Faculty Innovators

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	Michel Baudry, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Neurology and Biomedical Engineering Professor Baudry researches learning and memory in the brain and is involved with several collaborative projects including the Human Brain Project and a biomedical engineering project exploring the neural tissue/silicon chip interface. He studies the following points of investigation: Mechanisms implicated in long-term synaptic potentiation (LTP) and depression (LTD) in hippocampus and other brain regions; regulation of glutamate receptors; role of oxygen free radicals in neurodenerative diseases and the central nervous system; and mechanisms underlying selective neuronal degeneration
	Peter Beerel, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering Systems and Founder of Timeless Automation Peter Beerel is an associate professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and serves as the faculty chair of Innovation Studies for USC Stevens. In this role, Dr. Beerel oversees a faculty committee representing schools across the university, which identifies educational needs and interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities with USC innovators. Dr. Beerel is also the director of Software Engineering at Fulcrom Semiconductor, a start-up company building broadband network chips using asynchronous circuits. He is a co-author of four patents in the area of asynchronous circuits. Dr. Beerel is currently CEO of his new start-up, Timeless Automation, a software tool for the design of asynchronous circuits. Dr. Beerel received his B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
	Ted Berger, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, David Packard Chair of Engineering, and Director of the Center for Neural Engineering Dr. Berger became Director of the Center for Neural Engineering in 1997, an organization that helps to unite USC faculty with cross-disciplinary interests in neuroscience, engineering, and medicine. He has published over 170 journal articles and book chapters, and is co-editor of a book published by MIT Press entitled Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain: Implantable Biomimetic Electronics as Neural Prostheses. Dr. Berger currently is chairing a world-wide study of brain-computer interfaces that is being funded by multiple agencies of the NSF, NIH, and DoD. The research of Dr. Berger involves the complementary use of experimental and theoretical approaches to developing biologically constrained mathematical models of mammalian neural systems. The focus of the majority of current research is the hippocampus, a neural system essential for learning and memory functions.
	Roberta Brinton, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Vice Provost for Institutional Diversity Dr. Roberta Diaz Brinton is Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Of Southern California School Of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences Center with a joint appointment in the USC Neuroscience Program and Department of BioMedical Engineering. Professor Brinton leads a successful scientific research program to discover neural mechanisms of memory and neuron survival. She is also the Director of the Science Education Outreach initiative, the USC Science, Technology And Research (STAR) Program which provides junior and senior high school students in East and South Central Los Angeles the opportunity to learn science by joining a USC basic science research team for one or more years as a part of their high school science curriculum.
	Thomas Buchanan, Associate Dean for Clinical Research Dr. Buchanan is the professor of medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, chief of the division of endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) at LAC+ USC Medical Center has been named the school’s first associate dean from clinical research. Buchanan is well aware of the importance of clinical research. His own endeavors focus on the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes. In particular, he is known for his clinical research into ways to prevent the progression from gestational diabetes (which occurs in up to 5 percent of pregnant woman) to type 2 diabetes (which occurs within four years of pregnancy in as many as 40 percent of previously obese woman who were diagnosed with gestational diabetes).
	Jonathan Buckley. Professor of Research and Co-Director, Norris Cancer Center Biostatistics & Bioinformatics Core Dr. Buckley trained in Medicine, biostatistics and Computer Science, and for the last eight years has applied his expertise in these fields to the development of methods in bioinformatics. Initially with the USC microarray Core, and more recently with the Epigenome Center, he has collaborated on numerous projects that utilized high-throughput technologies for gene expression, genetic polymorphisms, proteomics, and DNA methylation.
	Steven. W. Chen, Associate Professor at the USC School of Pharmacy Dr. Steven Chen is an Associate Professor at the USC School of Pharmacy. His current clinical practice role includes the provision of clinical and consultative services to three safety net community clinics surrounding the university and USC Family Medicine, where he precepts Level IV pharmacy students and postgraduate pharmacy residents. Currently, Dr. Chen is part of a team of USC faculty directing multi-million-dollar, grant-funded research, evaluating the impact of pharmacist-managed patient care services for underserved populations.
