All Faculty
USC Dornsife College
Biological Sciences – Human and Evolutionary Biology
Jill McNitt-Gray
Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Email: mcnitt@usc.edu
Lorraine Turcotte
Professor of Biological Sciences of Human and Evolutionary Biology
Email: turcotte@usc.edu
Biological Sciences – Marine and Environmental Biology
Naomi M. Levine
Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: n.levine@usc.edu
Julia Schwartzman
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: julias21@usc.edu
Noelle Held
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email:
Carly Kenkel
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: ckenkel@usc.edu
Suzanne Edmands
Professor of Marine and Environmental Biology and Biological Sciences
Email: sedmands@usc.edu
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
Susan Forsburg
Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: forsburg@usc.eduSusan 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.edu
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
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
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: jhirsch@usc.eduQuantitative and Computational Biology
Jazlyn Mooney
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: jazlynmo@usc.edu
Chemistry
Kate White
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.edu
Anna Krylov
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.edu
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
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.eduMathematics
Susan Montgomery
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and Professor of Mathematics
Email: smontgom@math.usc.eduSusan Montgomery was born in 1943 and grew up in Lansing, Michigan. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan where her advisor was J. E. McLaughlin, who inspired her interest in algebra. Having obtained her undergraduate degree in Mathematics in 1965, Susan received an NSF Graduate Fellowship and started her graduate studies at the University of Chicago. In 1969, she defended her Ph.D. thesis titled “The Lie Structure of Simple Rings with Involution of Characteristic 2” under the supervision of I. N. Herstein. She then spent one year at DePaul University. In 1970, Susan joined the faculty at USC, where she is currently a professor.
Susan received multiple awards and recognition, including a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1984, an Albert S. Raubenheimer Distinguished Faculty Award from the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at USC in 1985, and a Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering at USC. In 2012, Susan was selected as an Inaugural Fellow of the AMS and elected as a Fellow of AAAS. Susan served on many professional society committees, including the AMS Board of Trustees in 1986–1996, the Board on Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council in 1995–1998 and its Executive Committee in 1997–1998, and the AWM Scientific Advisory Committee in 2015–2017. Furthermore, she was elected as vice president of the AMS for the 2014–2017 term. Moreover, she served as the chair of the Mathematics Department at USC in 1996–1999.
While in her early work Susan studied rings with involutions and group actions on rings, her current research is focused on Hopf algebras and their representations. She has published two books and more than 100 research papers; in addition, she was a coeditor for seven collections of papers on various topics in algebra. Her monograph Hopf algebras and their actions on rings became the most cited book on Hopf algebras and quantum groups. Susan graduated 14 PhD students, 6 of which are women.
Sami Assaf
Professor of Mathematics
Email: shassaf@usc.edu
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 of Science and Engineering
Email: gpanova@usc.edu
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.edu
Rosa Di Felice
Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Quantitative and Computational Biology
Email: difelice@usc.edu
Elena Pierpaoli
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: pierpaol@usc.edu
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.
The research of Professor Lu focuses on the investigation of metals and semiconductors whose size is reduced to the nanoscale (less than 1/1000 of the width of a human hair). Her research activities include the fabrication of nanostructures using both lithography and self-assembly techniques; characterization of their electrical, optical, magnetic, and topological properties; and development of nanoscale systems with enhanced functionality. In particular, she is interested in the quantum states and dynamics of electron charge and electron spin which will be essential for future applications in high density, low power and ultra fast electronics. This includes but not limited to memory and logic circuits, chemical/biological sensors, optoelectronic devices, spintronic devices, and energy harnessing devices.
Geraldine Peters
Professor (Research) of Physics and Astronomy
Email: gpeters@usc.eduUSC Viterbi School of Engineering
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Neda Maghsoodi
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: maghsoodi@usc.edu
Alejandra Uranga
WISE Gabilan Assistant Professor and 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.edu
Maral Mousavi
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
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: ellis.meng@usc.edu
Jennifer Treweek
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: jtreweek@usc.edu
Cristina Zavaleta
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: czavalet@usc.edu
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.edu
Megan McCain
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: mlmccain@usc.edu
Jill McNitt-Gray
Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Email: mcnitt@usc.edu
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:
Shaama Sharada
Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Chemistry
Email: ssharada@usc.edu
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
Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Email: ahodge@usc.edu
Malancha Gupta
Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Chemistry
Email: malanchg@usc.eduMalancha 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
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email:
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
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email:Ruolin 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
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: becerik@usc.eduDr. 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.edu
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
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: jieyuz@usc.edu
Souti Chattopadhyay
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
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
Assistant Professor Computer Science
Email: ruishanl@usc.edu
Paraskevi Micha
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.
Swabha Swayamdipta
Gabilan Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: swabhas@usc.edu
Bistra Dilkina
Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Industrial & Systems Engineering
Email: dilkina@usc.edu
Heather Culbertson
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: hculbert@usc.edu
Yan Liu
Professor of Computer Science
Email: liu32@usc.edu
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.edu
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.
Feifei Qian
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor
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.
Qian’s research has been recognized by publications in various top journals and conferences including International Journal or Robotics Research, Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Physical Review E, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, and Robotics: Science & Systems (best student paper 2012). Her work has also been covered by media press including R&D Magazine, Phys.org, and BBC.
Mengjie Yu
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: mengjiey@usc.edu
Michelle Povinelli
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Electrophysics, Professor of Physics & Astronomy
Email: povinell@usc.edu
Mahta Moghaddam
Ming Hsieh Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering-Electrophysics and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: mahta@usc.eduMahta 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 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.
The research of Professor Lu focuses on the investigation of metals and semiconductors whose size is reduced to the nanoscale (less than 1/1000 of the width of a human hair). Her research activities include the fabrication of nanostructures using both lithography and self-assembly techniques; characterization of their electrical, optical, magnetic, and topological properties; and development of nanoscale systems with enhanced functionality. In particular, she is interested in the quantum states and dynamics of electron charge and electron spin which will be essential for future applications in high density, low power and ultra fast electronics. This includes but not limited to memory and logic circuits, chemical/biological sensors, optoelectronic devices, spintronic devices, and energy harnessing devices.
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
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
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
Renyuan Xu
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering; WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor
Email: renyuanx@usc.eduI am currently a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California. From 2019-2021 I was a Hooke Research Fellow in the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, and before that I completed my Ph.D. in 2019 at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. My research interests include stochastic analysis, stochastic controls and games, machine learning theory, and mathematical finance. I am also interested in interdisciplinary topics that integrate methodologies in multiple fields such as applied probability, statistics, and optimization, along with their applications in addressing high-stake decision-making problems in modern large-scale systems.
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.edu
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
Associate Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Computer Science
Email: phebe.vayanos@usc.edu
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.
