USC Trojan Family Magazine Spring 2020

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THE NUMBERS ISSUE The growing power of data means quantification is touching more of our lives than ever.

scene Artist Oscar Oiwa’s 360-degree mural explores how reality and dreams intermingle. Four students from the USC Roski School of Art and Design—and 120 felt-tip pens—helped Oiwa complete the piece. “Dreams of a Sleeping World” is on exhibit at the USC Pacific Asia Museum through April 26.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Numerical Values

The quarterly magazine of the

University of Southern California ————————————— E DI TO R-I N- CHI E F

Numbers and I have had a love-hate relationship from the start.

Despite being an academic, type A kid, I wasn’t the fastest in class at multiplication tables. To this day, don’t ask me to divide big numbers in my head. If I don’t see the figures in front of me, forget about it.

Yet baseball pushed me to embrace them. It started first with the Dodgers (I knew all their batting totals) and then progressed to fantasy baseball (where earned run averages and run production reign supreme). This was math with a purpose: winning.

Sure, there’s an elegance to mathematics for the sake of it. In high school I’d carefully write down my calculus equations on graph paper, relishing the neatness of my x’s and y’s and the clarity and logic of math’s rules. But baseball brought home how math and numbers could be interesting when applied to everyday parts of life.

That's the inspiration for this issue of USC Trojan Family Magazine. Across society, big data and quantification are changing everything from sports to shopping.

In these pages, you’ll see how math is boosting cancer research, how dollars might be influencing behavior, and more. I hope you enjoy it.

As always, please drop us a line at magazines@usc.edu if anything sparks a memory or story you’d like to share. Thanks for reading—and Fight On! Alicia Di Rado Editor-in-Chief USC Trojan Family Magazine

Alicia Di Rado

CRE AT I VE DI RE CTO R

Jane Frey

M ANAGI NG E DI TO R

Elisa Huang

PRO DUCT I O N M ANAGE R

Mary Modina

I NT E RACT I VE CO NT E NT M ANAGE R

Diana Molleda

VI SUALS E DI TO R

Susanica Tam

STAF F PHOTO GRAPHE R

Gus Ruelas

I NT E RACT I VE M ARKE T I NG M ANAGE R

Rod Yabut ————————————— DE SI GN AND PRO DUCT I O N

The editor-in-chief during college, before the internet made compiling baseball statistics easy.

Pentagram ————————————— CO NT RI BUTO RS

Orli Belman

Steve Cimino

Leigh Hopper Russ Ono

Mark Rivard —————————————

USC Trojan Family Magazine (ISSN 8750-7927) is published in March, June, October and December by USC University Communications.

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COVER IMAGE BY ISRAEL G. VARGAS

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INSIDE

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Seen and Heard Stories of Trojan life from mail, email, social media and the news.

Numbers in sports go beyond box scores and split times.

Five Things You Need to Know Aging gracefully isn’t just about living longer but also living well.

T R O J A N

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News Why California’s population boom has stalled; a grad student strives to avoid catastrophe in the Middle East; and a beloved professor inspires a love for numbers.

12 Art Everywhere

By Chandrea Miller Discover USC’s lesser-known art treasures.

16 Game Changer

By David Medzerian USC Athletic Director Mike Bohn talks about his past as a ‘clipboard quarterback,’ his love of the band and more.

F E AT U R E S

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ATHLETE PHOTO BY CODY PICKENS; BOHN PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

FA M I LY

43 Alumni News

A mechanical engineer pivots to health care; an alumnus has a plan for a more livable L.A.; and mentors find rewards in paying it forward.

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49 Class Notes

Who’s doing what and where?

Now and Again After World War II, student enrollment grew rapidly—and so did the University Park Campus.

trojanfamily.usc.edu

A True Picture of Health

Medical research that includes more people from different backgrounds is crucial to advancing health care that benefits everyone. By Katharine Gammon

Math on a Mission

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Stopping HIV. Saving wildlife. Treating cancer. The answers to some of society’s challenges might come down to networks and algorithms. By Constance Sommer

The Science of Sport

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Data science and wearable devices are revolutionizing the way athletes of all levels train, compete, recover and do it all again. By Eric Lindberg

The Price of Prevention

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Can charging people a premium for “bad-for-you” goods like soda and sweetened drinks spur healthy habits? It may not be a simple calculation. By Daniel P. Smith usc trojan family

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Musings about Trojan life and USC Trojan Family Magazine from mail, email and the online world.

SEEN AND HEARD

Ride On If you were one of the millions who watched the Rose Parade in January, you might have caught sight of a unique equestrian procession from the Arabian Horse Association.

The horses were part of Warrior Horses for Warrior Kids, a nonprofit that pairs horses with children who have cancer.

The nonprofit was the brainchild of Ryan Melendez, a USC Dornsife senior from Valley Center, California, and captain of USC’s Western Equestrian team.

Melendez, who grew up riding Arabian horses, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in high school. When he needed to take his mind off cancer, he found happiness in horses. Now his nonprofit shares that joy, giving children a chance to build a special bond with “their” horse. It has also raised more than $500,000 for pediatric cancer research.

KTLA-TV featured a story on Melendez, who got to walk alongside the horses during the Rose Parade.

HIDDEN FIGURES

The Schol-AR app makes scientific images in research papers more vivid through the power of smartphones and augmented reality.