	Richard Cote, Professor and Co-director of the USC Provost’s Biomedical Nanoscience Initiative Dr. Richard Cote is co-director of the USC Provost’s Biomedical Nanoscience Initiative. The primary goals of the program include detection of disease at the earliest possible time, delivery of treatment at the right phase and the right time and restoration of tissue and organ function through innovative approaches. Dr. Richard Cote is using nanotechnology to develop a more accurate and cost-effective diagnostic test to screen for cancer. Cote and his team are examining ways to use novel nanowires and carbon nanotubes that transmit electrical pulses to identify any cancer related biomarkers. The team hopes to design a device that would allow for the detection of multiple biomarkers simultaneously, which would minimize false negative or positive results for complex cases.
	Paul Denny, Chief Technical Officer of Proactive Oral Solutions, Inc. and Professor at USC School of Dentistry He began his basic research at USC in the area of salivary gland development and has had continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health for more than 35 years. This early research laid the foundation for and the direction of the current translational project, the CARE test, which received Phase I and II funding from a STTR grant awarded by the National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research. Paul has published his research findings in numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals and has also presented his research at a number of scientific meetings. He is highly regarded by the research community for his work in the fields of salivary gland cellular development and differentiation, salivary glycoprotein structural analysis, and clinical application.
	Parkash Gill, Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Co-founder of VasGene Therapeutics, Inc. Dr. Gill is a Professor of Medicine (Hematology, Oncology and Pathology) at University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Gill is a leading expert in angiogenesis and its role in the progression of a number of prevalent diseases including cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration. Dr. Gill played a pivotal role in the development of three marketed drugs including Taxol® and DaunoXome® and served on the FDA BRM Advisory Committee for five years.
	Michael Goran, Associate Director of Institute for Prevention Research Dr. Goran is associate director of the Institute for Prevention Research at USC and Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Physiology and biophysics in the Keck School of Medicine. He is also the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Chair in Childhood Obesity and Diabetes. His research focuses on the etiology and prevention of obesity and type 2 diabetes in children. Currently, Dr. Goran serves as the principal investigator of several National Institutes of Health grants and is Director of the USC Center for Transdiciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer (USC C-TREC), a new $12 million grant just awarded from NCI.
	Martin Gundersen, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics and Astronomy His research interests include pulsed power science and technology, applied plasma physics, lasers, and research into plasma devices including corona devices for pollution remediation. He has published over 200 technical papers and holds several patents. Dr. Gundersen is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and winner of the 2000 Germeshausen Award of the IEEE Power Modulator Symposium.
	Hossein Hashemi, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Dr. Hashemi is interested in the study of the fundamentals of communication circuits and systems, along with integrated implementations. Besides high-speed and high-frequency integrated circuits, he is also interested in bio-inspired and bio-medical electronics. He received the Caltech engineering and applied science division fellowship award in 1999, Walker von Brimer Foundation Outstanding Accomplishment Award in 2000, Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2001, Intel Foundation Graduate Fellowship Award in 2002 and the Young Scholar Award from Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage (APISH) in 2003.
	Mark Humayun, Professor of Opthalmalogy and Biomedical Engineering Dr. Humayun’s research projects focus on the treatment of the most debilitating and challenging eye diseases through advanced engineering. Leading a team of more than 30 faculty and 200 students from 15 different institutes, Dr. Humayun is focused on developing therapies for 1) retinal degenerations such as retinitis pigmentosa, 2) macular degenerations such as age-related macular degeneration, 3) retinovascular diseases such as vein occlusions, 4) diabetic retinopathy, as well as 5) glaucoma. He is the director of the National Science Foundation BioMimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center, as well as the director of the Department of Energy Artificial Retina Project.
	Peter Jones, Professor and Director of USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center Dr. Jones has been studying DNA methylation defects in the origin of cancer, both with genetic diagnostic testing, but more importantly with the development of cancer therapeutics. Dr. Jones has consulted and advised on the development and creation of two approved therapeutics, and in his role at USC has invented several new compounds with promising efficacy as cancer therapeutics. Dr. Peter Jones is on the scientific advisory board of Epigenomics, a molecular diagnostics company focusing on the development and commercialization of in vitro diagnostic tests for cancer.
	Thomas Jordan, Professor of Eartch Sciences and Director of Southern California Earthquake Center Thomas Jordan came to USC College to run the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), a leading consortium of earthquake researchers made up of more than 50 universities and other institutions. He also came to USC to teach. Jordan is a geophysicist, applied mathematician and member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Jordan studies earthquakes, seismological study of earth structure and geodetic observations of plate motions and interplate deformation. Through his research, Professor Jordan has made a series of major discoveries about the three-dimensional structure of the Earth's interior.
