British Scholars Join USC Faculty

<p>Bumped for students learning more about SC faculty…</p>

<p>Dr. Lucio Soibelman has been named the new Chairman of the Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Viterbi. Professor Soibelman came to SC from Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor. He earned his Ph.D. at MIT. </p>

<p>Among many honors he has received the National Science Foundation Career Award and the 2010 ASCA Computing in Civil Engineering Award. Professor Soibelman is Co-Chief Editor of ASCA Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.</p>

<p>The Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering will add three new faculty. </p>

<p>Dr. Ben Reichardt–New Assistant Professor
Ph. D. Univ. of California at Berkeley
Post Doctoral Fellow at Cal Tech
Comes to SC from Univ. of Waterloo</p>

<p>Dr. Wei Wu–Associate Professor
Ph.D. Princeton University
Comes to SC from HP labs where he was Senior Scientist
Author of numerous articles and holds 49 patents</p>

<p>Dr. Mahta Maghaddam–Professor of EE
Ph. D. Univ. of Illinois
Comes to SC from the Univ. of Illinois
She has received various honors and awards and is a Fellow of IEEE</p>

<p>Suzanne Hudson will join the faculty in Dornsife for the fall of 2012. </p>

<p>Dr. Suzanne Hudson—Asst. Professor of Art History
Ph. D. Princeton Univ.
Post Doctoral Fellow at the Whitney Museum</p>

<p>She has written numerous articles in the field and has been a visiting faculty member.</p>

<p>Bumped for new freshmen…,</p>

<p>David Peng, M.D., M.P.H, named chair of Department of Dermatology at the USC Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Peng comes to SC from the Stanford University School of Medicine where he held the positions of Chief of Stanford Dermatology Clinics, Director of the Department of Dermatology Residency Training Program and Director of the Medical Dermatology Program. Dr. Peng is a Fellow of the American Contact Dermatitis Society.</p>

<p>Dr. Peng is considered to be a widely respected authority on melanoma and inpatient dermatological care. He is currently the co-investigator for a major NIH Environmental Health Sciences funded study in the field of dermatology.</p>

<p>Peng had previously been on the faculty at Keck from 2004-2009. He remarked, “Returning to USC represents a dream come true.”</p>

<p>Professor M. Hashem Pesaran, noted British economist, will now be a full time professor at USC. He is considered a leading expert of applied econometrics. Dr. Pesaran was Professor of Economics at Trinity College at Cambridge. At SC he holds the John Elliott Chair in Economics.</p>

<p>At Cambridge he received various honors:</p>

<p>Professional Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Fellow of the British Academy
Fellow of the Econometric Society
Fellow of the Journal of Econometrics
Holder of the George Sell Prize
Holder of the Royal Economic Society Prize</p>

<p>He is the founding editor of the Journal of Applied Econometrics and a co-developer of Microfit. Dr. Pesaran has been a consultant to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
His work has been published in more than 150 academic journals. He is the author of 16 books</p>

<p>USC has named Dr. Darious Lakdawalla as the first holder of the Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation. He has a joint appointment in the Price School of Public Policy and the USC School of Pharmacy. He will also be Director of Research at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.</p>

<p>Professor Lakdawalla comes to SC from the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as a former Director of Research at the Bing Center at the RAND Corporation.</p>

<p>Other honors include the Milken Institute’s Distinguished Economic Research Award and the Garfield Prize. His work has been published in leading journals of health policy. </p>

<p>Professor Lakdawalla received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.</p>

<p>Professor Jacob Soll has joined the faculty at the Dornsife School of LAS. Dr. Soll is a noted professor of history and accounting. He received his Ph.D. from Magdalene College, Cambridge University. His present position is Professor of History at USC.</p>

<p>Dr. Soll has a long list of honors. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009. He has been a Trinity College, Cambridge and European Institute visiting professor. He is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Luso-American Foundation Fellowship and Rotary Club Study Abroad Fellowship. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.</p>

<p>Professor Soll has received the Forkosch Prize and the Jacques Barzun Prize. He is the author of two books, essays and many journal articles in his field.</p>

<p>Professor Berislav Slokovic, formerly Director of the Center for Neurodegenerative and Brain Vascular Disorders at the Univ. of Rochester Medical Center, has returned to the USC Keck School of Medicine. At Rochester he was Dean’s Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Project.</p>

<p>At Keck Dr. Slokovic will be Director for the Center for Neurodegeneration Institute and chair the department of physiology. He is a prolific author of more than 250 articles. He has received numerous awards for his research including the Javits Award and membership in the Academy of Neurology. He completed fellowships at Queen Elizabeth College and at King’s College, London.</p>

<p>Joining him in Los Angeles will be his wife, Zora Mihailovich, a renowned concert pianist.</p>

<p>Che-Yen Chen has joined the USC Thornton School of Music faculty. His talents add to an already distringuished strings faculty. Chen will be teaching talented viola students. Midori Oto is chair of the strings department at Thornton and holds the Jascha Heifetz Chair of Violincello.</p>

