity of group 3 dialkyl complexes supported by tetradentate, monoanionic ligands. After graduation, Smaranda continued one more year at Caltech, doing research in the group of Prof. Brian M. Stoltz, where she developed a homogeneous Pd-catalyzed enantioselective decarboxylative protonation. In 2007, she started her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the tutelage of Prof. Richard R. Schrock, exploring molybdenum and tungsten alkylidene species for enantio-, Z-, and E-selective olefins metathesis reactions. After graduation in 2011, she undertook a postdoctoral position in the laboratories of Prof. Harry B. Gray at Caltech, as an NSF CCI postdoctoral fellow. Her research focused on mechanistic studies of the cobalt catalyzed hydrogen evolution, which shed new light on the previously speculative mechanisms of proton reduction. In August 2013, she started her independent career as an assistant professor in chemistry at the University of Southern California. She was promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry in March 2020.
Rebecca Broyer
Professor (Teaching) of Chemistry
Email: rbroyer@usc.edu
Earth Sciences
Caroline Seyler
Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences
Email: seyler@usc.eduCaroline Seyler received her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from McGill University in 2021 and has since been a postdoc at the University of Texas and an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. She is interested in the deformation of rocks at tectonic plate boundaries from fast earthquakes to slow creep. Seyler's work focuses on the rheology of faults and shear zones using a combination of field, experimental and microanalytical methods to determine how deformation mechanisms operating at the atomic scale control plate tectonics and influence seismic hazard.
Heidi Houston
Professor of Earth Sciences
Email: heidi.houston@gmail.comProfessor Heidi Houston has been a Professor at USC since 2018. Prior to that, she was a Professor at the University of Washington. She has also worked at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. Houston’s research focuses on earthquake physics and fault mechanics. She has specific interests in major plate boundaries, particularly subduction zones, deep earthquakes, and slow slip and tremor.
Karen Lloyd
Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences
Email: lloydk@usc.eduKaren G. Lloyd is a microbial biogeochemist, focused on discovering and describing life inside Earth’s crust. She joined the Earth Sciences faculty in July 2024 as the Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences. She has a joint appointment as Professor of Marine and Environmental Biology. Lloyd comes to us after twelve years at the University of Tennessee, where she was Professor of Microbiology, preceded by a post-doc with Bo Barker Jørgensen at the Center for Geomicrobiology at Aarhus University in Denmark and a PhD with Andreas Teske in Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina. Lloyd and her lab determine the carbon and energy sources for the vast uncharacterized majority of subsurface microorganisms in hydrothermal vents/springs, cold methane seeps, deep oceanic sediments, coastal estuaries and bays, and subduction zones. Her research combines bioinformatics (e.g., phylogenetics, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, and metabolomics) with geochemical measurements to recreate the lives of deep subsurface microbial communities and determine the effects they are having on Earth’s biogeochemical cycles.
Sarah Feakins
Professor of Earth Sciences
Email: feakins@usc.eduProfessor Sarah Feakins studies past climate using techniques of organic geochemistry, extracting molecular fossils from soils, lakes, and ocean sediments. The molecular fossils provide clues to past vegetation and climate. Research projects are currently underway in the western US, South America, and Africa, including warm times of the past with lessons for environments of human origins and our future climate.
Mathematics
Susan Montgomery
Professor of Mathematics
Email: smontgom@math.usc.eduGabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2017-2020)
Director of Graduate Studies, University of Southern California
Professor studies non-commutative algebras: Hopf algebras and their actions on rings, including automorphism groups of algebras, and quantum groups. She is also awarded with prestigious Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering.
Sami Assaf
Gabilan Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering and Professor of Mathematics
Email: shassaf@usc.eduDean’s Leadership Fellow for Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Director of Graduate Studies, University of Southern California
Professor Sami Assaf is a full Professor of Mathematics and a Gabilan Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering. Her research in combinatorics, geometry, and probability is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation. Professor Assaf is recipient of a USC Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Undergraduates, directs a local Math Circle for elementary school students, and currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Mathematics where she works to foster a culture of inclusivity, diversity, and excellence for all students.
Susan Friedlander
Professor of Mathematics
Email: susanfri@usc.eduSusan Friedlander is an American mathematician. Her research concerns mathematical fluid dynamics, the Euler equations and the Navier-Stokes equations. Friedlander graduated from University College, London with a BS in Mathematics in 1967. She was awarded a Kennedy Scholarship to study at MIT, where she earned an MS in 1970. She completed her doctorate in 1972 from Princeton University under the supervision of Louis Norberg Howard. From 1972–1974, Friedlander was a Visiting Member at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, followed by a year as an instructor at Princeton University. In 1975, she joined the faculty in the Mathematics department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2007, she moved to the University of Southern California where she is Professor of Mathematics and the Director of the Center for Applied Mathematical Sciences.
