Dear Colleagues,
You inspire me every day through your contributions that enhance our impact as a leading global research institution that drives positive social, economic, cultural, and environmental change.
In June, 11 USC researchers will be inducted as senior members of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) at the 13th Annual NAI Conference, where their remarkable innovations impacting society will be honored. This cohort of USC inductees will be the largest in any single year and offers yet another example of our global impact.
You have my deepest gratitude for your constant and enthusiastic work. I hope you will enjoy the summer and the fruits that it will bring for your scholarship. Thank you for reading this month’s update.
With gratitude,
Ishwar K. Puri, Senior Vice President, Research & Innovation
FACULTY ENGAGEMENT: Congratulations to our awardees! We are happy to announce the latest awardees of USC Research and Innovation (R&I) award programs:
President’s Sustainability Initiative Award (PSIA): Professor Elias Picazo (Dornsife College), Developing and Understanding Sustainable Iron-Catalyzed Reactions; Professors Bryan Tysinger, Santina Contreras and Adam Rose (Sol Price), Petros Ioannou (VSOE), and Rob McConnell (KSOM), Alleviating health inequities from air pollution in the Gateway Cities Region: An evidence-based, community-engaged and interdisciplinary approach; Professors Sergey Nuzhdin, James Moffett, Joe Árvai, Diane Kim and Jessica Dutton (Dornsife College), Sun-kissed solutions: harnessing sunflowers for practical nickel extraction and soil restoration; Professors Maral Mousavi, Daniel McCurry, Meisam Razaviyayn (VSOE), Elias Picazo (Dornsife College) and Steven Siegel (KSOM), Sustaining a healthy population through early detection and frequent monitoring: A one-stop green fabrication of versatile affordable diagnostics; Professors Alexander Robinson (School of Architecture); Mitul Luhar and Gale Lucas (VSOE), and Andreas Kratky (School of Cinematic Arts), Inclusive data-driven design for sustainable and climate resilient infrastructure; Professors Noah Malmstadt (VSOE) and Richard Brutchey (Dornsife College), Sustainable nanomanufacturing: Discovering solvent waste-free routes to manufacturing nanomaterials for renewable energy applications; Professors Steven Nutt (VSOE), and Travis Williams (Dornsife College), Recycling Composites to Sustain the Growth of Wind Energy.
Instrumentation Award: Professor Yali Dou (KSOM), Application to acquire instrumentation for an automated high throughput screening platform; Professor Rehan Kapadia (VSOE), Cryogenic deep reactive ion etcher; and Professor Janos Peti-Peterdi (KSOM), Multimodal intravital microscope for USC shared resource.
Generative AI: Professor Xiaohui Chen (Dornsife College) and Professor Quntao Zhang (Viterbi), Quantum Empowered Generative Artificial Intelligence; Professor Hosung Kim and Postdoc Yaqiong Chai (KSOM) and Professor Michael Khoo (VSOE), Simulation of realistic motion artifacts and correction of motion-affected MRI Images via a conditional diffusion probabilistic model; Professor Paul Thompson (KSOM) and Professor Anand Joshi (VSOE), Generative AI-Based Tractometry to Reveal Brain Fiber Tract Abnormalities in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease; Professor Ruishan Liu (VSOE), Large Language Models-Based AI Solutions for Clinical Trial Enrollment and Design.
SBIR/STTR Award: Professors Eunji Chung and Yi Huang (VSOE), and Mohamed Abou-el-Enein (KSOM), Storage formulation of miR-145 nanotherapeutics for atherosclerosis; Professor Vsevolod Katritch (Dornsife College), Novel Angiotensin AT2 receptor antagonists for neuropathic pain treatment; Professors Bodour Salhia, Juan Pablo Lewinger and Lynda Roman (KSOM), The development of OvaPrint, a cell-free DNA methylation test for the early detection of epithelial ovarian cancer; Professors Peter Yingxiao Wang and Longwei Liu (VSOE), Engineering Ultrasound Controllable CAR T cells targeting Intracellular KRAS mutants in Solid Tumor.
