Faculty News

New Directions
Xiaobing Tang, professor of East Asian languages and cultures, was the recipient of a 2005 Mellon New Directions Fellowship grant. Tang, who teaches and conducts research in 20th century Chinese literature, art, intellectual history and public culture, used the grant to study the art of printmaking at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts.

PINK Names Top Cancer Researchers
PINK magazine has selected geneticist Susan Forsburg, professor of biological sciences, as one of the top nine women in cancer research. An elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who has been recognized by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and an American Cancer Society grantee, Forsburg studies the control of the cell cycle — specifically how chromosomes are duplicated and segregated — in a remarkable yeast model she helped to pioneer. “Since an underlying cause of cancer is uncontrolled cell division, [Forsburg’s] work is the underpinning for other scientific pursuits,” PINK reported in its June/July 2006 issue.

Elinor Accampo’s New Book:
Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit
Historian and gender studies scholar Elinor Accampo’s new book, Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit: Nelly Roussel and The Politics of Female Pain in Third Republic France, was recently published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The book combines Accampo’s scholarly interests in French social and cultural history and the relationship between feminism and reproductive rights, providing a biography of Roussel (1878–1922), a French feminist and birth control advocate.

A Pathfinder in Foreign Policy
Patrick James has been named the Distinguished Scholar in Foreign Policy Analysis for the International Studies Association, 2006–07. The award is given annually for lifetime achievement in the study of foreign policy. James, a professor of international relations, will be honored for the award during a panel discussion of his career at the ISA conference in Chicago in spring 2007.

Medieval Monasticism
Lori Meeks, assistant professor of religion and East Asian languages and cultures, is spending the 2006-07 academic year in Japan, thanks to a Social Science Research Council/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. During the fellowship, she plans to complete a book on nuns and nunneries in medieval Japan (tentatively titled Days of Song and Prayer: Hokkeji and the Reinvention of Female Monasticism in Medieval Japan). She also plans to start a new project on Buddhist and Christian evangelism in contemporary Asia.

On the Move
Archaeologist Anne Porter’s research into the way people lived and governed themselves in the Near East 5,000 years ago is receiving much attention. Recently in Lyon, France, she spoke on the relationship between chronology, social collapse and the emergence of the Amorites. Porter, an assistant professor of religion, art history and classics, has been invited to give lectures on death and burial practices at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, La Sapienza University in Rome and Stanford University, as well as at the Los Angeles Biblical Archaeology Society and the California Museum of Ancient Art.
Quality of Life
Philippa Levine, professor of history, has been awarded a grant from the Borchard Foundation Center on Law and Aging. The foundation’s mission is to help improve the quality of life for elderly people.

First Tribulation, Then Triumph
Donald Miller's nomination of the AOCM, an association that organizes children orphaned by the Rwandan genocide, has helped the organization secure the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child (WCPRC).
More than 6,000 children are part of the AOCM and help each other with food, clothes, schooling, housing and healthcare. The $40,000 WCPRC award will be used to rebuild homes that were destroyed in the 1994 genocide.

Miller, professor of religion and sociology, met AOCM founder Naphtal Ahishakiye, whose entire family was killed in the genocide, at a conference three years ago. Deeply moved by Ahishakiye’s story and determined to assist the AOCM, Miller returned to Rwanda several times to document survivors’ stories. Last summer, Miller returned to Rwanda for the ninth time in four years to conclude a study on how nongovernmental organizations are assisting genocide survivors in Rwanda as part of a grant from the Templeton Foundation through the Metanexus Institute.

Faster is Better
Chemist Chongwu Zhou’s research on carbon nanotubes, which have the potential to make faster computer circuits than silicon-based nanotubes, was highlighted in the April issue of Scientific American.

Nobel Laureate Cites Need for Partnership
Chemist and Nobel Laureate George A. Olah addressed 45 students who traveled from China and eight other countries to receive M.B.A. degrees from the global executive M.B.A. program offered by USC Marshall School of Business in collaboration with Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. The program was created for managers seeking a U.S.-style M.B.A. education, and also serves USC’s large alumni base in Asia. During his commencement speech, Olah commented on the close relationship between science and business: “It is as important to create a viable product as it is to properly develop a sound economic and marketing strategy for it. That is why scientists and business people must work together to solve our energy problems.”