	Michael Kahn, Provost’s Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology Dr. Kahn came to USC in late 2006 from the Institute of Chemical Genomics in Seattle Washington and was the first professor named in the USC Provost’s new initiative to hire interdisciplinary researchers. A chemist by training, but with a strong grasp of cellular biology pathways, Dr. Kahn has already distinguished himself with collaborations across KSOM and with academic researchers worldwide. Compounds he has developed appear to have potent effects on solid tumors, stem cell development and more, and are attracting interest from pharmaceutical companies. He has recently been appointed head of the Developmental Therapeutics Program within the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
	Donald Kohn, Professor of Gene Therapy, Pediatrics, Molecular Microbiology & Immunology Kohn is director of the Gene, Immune and Stem Cell Therapy Program of the Saban Research Institute of Children Hospital Los Angeles, and co-director of the Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases. He leads a translational research program at CHLA that focuses on the development of gene therapy for the treatment of blood cell diseases such as immune deficiencies, sickle cell disease and AIDS. In 1993, Kohn’s group performed the first clinical trial of gene therapy for newborn infants with severe combined immune deficiency (“bubble boy disease”), and it continues to focus his work in this innovative medical modality.
	Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Assistant Professor, Philip and Cayley MacDonald Early Career Chair Krishnamachari is the director of the Autonomous Networks Research Group at USC. The mission of the Autonomous Networks research group is to perform high-impact academic research in the emerging technology area of wireless embedded networks. Their primary research focus is on discovering fundamental principles and developing algorithms for configuration and information processing in next-generation wireless sensor networks. These networks are envisioned to be unattended systems with applications ranging from environmental sensing, structural monitoring, and industrial process control to emergency response and mobile target tracking.
	Peter Laird, Associate Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Dr. Laird is Director of Basic Research for Surgery, Program Leader at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He serves on various editorial and scientific advisory boards, and is co-founder of ORCA Biosciences, currently Epigenomics, AG, and of TherEpi Corporation.
	Peter C. Mancall, Professor of History and Associate Vice Provost for Research Advancement As Associate Vice Provost for Research Advancement, Peter C. Mancall reports directly to Randolph Hall. He is also a professor of history and anthropology in the USC College and director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. Peter C. Mancall is an historian of early America , the early modern Atlantic world, and early Native American Indian history (c. 1492-1840).
	Frank Markland, Associate Dean for Scientific Affairs at Keck School of Medicine A veteran of the Keck School faculty since 1973, Markland has held several administrative posts. He was acting chair of biochemistry and molecular biology before former chair Laurence Kedes was appointed to the post in 1988. He also led the Medical Faculty Assembly during the 1980s. But in recent years, Markland has been dedicated to his innovative and sometimes news-making research, which seeks medical applications for compounds found in snake venom. He and his colleagues found that one such compound, called fibrolase, could break up blood clots, for example. And another protein, called contortrostain, has cancer-fighting properties. Currently, a pharmaceutical company is developing a modified version of fibrolase, while Markland’s lab is concentrating on contortrostatin’s potential. Frank Markland is on the science board of a USC start-up, Pivotal Biosciences, Inc.
	Maja Mataric, Senior Associate Dean for Research Maja J. Mataric is the Senior Associate Dean for Research. She is responsible for research development, research administration, and technology transfer. She is also a Professor of Computer Science and Neuroscience, the founding director of the USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems and the co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab. Her research into socially assistive robotics is aimed at endowing robots with the ability to help people through individual assistance and multi-robot team cooperation. She is currently serving as President of the USC Academic Senate and is on the Joint Senate-Provost University Research Committee. She recently chaired the Viterbi School's Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) Committee.
	Charles McKenna, Professor of Chemistry Charles McKenna is Professor of Chemistry in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and holds a joint appointment as Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy at USC. Additionally, he is Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Drug Discovery (iPIDD), which he founded. Of all his achievements in teaching at USC, perhaps the most significant has been his creation of an extraordinarily innovative and successful GE course in chemistry designed for non-science majors, Chem. 203Lg "Chemistry in Life: AIDS Drug Discovery and Development". The course, which rapidly grew from under 20 to over 240 students, presents scientific principles underlying molecular approaches to diagnosis and treatment of diseases using specific models (e.g. AIDS) within a societal context, and attracts an extraordinary diversity of students.