Zumberge Preliminary Studies Research Award: Professors Susumu Takahashi (Dornsife College) and Stephen Cronin (VSOE), Development of Bright and Stable Diamond Quantum Emitters for Quantum Sensing Applications; Professor Huriya Jabbar, (Rossier), How do mixed-income neighborhood initiatives reduce educational inequality for low-income black youth?; Professors Serghei Mangul (School of Pharmacy), Matt Pennell (Dornsife College) and Steven Gazal (KSOM), Developing reliable and scalable methods for deep immune phenotyping in public transcriptomics databases across diverse populations; Professors Yasser Khan, Krishna Nayak (VSOE) and John Wood (KSOM), Skin-line wearable sensor development for diagnostic ECG and MRI at 0.55 T; Professor Paul Seidler (School of Pharmacy), Structure-based investigation of neurotransmitters as modifiers of tau aggregation; Professor Willie Neiswanger, Krishna Garikipati and Yan Liu (VSOE), Foundation Models for Materials Physics to Accelerate the Development of Solid-State Batteries; Professor Zhenglu Li (VSOE), Correlated Electron-Phonon Coupling from First-Principles GW Perturbation Theory; Professor Swabha Swayamdipta (VSOE) and Professor Eric Rice (School of Social Work), Understanding Attitudes towards Homelessness through an Expert-Guided AI Social Engine; Acting Head for USC Libraries, Andrzej Rutkowski, Director Curtis Fletcher, Assistant Director Mats Borges, Librarian Suzanne Noruschat (University Libraries), Associate Dean Meredith Drake Reitan (Provost-Academic Programs), and Philip Ethington (Dornsife College), Before the bulldozers: Bunker Hill in the new deal era; Professors Houda Alachkar (School of Pharmacy), and Nicholas Graham (Davis), APOC2-CD36 deregulation presents a metabolic vulnerability in Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
Student Empowerment Award: Professor Adam Zimmerman (Gould), Corresi; Professor Jean-Michel Arnoult (Iovine and Young), BioFlare; Professor Chris Swain (Iovine and Young), Clinicode and Artesia; Professor Dan Wadhwani (Marshall), Momentum: Building Financial Freedom in NCAA Athletes; Professor Ellis Meng (VSOE), Happy Halls; Professor Erin Trish, (School of Pharmacy), Hospital Financial Aid Navigation Among Patients with Limited English Proficiency; Professor Grant Delgatty (Iovine and Young), NeoTrek Footwear; Professor Albert Han (KSOM), A novel salivary liquid biopsy methodology and sampling apparatus for HPV+ oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma screening; Professor William Resh (Sol Price), The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in the Public Service Labor Market; Professor Dong Song (VSOE), A next-generation neural interface for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders.
USC & Indian Institute of Science (USC-IISc) Collaborative Network Award:
Professor Gourab Mukherjee (Marshall), Efficient Score Estimation: Bridging Classical Statistical Theory with New-Age AI Applications; Professor Serghei Mangul (School of Pharmacy), Developing robust and scalable bioinformatics tools and databases for RNA viral discovery and characterization from metagenomics data; Professor Shri Narayanan (VSOE), Multi-modal Representation Modeling for Monitoring Neurodegenerative Diseases; Professors Yu-Tsun Shao, Jayakanth Ravichandran, Joshua Yang, Rehan Kapadia and Zhenglu Li (VSOE), and Professors Stephan Haas and Yunqiu Kelly Luo (Dornsife College), Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research: Quantum Materials for Electronics.
Navigating Research and Scholarship at USC: Whether you are new or need a refresher, we would like to invite you to attend this year’s research and scholarship orientation for faculty, staff, postdocs, PhD students, and graduate students on Friday, August 23, from 9AM to 12PM PT, via zoom. We have prepared an exciting and informative program on the latest and greatest resources and support available at USC to help you conduct research and navigate scholarship. Learn more and register here.
FEDERAL LANDSCAPE UPDATES: The National Science Foundation has released the solicitation for the Gen-4 Engineering Research Centers (ERC). The ERC program is designed to integrate engineering research and education with technological innovation to transform and improve national prosperity, health, and security. A required letter of intent is due September 3rd, and additional information can be found here.
RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION: The Office of Research & Innovation is excited to announce the launch of our new Research Administration education series. The program is designed to provide knowledge and skills for professionals working in research administration. The first online seminar will partner the Department of Contracts and Grants and the Department of Animal Resources to present “Budget Management: Strategies for Navigating Rising Animal Use and Care Costs.” The webinar will be held on Friday, June 14, 2024, at 9 a.m. and you can register today here. Stay tuned for more details on the full schedule and how to register for upcoming webinars and training sessions covering a wide array of essential topics in research administration. We look forward to your participation!
DEPARTMENT OF CONTRACTS & GRANTS: The National Science Foundation (NSF) released a new Proposals & Awards Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG (24-1)) for all proposals due on or after May 20, 2024. The Department of Contracts and Grants (DCG) recently held a live zoom training that covers many of the changes in the new NSF PAPPG.
Below is the recording of the training and a copy of the slides for review.
The new DCG website is slated to launch in early June. The website has been redesigned to better serve the USC research community and includes enhanced functionality, improved navigation, and a more modern design. DCG will be holding training sessions to walk campus users through the newly updated sections of the website at the date/times listed below:
June 17, 2024, at 9:00 a.m.
June 24, 2024, at 9:00 a.m.
Simply launch the training by clicking here during one of the above dates and times.
HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION PROGRAM: We are looking for clinicians interested in joining our Biomedical IRB full board committees. To ensure the protection of research participants in biomedical research, we must have clinicians from the different fields/specializations who can serve as primary reviewers and discussants in all full board deliberations. All meetings are held in Zoom at 7:30 in the morning. Each board meets for approximately 2 hours twice a month. If you are interested, please reach out to Julie Slayton at jslayton@usc.edu.
We are also on the precipice of renewing our accreditation with AAHRPP, the Association for Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs. Over the next months, we will be sharing information regarding the reaccreditation process and requesting information from our HRPP partners for the site visit that we anticipate will take place in early 2025.
STEVENS CENTER FOR INNOVATION: We are thrilled to announce our new Stevens Center Advisory Board members. These industry experts will meet three times a year and provide strategic counsel on technology transfer programs and activities. We are grateful for their time and expertise as we rebuild the Stevens Center to support your important work:
Dr. Vasiliki Anest, Chief Information Officer and Head of MESH Strategic Partnerships at Keck School of Medicine
Katherine Fibiger, Associate Director, Legal Affairs of the University of Pennsylvania Penn Center for Innovation, as well as Associate General Counsel of the University of Pennsylvania
Seth Levy, Partner/Leader Intellectual Property Practice / Co-Chair, Life Sciences Practice
Dr. Ellis Meng, Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Chair in Convergent Bioscience and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC Viterbi School
Dr. Sunita Rajdev, Senior Director for Licensing and Strategic Alliances, Office of Technology Licensing at Stanford University
Dr. Gaurav Sukhatme, Fletcher Jones Foundation Endowed Chair in Computer Science and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC Viterbi School.
DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL RESOURCES: Essential upgrades are underway at our animal facilities including the ZNI Bulk Sterilizer replacement project. The project will start May 20, 2024, and end on August 9, 2024. While we anticipate some disruptions to operations, we aim to minimize these by scheduling work during off-hours whenever possible. DAR staff will monitor noise and vibrations during the project and promptly address excessive disturbances with the contractors.
Ongoing construction activities in the various rooms of RRI are being communicated to stakeholders regularly with lookahead schedules; noise and vibration are also being monitored.
The HMR freight elevator modernization project (4/22/24-8/5/24) is still ongoing with utilization of the elevator platform when requested. DAR has worked diligently to ensure that research projects continue without interruption or significant delay.
We greatly appreciate your understanding and cooperation during these upgrades, as ensuring the safety and well-being of our teams and animals remains our top priority.
Check out the DAR-Quick Guide on Overcrowded Cages on the DAR website. PIs can encourage their staff to utilize this valuable resource to avoid overcrowded cage notices and preventable separation fees.
For additional resources, contact information, training videos, and answers to FAQs, please visit https://dar.usc.edu/
Monthly updates are archived here.