Greta Panova
Gabilan Distinguished Professor in Science and Engineering and Professor of Mathematics
Email: gpanova@usc.eduGreta Panova obtained her PhD in Mathematics in 2011 from Harvard University. Since then she has been on the faculty of UCLA and University of Pennsylvania before joining USC in 2018. Her research is in mathematics (Algebraic Combinatorics with connections to Integrable Probability and Representation Theory) with interactions with Theoretical Computer Science; and, separately, modeling in molecular biology. She is the recipient of the 2020 IMI Award of the Bulgarian Academy of Science, invited speaker at the Current Developments in Mathematics 2023 conference and an editor for the Electronic Journal of Combinatorics and the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical competition.
Cymra Haskell
Professor (Teaching) of Mathematics
Email: chaskell@math.usc.edu
Physics and Astronomy
Kelly Luo
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: yunqiuke@usc.eduKelly is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California. She was previously a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow and Honorary Kavli Fellow at Cornell University studying spin torque dynamics in van der Waals magnets. She received her Ph.D. in physics at the Ohio State University studying information transduction between spintronic, photonic, and magnetic states in two-dimensional hybrid systems. She obtained undergraduate degree in physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Vera Gluscevic
Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: gluscevi@usc.eduVera received her B.Sc. from University of Belgrade (Serbia) in 2007, and her Ph.D. from Caltech in 2013. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, she moved to Princeton University as a Visiting Research Associate in Physics in 2018. In 2019, she joined USC as Gabilan Assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy. Vera is one of the founding members of two large international collaborations, CMB-S4 and the Simons Observatory, where she served on the Executive Committee and as a lead of Likelihood and Theory working groups, respectively, in both instances helping scinence definition of these programs and leading their dark matter science groups. In 2022, Vera received USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Award and in 2023, she was named a Cottrell Scholar by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Her research is supported by NSF and NASA through astroparticle/cosmology and astrophysics theory programs.
Rosa Di Felice
Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: difelice@usc.eduI got my B.S. (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) degrees from the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". After a postdoc at Xerox PARC, I started my career as a researcher in the Italian National Research Council in 1998. I joined USC in 2013 as a research faculty and switched to a tenure track in 2018, was tenured in 2020 and promoted to full Professor in 2022. My research focuses on computational studies of the physicochemical properties of materials and molecules, with impact in nanotechnologies and health sciences.
Elena Pierpaoli
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: pierpaol@usc.eduI am a cosmologist interested in understanding the composition and evolution of the Universe. My work focuses on the interpretation of survey data in various wavelengths in order to understand the properties of dark matter and dark energy, as well as the early Universe physical processes that set the seeds for what we observe around us. I primarily work on the cosmic microwave background - the relic radiation produced after the Big Bang - and galaxy clusters - the largest gravitationally bound objects in our Universe.
Grace Lu
Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: jialu@usc.eduProfessor Lu received dual B.S. degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering in 1992 at Washington University in St. Louis. After studying in Professor Michael Tinkham's research group at Harvard University on superconducting single-electron transistors, she received her Ph.D in 1997. She subsequently conducted her postdoctoral research on the electron transport of individual carbon nanotubes at UC Berkeley under the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Geraldine Peters
Professor (Research) of Physics and Astronomy
Email: gpeters@usc.eduUSC Viterbi School of Engineering
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Neda Maghsoodi
Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: maghsoodi@usc.eduNeda received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Before joining USC, Neda did her postdoctoral research at Harvard University and then CalTech. Neda’s research lies at the interface of solid mechanics, materials science, and biology. Her research group uses a combination of theory, experiment, and computation to study mechanics of soft structures and materials in biology and engineering.
Alejandra Uranga
Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: auranga@usc.eduAlejandra Uranga is an Assistant Professor at the USC Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. Before joining USC in 2016, she was a Postdoctoral Associate (1 year) and then a Research Engineer (4 years) in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at MIT. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Florida Tech, a Master of Applied Sciences in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, and a PhD degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. Dr. Uranga's research interests are in aerodynamics, novel aircraft design, and integrated propulsion systems, for which she favors a combined computational and experimental approach. Her work aims to help achieve environmentally sustainable aviation.
Eva Kanso
Zohrab A. Kaprielian Fellow in Engineering and Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: kanso@usc.eduEva Kanso is a professor and the Z.H. Kaprielian Fellow in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California. While at USC, Kanso joined the Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) as an IPA rotator in Fall 2021. Prior to joining USC in 2005, Kanso held a two-year postdoctoral position in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech. She received a Ph.D. degree in 2003 and an M.S. degree in 1999 in Mechanical Engineering, as well as an M.A. degree in 2002 in Mathematics, all from the University of California at Berkeley. She obtained her Bachelor of Engineering degree from the American University of Beirut with distinction. Kanso held visiting positions at Princeton University in 2004, the Laboratoire LadHyX at the Ecole Polytechnique in 2015, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 2016-2017, the Simons Foundation in 2016-2017, and the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in 2021. Her research interests concern fundamental problems in the biophysics of cellular and subcellular processes and the physics of animal behavior, both at the individual and collection levels. A central theme in her work is the role of the mechanical environment, specifically the fluid medium and fluid-structure interactions, in shaping and driving biological functions.
