Eric M. Friedlander
Visiting Professor, Mathematics
Ph.D., Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1970
Current Institution: Northwestern University

Eric M. Friedlander is the Henry S. Noyes Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern University. His research interests include algebraic K-theory and representation theory, work for which he has been awarded a Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, invitation to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Susan Friedlander
Visiting Professor, Mathematics
Ph.D., Mathematics, Princeton, 1972
Current Institution: University of Illinois at Chicago

Susan Friedlander’s research has focused on mathematical fluid dynamics and partial differential equations. For her joint work on instabilities in fluid motion, she received the medal of the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris. She is currently the chief editor of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.

Steven Regeser Lopez
Professor, Psychology
Ph.D., Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1983
Previous Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Steven R. Lopez brings a cultural perspective to the study of mental illness, assessment and intervention. He studies how family factors influence the course of schizophrenia, particularly for Mexican-Americans. His research team has developed a model of cultural competence for clinical practice, which they are currently testing with support from the National Institute of Mental Health.

Jin Ma
Professor, Mathematics
Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Minnesota, 1992
Previous Institution: Purdue University

A distinguished scholar, Jin Ma has published extensively on stochastic control theory, analysis and differential equations. Ma’s research has been applied widely to option pricing, hedging, portfolio optimizations, stochastic recursive utilities, term structure of interest rates, risk measures and other areas of mathematical finance. His other interests include insurance models, credit risk and nonlinear filtering.

Sergey Nuzhdin
Professor, Biological Sciences
Ph.D., Genetics, Institute of Molecular Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
Previous Institution: University of California, Davis

Sergey Nuzhdin explores molecular evolution in a wide range of model systems, from fruit flies and mosquitoes to plants. He studies how new species form, including the role of ecological adaptation and the genes involved, and the origin and maintenance of genetic variation. Using quantitative, computational and model-based methods, he has shed light on the genetics of complex traits.

Ange-Marie Hancock
Associate Professor, Political Science
Ph.D., Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2000
Previous Institution: Yale University

Ange-Marie Hancock is a social welfare, education, and diversity (race/ethnicity and gender) policy specialist who has taught and spoken across the United States and in China. She just finished her second book manuscript, The Double Consciousness of the Pariah: Hannah Arendt and W.E.B. DuBois in Conversation.

Francille Rusan Wilson
Associate Professor
Ph.D., American History, University of Pennsylvania, 1988
Previous Institution: University of Maryland, College Park

Francille Rusan Wilson is an intellectual and labor historian whose research examines the intersections between black labor movements, black social scientists and black women’s history in the Jim Crow era. Her next book focuses on lawyer and economist Sadie T.M. Alexander and the impact of racism and sexism on working black women in the early 20th century.

Frank Alber
Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Ph.D., Computational Biochemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 1998
Previous Institution: University of California, San Francisco

Frank Alber brings expertise in computational chemistry to studies of cellular proteins and macromolecular assemblies. His work has led to the characterization of the structures of large cellular assemblies such as the nuclear pore complex. At USC, he will study the structure, function and dynamics of protein complexes to shed light on fundamental cellular processes.

David Albertson
Assistant Professor, Religion
Ph.D., Theology, University of Chicago, 2007
Previous Institution: University of Chicago

Historical theologian David Albertson specializes in the late medieval/early modern era, focusing on Christian thought and ethics. His dissertation examined the work of 15th century German cardinal and polymath Nicolaus Cusanus. Albertson received a Fulbright Fellowship to study last year at the University of Cologne in Germany.

Jay Bartroff
Assistant Professor, Mathematics
Ph.D., Mathematics, California Institute of Technology, 2004
Previous Institution: University of California, Riverside

Jay Bartroff focuses on statistics and probability, particularly within the context of biomedical research. He studies sequential analysis, experimental design, adaptive clinical trials and multistage hypothesis testing. At USC, he plans to develop new computational algorithms to derive optimal designs with applications to dose-finding studies for novel cancer treatments, medical diagnostic tests and educational testing.

Richard Brutchey
Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Ph.D., Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, 2005
Previous Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara

A synthetic inorganic chemist who has worked at the boundaries of materials science and biology, Richard Brutchey seeks to create and synthesize new nanoscale materials that will more efficiently catalyze chemical reactions in environmentally friendly ways. He has found novel methods of making useful nanoscale materials at low temperature that require less energy than previous methods.

Tansu Celikel
Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscience, La Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Avanzati, 2001
Previous Institution: Max Planck Institute for Medical Research

Neuroscientist Tansu Celikel is adept in a wide range of experimental methods that allow him to study brain function and plasticity, including what happens during learning and memory. He has mapped a part of the rodent brain called the somatosensory cortex using simultaneous electrophysiological recordings from hundreds of neurons throughout the cortex.