Energy Efficiency Wins Prize
The Society for Information Display has awarded the Jan Rajchman Prize to Mark Thompson, professor and chair of chemistry, and Thompson’s research partner Stephen R. Forrest of the University of Michigan for their research on organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, technology. Thompson and Forrest’s work led to the discovery of phosphorescent OLED technology, which makes cell-phone, TV and other displays more energy-efficient. The Rajchman prize is awarded for an outstanding technical achievement in or contribution to research on flat panel displays.

Leader of the Small World
Robert Bau, professor of chemistry, has been elected president of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA). The ACA works to promote interactions among scientists who study matter at the atomic level. Bau formerly served as vice president of the association.

Starr Named to National Library Board
The U.S. Senate recently confirmed the presidential nomination of historian Kevin Starr to serve on the National Museum and Library Services Board. The 24-member board advises the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent agency that is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s museums and libraries. Starr, a University Professor who is state librarian emeritus of California, is one of five new members appointed and will serve on the board through 2009. Starr was also recently elected to chair the USC Libraries Committee, a permanently sitting faculty advisory council.

Innovative USC College Professors
USC College professors earned five of 11 awards presented by the USC Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching. The fund, administered by the USC Provost’s Office and the Center for Excellence in Teaching (CET), received 21 proposals, each of which reflected “the desire to stay in touch with how students learn and what they need to succeed,” CET Director Danielle Mihram said. Award-winning USC College faculty members were:
Jack Feinberg, professor of physics and electrical engineering, for “Physics of Art and Medicine,” a variant of an introductory physics course that helps students discover the principles of physics through experiments in both medicine and art.

Albert Herrera and William McClure, professors of biological sciences, to pilot a redesign of “General Biology: Cell Biology and Physiology” — a class of over 300 students. In the redesigned course, the professors will replace large lectures with videotaped presentations of the basic course material, and lead smaller groups of students in expanded discussion sections.

Philippa Levine, professor of history, for “The Evolution Debates.” Students in the course participate in staged discussions recreating earlier arguments in the centuries-old debate on evolution. Levine has also incorporated wiki and other technologies into the course.

Megan O’Neil, assistant professor of art history, for “History of World Arts in Los Angeles.” Instead of students viewing slides of art, this survey of global artistic traditions takes students to objects and buildings in Los Angeles.

Mathematicians Gary Rosen, Cymra Haskell, Chunming Wang and Mohammed Ziane for “Freshman Calculus as a Laboratory Science: Training in the Mathematical Sciences for the 21st Century,” which integrates computers into freshman calculus, using real-world problems in finance, forensic science, biology, music and art.

Scholar, Citizen, Scientist
The Gerontological Society of America has bestowed its prestigious Donald P. Kent Award upon Margaret Gatz, professor of psychology, gerontology and preventive medicine. The award recognizes the scholar “who best exemplifies the highest standards for professional leadership in gerontology through teaching, service and interpretation of gerontology to the larger society.” Gatz is well known for her studies of dementia in Swedish twins, which look at risk and protective factors for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. She aims to identify and publicize lifestyle changes that improve the chances of living a dementia-free old age. Gatz also leads the College’s graduate program in clinical psychology and aging, one of the few U.S. programs of its kind. She will deliver the Kent Lecture at the 2007 society’s annual meeting.

Physicist, Playwright Partner
Clifford Johnson, professor of physics, and Oliver Mayer, assistant professor
of theater, received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Initiative to develop their one-act draft of Dark Matters into a
full-length play. The play is about two particle physicists and a musician. Actors Marlene Forte, Tony Plana and Gregory Itzin performed stage readings of the play at the Pasadena Playhouse in July.

2006 PEN Literary Award
In December, Percival Everett, professor of English, received the 2006 PEN Literary Award in fiction for his novel Wounded (Graywolf, 2005). “Wounded is a brilliant re-imagining of the Western and a sophisticated examination of race and sexuality, done with exemplary finesse and lack of pretentiousness,” the judges said. “Everett’s beautiful and remarkably economical prose style packs an enormous amount of action and emotional development into a small number of pages.” Everett is the author of 16 books, including American Desert, Erasure and Glyph. PEN Center USA began the annual awards in 10 categories in 1982.