	Gerard Medioni, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering He is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He is also Chairman of the Computer Science Department, co-director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS), and co-director of the USC Games Institute. Laying at the core of his research are automatic analysis of imagery, still, video, stereo, and infrared, this field known as “Computer Vision” or “Image Understanding”. Prof. Medioni is also interested in establishing bridges between Computer Vision and Computer Graphics. Stemming from these interests is technology that was licensed by Pasadena start-up, Big Stage. This new technology gives users the ability to create a digital 3D avatar of themselves and use it in all forms of digital content. Dr. Medioni has created a way for an interactive media user to place themselves in the action, which will be made available to the public in the second quarter of 2008.
	Tony Michaels, Professor of Biological Sciences and Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies Professor Michaels' basic research interests are related to ocean biogeochemistry, particularly at the regional and global scales. Professor Michaels' has a particular interest in Acantharia and their symbionts which extend to any groups of organisms that have special "tricks" that make them play a unique role in ocean ecosystems. Professor Michaels' current research interest includes environmental risks and how the science of risk is used to make decisions in business and society. Additionally, Dr. Michaels is working with universities around the United States and abroad to try to improve the quality and stature of academic environmental programs through the creation of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors.
	Louis-Philippe Morency, Research Scientist, Institute for Creative Technologies Morency has been named one of “AI’s 10 to Watch” by the journal IEEE Intelligent Systems. He is a leader of the non-verbal behaviors project at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, and admits to a lifelong fascination with observing the ways people communicate without speaking. His interest in interactions has led him to some groundbreaking research and innovations in the areas of computer vision, human-computer interaction, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Morency developed WATSON, a real-time library for visual feedback recognition in use at hundreds of labs and institutions worldwide. WATSON not only helps robots and virtual humans identify movement, but it also helps them anticipate when a gesture is likely to happen.
	Krishna Nayak, Assistant Professor, Min Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering Krishna S. Nayak is the laboratory director of the Magnetic Resonance Engineering Lab at USC. The Magnetic Resonance Engineering Laboratory (MREL) is dedicated to advancing state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging using magnetic resonance, by developing new imaging techniques geared towards in-vivo clinical and research applications.
	Nouri Neamati, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences Dr. Neamati is the recipient of several awards including the NIH Technology Transfer Award in 2000, STOP CANCER Award in 2001, GlaxoSmithKline Drug Discovery Award in 2002, and DOD Concept Award in 2005. Dr. Neamati has published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers, 8 book chapters and holds 14 patents. He is an associate editor of Current Anticancer Drug Targets. He is a member of the editorial advisory boards for Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, Recent Patents on Anticancer Drug Discovery and Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs.
	George Olah, Distinguished Professor and Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry Dr. George Olah is one of the world's leading scholars of hydrocarbon chemistry. He is a Professor in Organic Chemistry in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Professor George Olah received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for groundbreaking work on superacids and his observations of carbocations, and is a pioneering force in the chemical efforts for cleaner air. Prof. Olah devised a way to keep the transient carbocations around long enough to study their properties. What he found has revolutionized understanding of organic chemistry, leading to new discoveries, new fields of research and countless applications. Prof. Olah researches a wide range of synthetic and mechanistic organic chemistry with emphasis on hydrocarbon chemistry.
	Martin Pera, Professor at the Keck School of Medicine Martin Pera, an internationally renowned expert in the development of human embryonic stem cells and the control of growth and differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, has been named director of the newly created Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM) at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Pera had a number of inventions from the Australian Stem Cell Centre and the University of Melbourne, where he was previously.
	Cyrus Shahabi, Associate Professor at USC Computer Science Department Cyrus Shahabi is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the Information Laboratory (InfoLAB) at the Computer Science Department and also a Research Area Director at the NSF's Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the University of Southern California. He has two books and more than one-hundred articles, book chapters, and conference papers in the areas of databases, GIS and multimedia. He is currently an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS) and on the editorial board of ACM Computers in Entertainment magazine. Dr. Shahabi is co-founder and CTO of the Geosemble Technologies. Geosemble is a partially-owned subsidiary of Fetch Technologies. Geosemble Technologies provides technology for automatically and accurately extracting intelligence from a range of map and satellite image sources.
	Wei-Chiang Shen, Professor of Pharmacology Dr. Shen is developing treatments that involve the combination of growth factors and other molecules that permit new methods of drug delivery for biologics. He was recently featured on the cover of USC Pharmacy Magazine in a story entitled “Drugs of the Future: Envisioning the Cures of Tomorrow.” His recent work has attracted licensing interest (Acorn Biomedical), and he is a serial inventor.