Roberto Delgado
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D., Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University, 2003
Previous Institution: Hunter College, City University of New York

Primatologist and USC College alumnus Roberto Delgado specializes in studying the complex interplay between an animal’s behavior and its environment, with a focus on social organization, vocalizations and mate selection. He’s pursued fieldwork on orangutans and langurs in Indonesia, howling monkeys in Costa Rica and marmosets in Brazil, among others.

Sarah Feakins
Assistant Professor, Earth Sciences
Ph.D., Geology, Columbia University, 2006
Previous Institution: California Institute of Technology

Sarah Feakins combines geological and biological methods to better understand the intertwined histories of the planet’s environment, climate and life. She specializes in using molecular and isotopic geochemical techniques to detect “biomarkers” (molecular signatures of life preserved in layers of ancient sedimentary rock), which she can use to reconstruct patterns of ecological, environmental and climatic change.

Edwin Hill
Assistant Professor, French
Ph.D., French and Francophone Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2007
Previous Institutions: Getty Research Institute and University of California, Los Angeles

Edwin Hill’s research centers on the literature, music and culture of the French-speaking West Indies, as well as contemporary work by Caribbean, sub-Saharan Francophone and African-American writers and musicians. His dissertation, “Black Soundscapes White Stages: The Meaning of Sound in the Francophone Black Atlantic,” explores Antillean music and literature from the 1920s to 1960s.

Dana Johnson
Assistant Professor, English
M.F.A., Creative Writing, Indiana University, 2000
Previous Institution: University of California, Riverside

USC alumna Dana Johnson’s fiction examines the intersection of race and class, focusing on the complexities of African-American identity in post-civil rights era America. Her teaching interests include creative nonfiction and issues of race, class and gender. Johnson is the author of the award-winning story collection Break Any Woman Down (University of Georgia Press, 2001).

Sean Roberts
Assistant Professor, Art History
Ph.D., History of Art, University of Michigan, 2006
Previous Institution: Tufts University

Sean Roberts’ research focuses on early modern books, maps and images, and their currency as visual culture in the Mediterranean world. He studies the relationships between the histories of science, art and ideology across Europe from the 15th to 18th centuries. He is currently investigating the 16th century Venetian painter Tintoretto’s depictions of Egyptians, Turks and black Africans.

Biing-Jiun Shen
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Ph.D., Clinical Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001
Previous Institution: University of Miami

Biing-Jiun Shen explores the link between psychosocial factors (such as emotional distress, stress and coping) and the development and progression of cardiovascular disease. He applies advanced statistical techniques to the interrelationships among psychological characteristics, psychophysiological factors and disease outcome to identify psychological variables that can lead to — or help ameliorate — heart disease.

Travis Williams
Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Ph.D., Organic Chemistry, Stanford, 2005
Previous Institution: California Institute of Technology

Travis Williams is interested in developing more efficient ways to produce pharmaceuticals by designing new reactions for complex molecule synthesis. He is working on creating highly simplified analogs of the tris(oxazole) macrolide family of marine natural products, which have attracted interest as potential new cancer treatments.

Louis Goldstein
Professor, Linguistics
Ph.D., Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977
Previous Institution: Yale University

Louis Goldstein specializes in phonetics and phonology and studies the “dance of the tongue.” This is composed of movements or “gestures” of the vocal tract organs that we employ when we communicate using speech. The gestures are the same from language to language but each language orchestrates them according to its own scheme. He studies these speech gestures in the laboratory and uses the resulting knowledge to build a comprehensive “talking head” computer model.

Manuel Pastor
Professor, Geography and American Studies and Ethnicity
Ph.D., Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1984
Previous Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz

Manuel Pastor focuses his research on themes of social inequality both in the U.S. and abroad. His research on U.S. urban issues has generally focused on the labor market and social conditions facing low-income urban communities. He recently teamed with Chris Benner and Laura Leete to write Staircases or Treadmills? Labor Market Intermediaries and Economic Opportunity in a Changing Economy (Russell Sage Press, 2007).

Andrew Curtis
Associate Professor, Geography
Ph.D., Geography, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995
Previous Institution: Louisiana State University

As director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Remote Sensing and GIS for Public Health, Andrew Curtis specializes in computer cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial patterns in medical geography, spatial distribution of anthrax, reducing infant mortality, GIS and epidemics in history, GIS in bioterrorism response and emergency response mapping. In 2005–2006, Curtis focused much of his time on search-and-rescue and recovery operations related to Hurricane Katrina.

Maarten van Delden
Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 1990
Previous Institution: Rice University

Maarten van Delden specializes in Latin American and comparative literature, with a focus on Mexico. His current research interests are literary and cultural relations between Mexico and the United States, the Spanish American novel and international modernism, and “culture wars” in 20th century Spanish America. He is co-author of a forthcoming book entitled Gunshots at the Fiesta: Literature and Politics in Latin America.