Administration and Staff

Director
Leana Golubchik
Stephen and Etta Varra Professor and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science
Phone: (213) 740-0996
WiSE Office: DRB 232
leana@usc.edu

Program Manager
Mallory Redel
Phone: (213) 740-0996
WiSE Office: DRB 232
redel@usc.edu

Marketing Assistant
Joana Lachica
Phone: (213) 740-0996
WiSE Office: DRB 232
lachicam@usc.edu

Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Jessica Parr
Professor of Chemistry (Teaching)
Phone: (213) 821‑6614
SGM 445
parr@usc.edu

Undergraduate Research Program Mentor
Raffaella Ghittoni
Professor of Biological Sciences (Teaching)
Phone: (213) 740‑8352
ZHS 256
rghitton@usc.edu
WiSE Advisory Boards and Committees
Chair

Judith Hirsch
Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering and Professor of Biological Sciences
Email: jhirsch@usc.eduMembers

Hanna Reisler
University Professor, Lloyd Armstrong, Jr. Chair in Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry
Email: reisler@usc.edu
Shanghua Teng
University Professor, Seeley G. Mudd Professor of Engineering, and Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics
Email: shanghua@usc.edu
Amy Childress
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email: amyec@usc.edu
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.

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.

Leana Golubchik (Ex-officio, WiSE Director)
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 and 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 Ph.D. from UCLA. Her research interests are broadly in the design and evaluation of large scale distributed systems, including deep learning systems, hybrid clouds and data centers, and their applications in machine learning and data analytics as well as privacy and security. Leana is the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems. She is the recipient of the IBM Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Okawa Foundation Award, the WTS-LA Diversity Leadership Award, the USC Remarkable Women Award, and the USC Mellon Culture of Mentoring Award. She is a Fellow of AAAS.

Suzanne Edmands
Professor of Marine and Environmental Biology and Biological Sciences
Email: sedmands@usc.edu
Stacey Finley
Nichole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professor and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: sfinley@usc.eduChair

Jill McNitt-Gray
Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering
Email: mcnitt@usc.eduMembers

Sami Assaf
Professor of Mathematics
Email: shassaf@usc.edu
James Boedicker
Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Biological Sciences
Email: boedicke@usc.edu
Joshua West
Wilford and Daris Zinsmeyer Early Career Chair in Marine Studies and Associate Professor of Earth Sciences and Environmental Studies
Email: joshwest@usc.eduChair

Malancha Gupta
Jack Munushian Early Career Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Chemistry
Email: malanchg@usc.eduMembers

Eun Ji Chung
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Email: eunchung@usc.edu
Somil Bansal
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Computer Science
Email: somilban@usc.eduSomil Bansal is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from the University of California at Berkeley in 2020. Before that, he obtained a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Between August 2020 and August 2021, he spent a year as a Research Scientist at Waymo (formerly known as Google Self-Driving Car project). He has collaborated closely with companies like Skydio, Google, Waymo, Boeing, as well as NASA Ames. Somil has received several awards, most notably the NSF CAREER award, the Eli Jury Award at UC Berkeley for his doctoral research, the outstanding graduate student instructor award at UC Berkeley, and the academic excellence award at IIT Kanpur.
Chair

Anjali Bhatnagar (Chair of the Board, Programming Committee)
PhD Candidate in Marine and Environmental Biology
Email: ambhatna@usc.eduMembers

Dannielle Fougere (Programming Committee, Webmaster)
PhD Candidate in Earth Sciences
Email: dfougere@usc.edu
Heather Culbertson (Ex-officio, Faculty Mentor)
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Email: hculbert@usc.edu
Tristan McPhail (Mentorship Committee, Secretary)
PhD Candidate in Chemical Engineering
Email: tmcphail@usc.edu
Vera Gluscevic (Ex-officio, Faculty Mentor)
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Email: vera.gluscevic@usc.edu