Biomedical Engineering
Eun Ji Chung
The Dr. Karl Jacob Jr. and Karl Jacob III Early-Career Chair and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: eunchung@usc.eduEun Ji Chung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California and the Dr. Karl Jacob Jr. and Karl Jacob III Early Career Chair. She has a courtesy appointment in Chemical Engineering, Medicine (Nephrology and Hypertension), and Surgery (Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Repair), and is an affiliated faculty at the Norris Cancer Center and the Stem Cells department. Her laboratory is interested in harnessing molecular design and self-assembly to develop nano- to macroscale biomaterials that can be utilized in medicine. Dr. Chung received her B.A. with honors in Molecular Biology from Scripps College, her Ph.D. from the Department of Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University, and her postdoctoral training from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.
Maral Mousavi
Edna Chow and Daniel Maneval Early Career Chair and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: mousavi.maral@usc.eduMaral Mousavi joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC in 2019 as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Mousavi’s research experiences and interests span from point-of-care diagnostics, to electrochemical sensors, wearable devices, neural probes, and tools for precision medicine. She received her B.S. from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. She completed her PhD studies in 2016 at the University of Minnesota, under the advisement of Professor Philippe Buhlmann, who is one of the world leaders in supramolecular electrochemical ion sensing. In her doctorate studies, she worked on electrochemical devices for sensing and energy storage, and use of fluorous compounds as novel materials for improving selectivity of potentiometric sensors. From 2016-2019, Maral was a postdoctoral fellow in the research group of Professor George Whitesides at Harvard University, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, working on affordable diagnostic devices to make healthcare and analysis accessible to all. Professor Mousavi is the recipient of NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, Powell Research Award, Zumberge Diversity and Inclusion Research Award, the Grand Prize for the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Research Competition, the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Graham N. Gleysteen Fellowship for Academic Excellence, and two Graduate Student Research Awards from Eastern Analytical Symposium, and Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry.
Ellis Meng
Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Chair in Convergent Bioscience and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: ellis.meng@usc.eduVice Dean for Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2016-2019)
Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering (2015-2018)
Ellis Meng directs the Biomedical Microsystems Laboratory which focuses on developing novel micro- and nanotechnologies for biomedical applications. In particular, we are interested in the integration of multiple modalities (e.g. electrical, mechanical, and chemical) in miniaturized devices measuring no more than a few millimeters for use in fundamental scientific research, biomedical diagnostics, monitoring, and therapy.
Cristina Zavaleta
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: czavalet@usc.eduDr. Zavaleta was born and raised in a small border town in South Texas, near Mexico. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Medicine at the University of Incarnate Word, a small private university in San Antonio. After graduating, she started in the Medical Physics graduate program at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio where she focused on utilizing radioactive nanoparticles for the treatment of ovarian cancer. After receiving her Ph.D., she began a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University under the guidance of Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, where she helped pioneer a new molecular imaging strategy that utilizes Raman nanoparticles for cancer detection. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California in the department of Biomedical Engineering. Her lab focuses on providing physicians with new nano-based molecular imaging tools to improve cancer detection and treatment.
Stacey Finley
Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professor and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: sfinley@usc.eduDr. Stacey Finley is holder of the Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professorship and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Dr. Finley received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida A & M University and obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. She completed postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Finley joined the faculty at USC in 2013, and she leads the Computational Systems Biology Laboratory.
Jill McNitt-Gray
Lloyd Armstrong, Jr. Chair in Science and Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Email: mcnitt@usc.eduDr. McNitt-Gray is the Director of the USC Biomechanics Research Laboratory and is a Fellow of the American Society of Biomechanics (ASB), International Society of Biomechanics (ISB), and the National Academy of Kinesiology. Dr. McNitt-Gray’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the neuromuscular control and dynamics of movement. She uses both experimental and dynamic modeling approaches to test research hypotheses specific to control priorities during well-practiced, goal-directed tasks.
Brittany Kay
Lecturer of Biomedical Engineering
Email: bkay@usc.eduBrittany Kay graduated from USC's undergraduate Biomedical Engineering (BME) program summa cum laude in 2006, and received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in BME from USC in 2012. For her Ph.D., Brittany specialized in pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling, which is the process of mathematically modeling how drugs are distributed through (and eliminated from) the body and how they affect the body or disease state. In 2013, she joined the USC BME faculty as a part-time lecturer, becoming a full-time lecturer in January 2014. Brittany teaches 6 classes a year at USC on varying BME-related topics with students ranging from freshman to Ph.D. candidates.
Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Katherine Shing
Associate Professor Emeritus
Email:
Corinne Packard
Professor Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Email: cpackard@usc.eduDr. Corinne Packard is a Professor at the University of Southern California in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science. From 2010-2024, Packard progressed through the professorial ranks in the George Ansel Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines while simultaneously jointly appointed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Prior to appointment at Mines, Packard earned B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science & Engineering at MIT, focusing on nanoscale deformation of materials, and followed that with post-doctoral study combining optoelectronics and mechanics in an electrical engineering laboratory, also at MIT. Packard’s research addresses issues of materials sustainability in solar energy, electronics, and aerospace, using fundamental and applied mechanics of brittle materials to improve materials utilization and enhance performance in extreme environments. Notable awards include the AIME Robert Lansing Hardy Award, a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, and the Colorado School of Mines Faculty Excellence Award. She has an impactful research portfolio with more than 60 archival publications and 4 issued patents; leads outreach with women and disabled children; and is a devoted teacher, developing diverse and highly trained professionals for STEM careers and leadership in industry and academia.
Shaama Sharada
Chester Dolley Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Chemistry
Email: ssharada@usc.eduProf. Shaama Mallikarjun Sharada is an Associate Professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California. Her research interests span the development and application of quantum chemistry methods to design catalysts for sustainable chemistry. Her group is developing efficient algorithms, inspired from signal processing, for advancing sophisticated rate theories in catalysis. The group is also establishing frameworks for catalyst design and discovery towards efficient natural gas conversion and light-driven carbon dioxide utilization.
Andrea Armani
Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Email: armani@usc.eduProf. Armani received her B.A. in the Physics from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech. She has received numerous awards, including the ONR Young Investigator and the PECASE, and she was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She is currently the Director of the Northrop Grumman Institute for Optical Nanomaterials and Nanophotonics. The over-arching mission of her research is to develop novel nonlinear materials and integrated optical devices that can be used in portable disease diagnostics and telecommunications. These efforts include a wide range of topics including materials synthesis, integrated optics and instrument development, and computational modeling. In the materials synthesis area, we use a range of deposition and growth methods, including polymerization reactions (grafting to/from) and VLS growth, to create new optically active and responsive materials. Leveraging these materials, new integrated photonics devices, such as waveguides and lasers, are invented. These devices are used in both fundamental science and biodetection applications. A core focus is on developing low-cost, portable instruments for both diagnostics and prognostics for a wide range of diseases. As a complementary effort to our experimental work, we perform a significant amount of FEM and FDTD modeling.
Andrea Hodge
Fluor Professor in Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: ahodge@usc.eduAndrea Hodge holds the Arthur B. Freeman Professorship of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. She received her Ph.D. degree in Materials Science from Northwestern University. Prof. Hodge served as the Vice Provost for undergraduate programs at USC from July 2016 to June 2020 and is currently the Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. Her research focus is on the synthesis of engineered metallic microstructures with nanoscale precision, which allows for tailored properties and/or functionality. Dr. Hodge is the recipient several prestigious research awards including: NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award and DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA).
Malancha Gupta
Lloyd Armstrong Jr. Chair in Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Chemistry
Email: malanchg@usc.eduDistinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2020-2023)
Malancha Gupta is a professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California. She received her BS in chemical engineering from the Cooper Union in 2002. She received her PhD in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 under the guidance of Professor Karen Gleason. From 2007-2009, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University working under the guidance of Professor George Whitesides. She has received several awards including the ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award in 2012, the NSF CAREER Award in 2013, and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Junior Faculty Research Award in 2014.
Lessa Grunenfelder
Associate Professor of Practice in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Email: grunenfe@usc.eduSonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz
Pasquale and Adelina Early Career Chair and Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email:Kandis Leslie Gilliard-AbdulAziz will join the USC Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as a Gabilan Assistant Professor in January 2024. She currently leads the Sustainable Catalysis and Materials laboratory (the-sustainable-lab.com) at the University of California, Riverside in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering. Abdul-Aziz received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining UC Riverside, she was a Provost postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also worked previously as a Forensic scientist for the Philadelphia police department and as a Refinery chemist at Sunoco Chemicals in Philadelphia after receiving a B.S. in Chemistry from Temple University. Her research group develops sustainable catalytic processes using an interdisciplinary toolset from chemistry, materials and chemical engineering. Abdul-Aziz is a 2021 Scialog Negative Emissions Science and National Academy Frontiers of Engineering fellow. She was recently awarded a 2022 NSF Career Award for developing specialized catalysts for CO2 capture and utilization.
Jiachen Zhang
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: jiachen.zhang@usc.eduDr. Jiachen Zhang will be joining the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Spring 2024. Her research group investigates the interactions of air quality, climate, and society, quantifying the impacts of strategies aimed at mitigating climate change and air pollution. Dr. Zhang holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from USC and a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from Peking University. Currently, Dr. Zhang is the manager of the Mobile Source Technology Assessment and Modeling Section at the California Air Resources Board, where she leads a team of scientists and engineers to conduct original research projects, develop emissions inventory, and inform first-of-their-kind policies aimed at promoting electric vehicles and reducing air pollution emissions.
