Teaching Faculty

USC Dornsife College
USC Viterbi School of Engineering

USC Dornsife College

Biological Sciences – Human and Evolutionary Biology

Gioia Polidori : Associate Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences

Karla received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Biological Oceanography. She has been at USC since 2006 and is a Professor of the Practice of Biology and Environmental Studies. Her expertise combines classic and molecular approaches to marine microbial and metazoan ecology. She has serves as an NSF program officer in the Office of Polar Programs and currently serves as the Director of USC Sea Grant.

Biological Sciences – Molecular and Computational Biology

Christa Bancroft

Associate Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences

Email: cbancrof@usc.edu

Nancy Castro

Associate Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences

Email: ncastro@usc.edu

Nancy Castro received her PhD from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in Pharmacology with an emphasis in Molecular Biology. The focus of her graduate research was on breast cancer and signal transduction pathway activation by a specific protein known as breast tumor kinase. Upon completion of her PhD, she moved back home to southern California and pursued a post-doctorate position at City of Hope in Duarte, CA. Her post-doctorate focused on Diabetes research, specifically, looking at miRNAs and their dysregulation in promoting Diabetic Nephropathy. After four years as a post-doc, Nancy started teaching at USC in the Biological Sciences department in 2014, where she now teaches lower and upper division biology courses such as General Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biochemistry, as well as teaching biology laboratory courses.

Raffaella Ghittoni

Associate Professor (Teaching) of Biological Sciences

Email: rghitton@usc.edu

I 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

Quantitative and Computational Biology

Chemistry

Rebecca Broyer

Professor (Teaching) of Chemistry

Email: rbroyer@usc.edu

Rebecca M. Broyer received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego in 2000. She worked in the biotechnology industry for the several years before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles where she received her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2009. She was awarded an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she worked in field of conservation science to develop polymeric materials for the preservation of modern works of art from 2009-2010. Dr. Broyer was an organic chemistry instructor at Glendale Community College before joining the faculty in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southern California in 2010 where her current research interests are focused on chemical education and the development of an improved emotional and motivational experience toward chemistry lab work.

Jessica Parr

Professor (Teaching) of Chemistry

Email: parr@usc.edu

Earth Sciences

Mathematics

Cymra Haskell

Professor (Teaching) of Mathematics

Email: chaskell@math.usc.edu

Dr Cymra Haskell was awarded her PhD in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1992 and completed post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin and the State University of New York at Stony Brook before coming to the University of Southern California (USC) in 1998. Her research is in the area of ergodic theory and applied mathematics. Her primary focus today is on mathematics education and increasing diversity in mathematics.

Felicia Tabing

Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Mathematics

Email: tabing@usc.edu

Physics and Astronomy

USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Inna Abramova

Lecturer of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Email: abramova@usc.edu

Biomedical Engineering

Brittany Kay

Lecturer of Biomedical Engineering

Email: bkay@usc.edu

Brittany 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

Lessa Grunenfelder

Associate Professor of Practice in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Email: grunenfe@usc.edu

Lessa Grunenfelder has a B.S. in astronautical engineering and a MS and PhD in materials science, all from USC. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on material properties, processing, selection, and design. She is passionate about sharing her love of materials science with students through curriculum that combines fundamental science and engineering application.

Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Amy Rechenmacher

Professor of Practice in Civil and Environmental Engineering Practice

Email: arechenm@usc.edu

Prof. Rechenmacher specializes in the fields of Geotechnical Engineering and Geomechanics. She was formerly on the tenure track, studying strain localization and localized flow in granular materials. She transitioned to full-time teaching in 2013, teaching geotechnical and mechanics courses, as well as first-year engineering introductory courses. Her interests currently lie in uses of active and engaged learning techniques as a means to enhance student learning.

Computer Science

Claire Bono

Lecturer of Computer Science

Email: bono@pollux.usc.edu

Tatyana Ryutov

Senior Lecturer of Computer Science

Email: tryutov@gmail.com

Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering

Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Shalini Gupta

Lecturer of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Email: shalinig@usc.edu

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Teaching Faculty