<p>Mr. Chen is a founding member of the Formosa Quartet, recipient of the Amadeus Prize. He was also first prize winner of the William Primrose Viola Competition and the winner of the Tertis Viola Competition. He has performed across the U.S. and abroad, including the Library of Congress and the Snape Malting Concert Hall in Britain.</p>

<p>He has been a member of the Avalon String Quartet and was on the faculty of the Indiana Univ. School of Music. Chen received his Master’s degree from the Julliard School where he studied with Paul Neubaurer.</p>

<p>Correction:</p>

<p>Paul Neubauer</p>

<p>Dr. John Hawthorne will join the SC faculty in the Dornsife School of LAS. He is the Wayneflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University currently. Dr. Hawthorne will be teaching classes at both Oxford and USC. At SC he will be Professor of Philosophy.</p>

<p>2013…</p>

<p>There are many new scholars who have joined the SC faculty. I am just catching up on the new list.</p>

<p>The USC School of Architecture has added Dr. Alison Hirsch to the faculty. Hirsh is from New York. Her research focuses on public histories of urban settings. She received her BA in Art History from Wesleyan Univ., an MLA and MS in Heritage Conservation from Univ. of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Architecture, also from Univ. of Pennsylvania.</p>

<p>Alexander Robinson will be an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture. He is the Director of the Morphologies Laboratory. He received his BA from Swarthmore and his MLA from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.</p>

<p>Dr. Arthur Toga will join the USC faculty this summer. He comes to SC from UCLA where he directed the neuroimaging laboratory. He was the Associate Dean of the Geffen School of Medicine, Associate Vice-Provost of Informatics at UCLA. He was the founding editor of Neuroimage Journal. Dr. Toga served as past director of admissions for the graduate neuroscience program and is now on the advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.</p>

<p>Dr. Toga earned his B.S. in Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Massachusettes, his M.S. in Neuroscience from St. Louis University, Cum Laude. His Ph.D.in Neuroscience was received from St. Louis University. His awards include the Smithsonian Award, Telly Award, Communication Award, Di Chino Award and the SPIE cum laude Award.</p>

<p>Another Oxford alumnus will join the SC faculty. Dr. Paul Thompson received his B.A. from Oxford in Greek and Latin Languages, a First. He earned his M.A., also from Oxford, in Classical Languages with Honors. Later he earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA. Dr. Thompson has been a Fulbright Scholar and received the Hughes Fellowship and the Turken Award. He was elected to the American Neurologic Association. Awards include the Young Investigator Award and the Erdieson Award for Neuroscience Research</p>

<p>Correction: Title should read: More in 2013</p>

<p>Here’s more about Toga and Thompson -</p>

<p>[USC</a> made its offer to neuroscientists a no-brainer - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-usc-ucla-recruit-20130518,0,725550.story]USC”>USC made its offer to neuroscientists a no-brainer)</p>

<p>Dr. John Liu will serve as the new Director of the Spine Division at USC Keck School of Medicine. He is considered a pioneer in complex minimally invasive surgical techniques.
Dr. Liu, a board certified neurosurgeon, was the Vice Chairman of Spine Services at Cedas-Sinai. His research interests are in scoliosis and spinal cord injuries.</p>

<p>John Liu received his MD from UCLA and completed his residency and fellowship at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. He is a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserves and has received three medals from the Army, including the Army Achievement Medal for Meritorious Service.</p>

<p>Dr. Frank Acosta will join the faculty at the Keck School of Medicine as an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery. He has also been at Cedars-Sinai, had a clinical practice and conducted research projects on the spine and diagnosis of spinal disorders funded by the National Institute of Health.</p>

<p>Dr. Acosta received his BS in chemistry from Harvard University and his MD from Harvard Medical School. His internship and residency in neurosurgery was at UC San Francisco. He earned a fellowship in complex spinal surgery at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.</p>

<p>Dornsife has added new faculty to the school both from the United States and abroad.</p>

<p>Dr. Joshua Aizenman will hold the Dockson Chair in Economics and International Relations.
Ph.D. from Univ. of Chicago in Economics
He was the Champion Chair of International Economics at Dartmouth. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research.</p>

<p>Dr. Jamal Ali
Associate Professor (Teaching) of Arabic
Ph.D. UCLA in Arabic
He has written books about the Arabic language and history of Arabic linguistic thought. He received the CASA Fellowship and the CASA III Fellowship twice. Dr. Ali previously was associated with the Univ. of Pennsylvania and City Univ. of New York.</p>

<p>Dr. Sami Assaf
Gabilan Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Ph.D. in Mathematics at Univ. of California at Berkeley
Dr. Assaf’s interests are in symmetric function theory and algebraic geometry. She has received two grants from the AWM and was honored with the Herb Alexander Prize. She was awarded a NSFoundation Mathematical Science Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. Her recent associations have been with MIT and Univ. of Pennsylvania.</p>

<p>Dr. Andrew Bacon
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D. in Philosophy, Oxford University
His interests include metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophical logic. His work has been widely published. At Oxford he received the John Locke Prize, the Wykeham Scholarship and the Ryle Prize. In 2010 he was named a Prize Fellow at Oxford’s Magdalen College.</p>