Ruolin Li
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: ruolinl@usc.eduRuolin Li is a Gabilan Assistant Professor with Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Southern California. She is broadly interested in the design and control of future mobility systems, particularly involving automated agents such as autonomous vehicles. Her work lies at the intersection of human behavior modeling, modeling of multi-agent systems, and control and optimization, aiming to enhance the societal benefits of the intelligent transportation system. She was previously a postdoctoral scholar with the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford. Prior to that, she obtained a Ph.D. and a M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2023 and 2018. She was selected as a Rising Star in Civil and Environmental Engineering by MIT in 2021 and a Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering by Stanford in 2022.
Burcin Becerik-Gerber
Dean's Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: becerik@usc.eduProfessor and Chair of Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California
Dr. Burcin Becerik-Gerber is a professor and Chair of Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and founder and the Director of USC Center for Intelligent Environments (CENTIENTS). During the last 15 years, her research focused on advanced data acquisition, modeling, visualization for design, construction, and control of user-centered responsive and adaptive built environments. She pioneered a new field: Human-Building Interaction (HBI), which is a convergent field that represents the growing complexities of the dynamic interplay between human experience and intelligence within built environments.
Audrey Olivier
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: audreyol@usc.eduDr. Olivier holds a Diplôme d'Ingénieur (2013) from École Centrale de Nantes, France, and a M.S. (2013) and Ph.D. (2017) in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University, New York. Her doctoral work focused on the development of probabilistic data analytics tools for Structural Health Monitoring and damage detection applications. During her postdoctoral appointment (2018-2020) at the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, Johns Hopkins University, she worked on the development of Scientific Machine Learning algorithms for materials modeling applications. As an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University (2020-2021), she worked on data analytics tools for optimization of emergency medical services deployment in the greater New York City area.
Amy Childress
Dean's Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: amyec@usc.eduGabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering (2019-2022)
I am a Professor and Director of the ReWater (Water Reuse and Resource Recovery) Center in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. My research and scholarly interests are in the areas of desalination, wastewater reuse, and the water-energy nexus. Most recently, I have investigated membrane processes for innovative solutions to contaminant and energy challenges; conceptual analyses of innovative configurations of shared/integrated facilities; colloidal and interfacial aspects of membrane processes; and brine reduction and energy recovery. I am a past president of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, a Board-Certified Environmental Engineering member, and a recent Fulbright US scholar. I chair National Water Research Institute independent advisory panels on potable reuse and seawater desalination projects and serve on the external audit panel for Singapore Public Utilities Board. I am co-editor of Desalination and on the advisory boards of several technical journals.
Kelly Sanders
Dr. Teh Fu Yen Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Spatial Sciences
Email: ktsanders@usc.eduDr. Kelly Twomey Sanders is an Associate Professor in the University of Southern California’s Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research aims to ease tensions between human and natural systems, with particular emphasis on reducing the environmental impacts of providing energy and water, analyzing tensions between climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, and anticipating the effects of climate change on energy systems. She has authored more than two dozen publications and has given dozens of invited talks on topics at the intersection of engineering, science, and policy. Sanders has been recognized in Forbes’ 30 under 30: Today’s disruptors and tomorrow’s brightest stars and MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 for her contributions to the energy field. In 2019, she was granted an NSF Early CAREER award. Her research and commentary have been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, WIRED magazine, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American. Sanders received her B.S. in Bioengineering from the Pennsylvania State University, as well M.S.E and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Environmental Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, respectively. She teaches classes related to energy and the environment.
Amy Rechenmacher
Professor of Practice in Civil and Environmental Engineering Practice
Email: arechenm@usc.eduThomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Jieyu Zhao
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: jieyuz@usc.eduJieyu Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at USC. Her research interest lies in fairness of ML/NLP models. Her research has been recognized widely by the community: she has won best paper award from EMNLP, got the Microsoft PhD Fellowship and was selected as the EECS Rising Star. More details can be found at https://jyzhao.net/.
Souti Chattopadhyay
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: schattop@usc.eduSouti “Rini” Chattopadhyay received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Oregon State University. She works at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, and Cognitive Science. Her work is focused on understanding how humans make decisions when interacting with interfaces, specifically programming interfaces. She is an intern alum of Microsoft Research and continues working with them to broaden the participation of future generations in computing. Some of her works were awarded best papers and honorable mentions by ACM and IEEE, including understanding cognitive biases in programmers, and exploring a plethora of challenges data scientists face. Chattopadhyay's work on cognitive biases was also recognized as research highlights by CACM and that on supporting data scientists was featured in Nature articles.
Weihang Wang
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: weihangw@usc.eduWeihang Wang's research interests are in software engineering. Before joining USC, Wang was an Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo, from 2018 to 2022. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2018. Wang was awarded an NSF CAREER Award, a University at Buffalo Exceptional Scholar - Young Investigator Award, a Maurice H. Halstead Memorial Research Award, a Facebook Testing and Verification Research Award, and a Mozilla Research Award.