	Kirk Shung, Professor of Biomedical Engineering Professor Shung currently conducts research primarily in the area of high frequency ultrasonic imaging and transducer development supported by an NIH National Resource Grant on transducer technology. Its thrust is on developing high frequency ultrasonic transducers and arrays which with improved spatial resolution are and can be used for dermatological, ophthalmological and intravascular imaging and small animal imaging.
	Lowell Stott, Professor of Earth Sciences Professor Stott research attempts to understand what factors have governed the behavior of Earth's climate through time. Climate history is reconstructed from geologic archives such as marine sediments, speloethems (cave deposits), living and fossil trees and other types of archives the contain climate information. These paleo-archives incorporate a geochemical signature that reflects environmental conditions at a particular site at the time the archive was formed. Stott's research group at USC is currently involved in studies that seek to reconstruct climate information from sites located within western tropical Pacific (Indonesia ), India and China in an effort to quantify how ocean and atmospheric changes during the past 30,000 years influenced monsoon precipitation.
	Mark Thompson, Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science Mark Thompson is also the co-director of the USC Provost’s Biomedical Nanoscience Initiative. Thompson’s pioneering accomplishments extend to both research and teaching. He recently created the General Education course “Chemistry in the Environment, Energy and Society,” in which students use chemistry to learn about the origins of pressing social problems, such as air pollution, global warming, the ozone layer, clean water and genetic engineering. The hallmark of Thompson’s research is the combination of imaginative fundamental studies of the chemistry of materials and how they can be applied for use in flat panel displays, including cell phones and digital cameras, and biocompatible implants in the human body. He is forging into exciting interdisciplinary fields including solar energy conversion. Since arriving at USC in 1995, he has published 125 articles in refereed journals and secured 45 patents.
	Priya Vashishta, Professor of Computer Science, Material Science and Physics Priya Vashishta is the Director of the Collaboratory for Advances Computing and Simulations. He along with his other colleagues – Rajiv Kalia and Aiichiro Nakano – joined USC in September 2002. They have multidisciplinary appointments in the School of Engineering and College of Letter, Art and Sciences. Vashishta was the Cray Research Professor of Computational Sciences at the Louisiana State University since 1990. He is the founding Director of the Concurrent Computing Laboratory for Materials Simulations at LSU. The Laboratory established a unique dual degree program where students can obtain a Ph.D. in Physical Sciences & Engineering and M.S. from the Department of Computer Sciences in five years.
	Alan Willner, Professor of Electrical Engineering Dr. Willner is a Professor of Electrical Engineering - Systems at the University of Southern California. He is the Associate Director for the USC Center for Photonics Technology, is Co-Director of the USC Communications Sciences Institute, and was an Associate Director for Student Affairs for the NSF Engineering Research Center in Multimedia. Prof. Willner has served on several scientific advisory boards for small companies.
	Carolee J. Winstein, Professor of Biokinesioloty and Physical Therapy Carolee J. Winstein, Ph.D, PT, FAPTA is a movement scientist and academic physical therapist. She directs the Motor Behavior and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory and is Director of Research for the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Neurology, USC Keck School of Medicine where she also has several ongoing collaborations. Nationally and internationally, she is best known for work concerned with the functional neural and behavioral basis of motor control and learning and its relationship to neurorehabilitation. She has published extensively on scientifically derived neurorehabilitation approaches to enhance recovery and repair after adult onset stroke.
	Detlof von Winterfeldt, Professor and Director of Homeland Security for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events Dr. Detlof von Winterfeldt is the Director of CREATE. He is a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering and a Professor of Public Policy and Management at the School of Policy, Planning and Development. He is an expert in decision and risk analysis with particular interest in the application of these fields to environmental, technology, and safety problems.
	Mike Zyda, Professor of Computer Science Michael Zyda is the Director of the USC GamePipe Laboratory, and a Professor of Engineering Practice in the USC Department of Computer Science. At USC, he created the BS in Computer Science (Games) and MS in Computer Science (Game Development) cross-disciplinary degree programs and doubled the incoming undergraduate enrollment of the Computer Science Department. Professor Zyda's research interests include computer graphics, large-scale, networked 3D virtual environments, agent-based simulation, modeling human and organizational behavior, interactive computer-generated story, computer-generated characters, video production, entertainment/defense collaboration, modeling and simulation, and serious and entertainment games. He is a pioneer in the fields of computer graphics, networked virtual environments, modeling and simulation, and serious games.