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
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: turcotte@usc.edu
Biological Sciences – Marine and Environmental Biology
Naomi M. Levine
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and Earth Sciences
Email: n.levine@usc.edu
Julia Schwartzman
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: julias21@usc.eduJulia Schwartman received her Ph.D. 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 phenotypic heterogeneity in marine bacteria. At USC, Schwartman's lab will investigate how complex bacterial behaviors shape coastal marine ecosystems through their contribution to nutrient cycling and the development of brown algae.
Noelle Held
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email:Noelle Held will join the USC Department of Biology Sciences as Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences in January 2023. 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.
Laura Melissa Guzman
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: guzmanur@usc.edu
Carly Kenkel
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: ckenkel@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.edu
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.
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.edu
Hanna Reisler
University Professor, Lloyd Armstrong, Jr. Chair in Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry
Email: reisler@usc.edu
Anna Krylov
Gabilan Distinguished Professor in Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry
Email: krylov@usc.edu
Earth Sciences
Caroline Seyler
Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences
Email: seyler@usc.eduCaroline Seyler will join the Department of Earth Sciences at USC in January 2024. 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 earthquakes to ductile flow. 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.
Karen Lloyd
Professor of Earth Sciences
Email:
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.edu
Physics and Astronomy
Kelly Luo
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: yunqiuke@usc.eduKelly Luo's research focuses on spin-based information processing in van der Waals quantum materials, utilizing experimental techniques such as ultrafast optical microscopy and microwave low-temperature magnetotransport, among others. Luo was previously a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow and Honorary Kavli Fellow at Cornell University studying spin torque dynamics in van der Waals magnets. Luo 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 her undergraduate degree in physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Elena Pierpaoli
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: pierpaol@usc.edu
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Neda Maghsoodi
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: maghsoodi@usc.eduNeda Maghsoodi is a Gabilan Assistant Professor in the USC Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. Maghsoodi was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Maghsoodi received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Maghsoodi's research lies at the interface of applied mechanics, materials science, and biology and develops novel theoretical-computational models to elucidate complex behavior of soft structures in engineering and biology. In her academic career, Maghsoodi has received several honors and awards; including, she was named a Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering by UC-Berkeley and received the Best Paper award in the ASME International Conference on Micro- and Nanosystems.
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
Gabilan Assistant 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. She received her B.A. in Molecular Biology with honors from Scripps College (Claremont, CA) and her Ph.D. from the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Program and the Department of Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University. At Northwestern, Dr. Chung developed biodegradable, citric acid-based polymers and nanocomposites for tissue engineering. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, she developed bio-nanomaterials for theranostic applications. Professor Chung is a recipient of the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award (2014) and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (DP2, 2018), and received the USC faculty mentoring award for undergraduates in 2018, among many other awards. Dr. Chung is a member of the Society for Biomaterials, Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Institute for Chemical Engineers.
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
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: czavalet@usc.edu
Stacey Finley
Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences
Email: sfinley@usc.eduStacey Finley is the holder of the Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professorship and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, as well as Quantitative and Computational Biology, 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. Dr. Finley has a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and she is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Finley is also a standing member of the MABS Study Section at NIH. Her research has been supported by grants from the NSF, NIH, and American Cancer Society.
Selected honors. 2016 NSF Faculty Early CAREER Award; 2016 Young Innovator by the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering journal; Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize from the Society of Mathematical Biology; Junior Research Award from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering; the Hanna Reisler Mentorship Award; 2018 AACR NextGen Star; 2018 Orange County Engineering Council Outstanding Young Engineer; 2021 Elected Fellow of American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering; 2022 Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society
Megan McCain
Chonette Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
Email: mlmccain@usc.eduMegan L. McCain earned her BS in Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD in Engineering Sciences at Harvard University. As a graduate student, she engineered cardiac cells and tissues to investigate the role of mechanotransduction in cardiac development and disease. Megan continued as a post-doctoral researcher at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, where she engineered microscale, functional mimics of human cardiac tissues, known as “Heart on a Chip”. In 2014, Megan joined USC as the Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering. She also currently holds a joint appointment in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Her research group, the Laboratory for Living Systems Engineering, engineers and utilizes novel “Organ on Chip” platforms for human disease modeling and drug screening, with a focus on cardiac and skeletal muscle. Megan is a recipient of a Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association, and has been recognized as a Top Innovator Under 35 by MIT Technology Review and a Rising Star by the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering sub-group of the Biomedical Engineering Society.
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 Hodge
Arthur B. Freeman Professor and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: ahodge@usc.edu
Malancha Gupta
Jack Munushian Early Career Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Chemistry
Email: malanchg@usc.edu
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:
Amy Childress
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and 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.edu
Amy Rechenmacher
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Practice
Email: arechenm@usc.eduComputer Science
Jieyu Zhao
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email: jieyuz@usc.eduJieyu Zhao is a postdoctoral research at UMD, working together with Professor Hal Daumé III. Zhao will join the Department of Computer Science at USC in August 2023. Zhao obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at UCLA where she was advised by Professor Kai-Wei Chang. Her research interest lies in fairness of ML/NLP models. Her paper got the EMNLP Best Long Paper Award (2017). Zhao was one of the recipients of 2020 Microsoft Ph.D. Fellowship and has been selected to participate in the 2021 Rising Stars in EECS workshop. Her research has been covered by news media such as Wires, The Daily Mail and so on. Zhao was invited by UN-WOMEN Beijing on a panel discussion about gender equality and social responsibility. More detail can be found at jyzhao.net.
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.
Paraskevi Micha
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Email:
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
Philip and Cayley MacDonald Endowed Early Career Chair and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: liu32@usc.edu
Maja Mataric
Chan Soon-Shiong Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics
Email: mataric@usc.edu
Ewa Deelman
Research Professor of Computer Science and Principal Scientist at USC Information Sciences Institute
Email: deelman@isi.edu
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
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.eduParia Rashidinejad
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email:
Feifei Qian
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor
Email: feifeiqi@usc.edu
Michelle Povinelli
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics and 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.edu
Urbashi Mitra
Gordon S. Marshall Chair in Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science
Email: ubli@usc.edu
Alice Parker
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Emeritus
Email: parker@eve.usc.edu
Maryam Shanechi
Dean's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
Email: shanechi@usc.eduDaniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Renyuan Xu
Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering; WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor
Email: renyuanx@usc.edu
Phebe Vayanos
Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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.