Ruishan Liu
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: ruishanl@usc.eduHi! I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at USC. I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2022, where I was fortunate to work with Prof. James Zou. I was a postdoctoral scholar in the department of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University from 2022 to 2023. Prior to that, I received my bachelor's degree in Physics from Peking University.
Paraskevi Micha
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: pmicha@usc.eduEvi Micha is an Assistant Professor of the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California. Before that, she was a postdoc fellow at Harvard University, and she obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. One of her recent papers was selected as exemplary in the applied modeling track of ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. Her research has been awarded the 2024 Best Dissertation Award from the Canadia Artificial Intelligence Association and the 2024 IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award runner-up.
Z. Morely Mao
Professor of Computer Science
Email:
Swabha Swayamdipta
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: swabhas@usc.eduSwabha Swayamdipta is a Gabilan Assistant Professor and an Assistant Professor of CS since Fall 2022. She leads the Datasets, Interpretability, Language and Learning (DILL) Lab. She was previously a postdoc at the Allen Institute for AI and the University of Washington, working with Yejin Choi. She received her PhD in 2019 from CMU, where she was advised by Noah A. Smith and Chris Dyer. Her work has received Outstanding Paper Awards at ICML 2022 and NeurIPS 2021, and a Best Paper Honorable Mention at ACL 2020. Her research is supported by awards from the Allen Institute for AI and Intel Labs.
Bistra Dilkina
Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Industrial & Systems Engineering
Email: dilkina@usc.eduBistra Dilkina is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. She is also the co-Director of the USC Center for AI in Society (CAIS), a joint effort between the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. During 2013-2017, Dilkina was as an Assistant Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a co-director of the Data Science for Social Good Atlanta summer program. She received her PhD from Cornell University in 2012, and was a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Institute for Computational Sustainability until 2013. Dilkina is one of the junior faculty leaders in the young field of Computational Sustainability, and has co-organized workshops, tutorials, special tracks at major conferences on Computational Sustainability and related subareas. Her work spans discrete optimization, network design, stochastic optimization, and machine learning.
Heather Culbertson
Kenneth C. Dahlberg Early Career Chair and Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: hculbert@usc.eduHeather Culbertson’s research focuses on the design and control of haptic devices and rendering systems, human-robot interaction, and virtual reality. Previously, she was a research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University where she worked in the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) Lab. She received her PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 working in the Haptics Group, part of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory. Her awards include the NSF CAREER Award, IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics Early Career Award, citation for meritorious service as a reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Haptics, Best Paper at UIST 2017, and the Best Hands-On Demonstration Award at IEEE World Haptics 2013.
Yan Liu
Professor of Computer Science
Email: liu32@usc.eduI am a full professor in the Computer Science Department of the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. I joined USC in August 2010. Before that, I was a research staff member in the Data Analytics Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center since November 2006. I received my M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.
Maja Mataric
Chan Soon-Shiong Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics
Email: mataric@usc.eduMaja received her Ph.D. from MIT in Computer Science & AI. She has been at USC since 1997 and is a Chaired and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, with appointments in Neuroscience and Pediatrics. She has served as the USC President if the Faculty, Viterbi Dean of Research, and USC Vice President of Research. Her is a pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics, which creates human-machine interaction interventions; her lab has worked with children with autism, stroke and dementia patients, and with students with anxiety and/or depression. She is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of AAAS, AAAI, ACM, and IEEE, and received a Presidential mentoring award from President Obama.
Ewa Deelman
Research Professor of Computer Science and Principal Scientist at USC Information Sciences Institute
Email: deelman@isi.edu
Kallirroi Georgila
Research Associate Professor of Computer Science
Email: kgeorgila@usc.eduKallirroi Georgila is a Research Associate Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC) and at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Her research interests include all aspects of speech and language processing with a focus on machine learning (including deep learning), particularly reinforcement learning of dialogue system policies, dialogue system evaluation, speech recognition, and expressive conversational speech synthesis. She has chaired and served on the organizing, senior, and program committees of many conferences and workshops. She has also served as Vice President of SIGdial (the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue), and currently she is an Associate Editor of the Dialogue and Discourse journal.
Yolanda Gil
Research Professor of Computer Science and Spatial Sciences and Principal Scientist at USC Information Sciences Institute
Email: gil@isi.edu
Kristina Lerman
Research Professor of Computer Science and Principal Scientist at USC Information Sciences Institute
Email: lerman@isi.edu
Jelena Mirkovic
Research Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science
Email: mirkovic@isi.edu
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering
Leana Golubchik
Stephen and Etta Varra Professor and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science
Email: leana@usc.eduLeana Golubchik is the Stephen and Etta Varra Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (with a joint appointment in Computer Science) at USC. She also serves as the Director of the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program. Prior to that, she was on the faculty at the University of Maryland and Columbia University. Leana received her PhD from UCLA. Her research interests are broadly in the design and evaluation of large scale distributed systems, including hybrid clouds and data centers and their applications in data analytics, machine learning, and privacy. Leana is the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (ToMPECS). She received several awards, including the IBM Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Okawa Foundation Award; she is a member of the IFIP WG 7.3 and a Fellow of AAAS.
Paria Rashidinejad
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: rashidin@usc.eduParia Rashidinejad is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Fall 2024. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Berkeley at the Berkeley AI Research (BAIR) Lab and the Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI). Her research is on mathematical foundations of AI and designing capable and general-purpose AI systems for reliable integration into the real world. Her recent research has been focusing on reinforcement learning and machine learning algorithms for autonomous inference, prediction, and decision-making. She also works on machine learning applications in areas such as healthcare, robotics, autonomous driving, and systems. She received her Ph.D. in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2022.
Priya Panda
Lloyd F. Hunt Early Career Chair of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Email: priya.panda@usc.eduDr. Priya Panda is an Associate Professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the University of Southern California starting Fall 2025. Prior to her appointment at USC, she was an Assistant Professor at Yale University in the Electrical & Computer Engineering department from 2019-2025. Dr. Panda has been a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google DeepMind in 2024-25. Her research interests lie in Algorithm-Hardware Co-design for Efficient AI/ML, Neuromorphic Computing and Spiking Neural Networks. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2019. She received the B.E. degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and the M.Sc. degree in Physics from B.I.T.S. Pilani, India, in 2013. She was the recipient of outstanding student award in physics for academic excellence. From 2013-14, she worked in Intel, India on RTL design for graphics power management. She has also worked with Intel Labs, USA, in 2017 and Nvidia, India in 2013 as research intern. During her internship at Intel Labs, she developed large scale spiking neural network algorithms for benchmarking the Loihi chip.
Feifei Qian
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: feifeiqi@usc.eduFeifei Qian joined the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering as an Assistant Professor in Jan 2020. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Physics from Georgia Institute of Technology, in 2015 and 2011, respectively. Prior to her appointment at USC, she worked in the GRASP lab at University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral researcher from 2016 to 2019. Dr. Qian’s expertise is in analyzing and modeling the complex interactions between robots and their locomotion environments and generating innovative control and sensing strategies to improve robot mobility on challenging terrains. In recent research, Qian studied the locomotion of legged robots and animals, and has uncovered principles and strategies to produce effective movement on granular terrains and in perturbation-rich environments. Using these principles, she is developing robots that can exploit obstacle disturbances to navigate cluttered environment, and robots that can use their leg as soil strength sensors to generate erodibility map by walking around the desert.
Michelle Povinelli
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: povinell@usc.eduVice Chair of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Michelle Lynn Povinelli is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics and Astronomy at the University Southern California. She is a Fellow of the OSA and the SPIE. Povinelli is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and the TR35 Award for innovators under age 35 from MIT's Technology Review magazine. Her research has been funded by a variety of sources including NSF, ARO, NASA, DARPA, NGA, DOE, private companies, and foundations, and she was a member of the 2018-19 class of the Defense Science Study Group.
Mahta Moghaddam
Ming Hsieh Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: mahta@usc.eduVice Dean for Research
Mahta Moghaddam received the B.S. degree (with highest distinction) from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1986 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1989 and 1991, respectively, all in electrical and computer engineering. From 1991 to 2003, she was with the Radar Science and Engineering Section, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, before joining the Radiation Laboratory in the EECS department at Michigan. Dr. Moghaddam joined the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering in January 2012. Dr. Moghaddam has introduced innovative approaches and algorithms for quantitative interpretation of multichannel radar imagery based on analytical inverse scattering techniques applied to complex and random media. She has also developed quantitative approaches for multisensor data fusion by combining radar and optical remote sensing data for nonlinear estimation of vegetation and surface parameters. She has led the development of new radar instrument and measurement technologies for subsurface and subcanopy characterization. She has been a Systems Engineer for the Cassini Radar and the Science Chair of the JPL Team X (Advanced Mission Studies Team).
Mercedeh Khajavikhan
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: khajavik@usc.eduProfessor Khajavikhan is a professor at the ECE department. She has also a joint appointment at the Department of Physics & Astronomy, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences at USC.
She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2009. Subsequently, she joined the University of California in San Diego as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked on the design and development of nanolasers, plasmonic devices, and silicon photonics components. In August 2012, she started her career as an Assistant Professor in the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) at the University of Central Florida (UCF), working primarily on unraveling novel phenomena in active photonic systems. She is the recipient of the NSF Early CAREER Award in 2015, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 2016, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2018, the University of central Florida Reach for the Stars Award in 2017, UCF Luminary Award in 2018, and DARPA Director’s Fellowship in 2020. She is a fellow of Optica (formerly known as Optical Society of America OSA).
Grace Lu
Professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: jialu@usc.eduProfessor Lu received dual B.S. degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering in 1992 at Washington University in St. Louis. After studying in Professor Michael Tinkham's research group at Harvard University on superconducting single-electron transistors, she received her Ph.D in 1997. She subsequently conducted her postdoctoral research on the electron transport of individual carbon nanotubes at UC Berkeley under the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Urbashi Mitra
Gordon S. Marshall Chair in Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: ubli@usc.eduUrbashi Mitra received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Previous appointments include the Ohio State University and Bellcore. Her research interests are in: wireless communications, communication and sensor networks, biological communication systems, underwater acoustic communication, detection and estimation and the interface of communication, sensing and control. Dr. Mitra actively collaborates with domain experts in microbiology, underwater acoustics, quantum chemistry and epidemiology.
Alice Parker
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Emeritus
Email: parker@eve.usc.eduAlice C. Parker is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California and is a former Division Director for Computer Engineering, a former Dean of Graduate Studies, and a former Vice Provost for Research at USC. She was elected President of the Academic Senate in 1993. She was previously on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Parker received the B.S.E.E. and Ph.D degrees from North Carolina State University and an M.S.E.E. from Stanford University. She was elected a Fellow of the IEEE for her contributions to design automation in the areas of high-level synthesis, hardware description languages and design representation. She also received an NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers, an NSF Fellowship, an award from ASEE (the Sharon Keillor award), and an teaching award from the Viterbi school.
Maryam Shanechi
Alexander A. Sawchuk Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science
Email: shanechi@usc.eduMaryam Shanechi is the Alexander A. Sawchuk Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science. She also is a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program at USC. She is the Founding Director of the new USC Center for Neurotechnology. She joined USC as Assistant Professor in July 2014. Prior to that, she was Assistant Professor at Cornell University's ECE department in 2014. She received the B.A.Sc. degree with honors in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto in 2004 and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2006 and 2011, respectively. She held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School from 2011-2012 and at the University of California, Berkeley from 2012-2013. She has received various awards including the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, MIT Technology Review World's Top 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35), Popular Science Brilliant 10, Science News 10 Scientists to Watch (SN10), ASEE's Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, One Mind Rising Star Award, a DoD joint US-UK multidisciplinary university research initiative (MURI) award, the DoD BARI award for US-UK collaboration on human-machine teaming, the NAE frontiers invitation, and both the NAE and NAS frontiers invitation as speaker and session chair. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and was named a Blavatnik National Awards Finalist in both 2023 and 2024.
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Karmel Shehade
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Email: kshehade@usc.eduI am a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE) at the University of Southern California (USC). Before joining USC, I was an Assistant Professor of ISE at Lehigh University and a Presidential and Dean Postdoctoral fellow at Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy of Carnegie Mellon University. I hold a Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, an M.S. in Systems Science and Industrial Engineering from Binghamton University, and a B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology.
Victoria Stodden
Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Email: stodden@usc.eduVictoria Stodden is Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California. She received a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University and a Law Degree from Stanford Law School. She graduated magna cum laude with her Bachelor’s in Economics from the University of Ottawa and holds a master’s degree in Economics from the University of British Columbia. She held the Kauffman Innovation fellowship at Yale Law School and was a Berkman Klein fellow at Harvard Law School. She was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT and has held faculty positions at the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, and a tenured position at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Stodden is an internationally recognized leader in improving the reliability of scientific results in the face of increasingly sophisticated computational approaches to research: understanding when and how inferences from data are valid and reproducible, what it means to have replicated a result, the effect of big data and computation on scientific inference, the design and implementation of scientific validation systems, standards of openness and transparency for data and code sharing, and resolving legal and policy barriers to disseminating reproducible research.
Sze-Chuan Suen
Associate Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering
Email: ssuen@usc.eduSze-chuan Suen joined the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor in 2016 and is a faculty member at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Sze holds a PhD from the department of Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Julie Higle
Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering Emeritus
Email: julie.higle@usc.eduDr. Higle was an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor in the Systems and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Arizona, 1985-2006; and Professor and Chair, Integrated Systems Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2006-2012. Dr. Higle serves as Senior Vice President for Academics, Institute of Industrial Engineers, 2009-present. She has served as vice-chair of the INFORMS Section on Optimization, Program Chair for the 10th International Conferences on Stochastic Programming, among a variety of other positions.
Phebe Vayanos
Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Computer Science
Email: phebe.vayanos@usc.eduI am an Associate Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Southern California, and a Co-Director of the CAIS Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society. I hold a Viterbi Early Career Chair in Engineering and before that held a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professorship. Through my research, I aim to advance integer, stochastic, and robust optimization, and their interface with machine learning, causal inference, and economics to enable the design of predictive and prescriptive models that are robust, interpretable, and fair, being suitable to deploy in high-stakes settings.
Abigail Horn
Research Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Email: hornabig@usc.eduAbigail Horn is a Research Computer Scientist at the Information Sciences Institute and incoming Research Assistant Professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. Horn was recently a Research Associate in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at USC.
The general area of Horn's research is the combination of approaches from network and computational social science and systems modeling with large-scale novel data sources to design solutions to pressing public health challenges. Horn focuses on problems in food systems and nutrition, and infectious disease modeling.