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Technology similar to the software behind Pokémon Go has hit research papers, thanks to USC's Tyler Ard. Ard, an assistant professor of research at the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, generated buzz in the research community after he shared video on social media showing Schol-AR, his augmented reality app. When users point their smartphone cameras at a special image in a journal, an interactive 3D model appears and floats above the paper. He is hopeful that the app can be used to communicate and visualize research across many disciplines.

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The pounding headache. Dry mouth. A churning stomach. They’re the price to be paid after drinking too much booze.

Veisalgia (otherwise known as a hangover) has plagued revelers for millennia. Yet there is no known remedy.

USC School of Pharmacy professors Daryl Davies and Terry David Church and PhD student Joshua Silva recently wrote on the website The Conversation about the biology behind hangovers and warned consumers about so-called cures.

Their story was shared by news outlets including PBS NewsHour, MSN and CNN, which warned partygoers that popular remedies like kudzu root, energy drinks, caffeine and herbal supplements still have no scientific proof to back their claims.

The pharmacists are studying several remedies to find whether they work, and how. Until they know more, they say your best bet may be a few ibuprofen, TV and lots of rest. spring 2020

MELENDEZ PHOTO COURTESY OF RYAN MELENDEZ; SCHOL-AR PHOTO COURTESY OF TYLER ARD AND ARTHUR TOGA

The Hangover

FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

Aging Gracefully

KEEP DISCOVERING

You can learn and grow regardless of age. About 2,500 USC students are age 40 or older, says Caroline Cicero, USC Leonard Davis instructional associate professor and director of the USC Age-Friendly University Initiative.

Some graduates have even taken classes well into their 90s.

Growing old, as they say, is better than the alternative. USC experts on aging focus not only on extending our lifespans but also on helping people spend more of those years in good health.

Here are five quick things you should know about aging (with a nod to experts at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and Keck School of Medicine of USC.)

STAY ALERT

Scams often target the elderly. Seniors might be vulnerable due to changes in the aging brain. These changes could make it harder for older people to recognize swindles or imagine themselves as victims, says Duke Han, associate professor of family medicine.

SLEEP TIGHT

Slumbering six hours or less a night is associated with dementia, heart disease, diabetes and other health conditions.

Need more shut-eye?

Try turning in earlier and turning off devices and TV, recommends Jennifer Ailshire, assistant professor of gerontology, sociology and spatial sciences.

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EAT EARLY AND GET MOVIN’

Daily exercise can cut risk of age-related diseases.

Combine that with healthful eating, says Cary Kreutzer, associate professor and director of USC Leonard Davis’ MS program in nutrition, healthspan and longevity. Our bodies are more efficient at burning calories when we’re active during the day, so front-load bigger meals early to digest calories before bedtime.

KNOW YOUR NUTRITION

Eating foods full of nutrients is important, but antioxidant enzymes found in the body—not our diet— provide the most protection against free radicals.

Eating antioxidant-rich vitamins won’t prevent as much damage as you might think because digestion destroys much of the antioxidants, says USC Leonard Davis Vice Dean and Distinguished Professor Kelvin Davies.

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Community matters – a legacy of winning together.

Bob Renken Noreen Jenkins Brian Bissell Bucky Burge Mason Carpenter

1998 MBTAX 2005 2013 MBA 2009 2013 MBA

Brian Flynn Ashley Fontanetta Caleb Silsby Pegine Grayson

1971 BS & 1985 MFA 2004 2011 MBA 1987 LAW

David Dahl Riley Mathies Rosa Lee Jim Parks*

1992 MBA 2015 2007 1972 BS & 1975 MBTAX

[Listed from top left - right] *Board Member

Family, friends, colleagues and neighbors — sharing meaningful relationships is the key to a rich and rewarding life.

As Trojans, we are doubly blessed to be a part of a larger community dedicated to important values like education, family and tradition and to extending opportunities to the next generation. As the largest multi-family office headquartered in the West, we take pride in our USC Trojan alumni resolutely committed to care more, and to do more to maximize the legacy of individuals, families and leaders whose ingenuity and leadership inspire and shape our world.

Your Legacy is Our Business. Fight on!

Contact Tim McCarthy at 626.463.2545 whittiertrust.com $10 M I L L I O N M A R K E T A B L E S E C U R I T I E S A N D/ O R L I Q U I D A S S E T S R E Q U I R E D. Investment and Wealth Management Services are provided by Whittier Trust Company and The Whittier Trust Company of Nevada, Inc. (referred to herein individually and collectively as

“Whittier Trust”), state-chartered trust companies wholly owned by Whittier Holdings, Inc. (“WHI”), a closely held holding company. This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended, and should not be construed, as investment, tax or legal advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results and no investment or financial planning strategy can guarantee profit or protection against losses. All names, characters, and incidents, except for certain incidental references, are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

TROJAN

UNDER THE LIGHTS

PHOTO BY LING LUO

It takes a small army of students to stage one of USC’s annual highlights: Conquest. The most recent edition of the event offered a carnival (with Ferris wheel), pep rally, concert headlined by rapper and alumna Saweetie ’16 and more.

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trojan news

California or Bust As its population growth stalls, has the Golden State lost its luster?

The famously sunny climate and laidback lifestyle of California have drawn people to the state for generations. With plentiful jobs in industries from tech to entertainment, it’s no surprise that people from all over the world hope to live out the California dream.

nation with nearly 40 million residents, but the population explosion that it experienced in the 20 th century has slowed to a crawl. Data released last May by the California Department of Finance revealed that, in 2018, California’s popula-

“California has always been a magnet for transplants,” says Dowell Myers, a professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy and director of the Population Dynamics Research Group. Myers has studied the demographics of the Golden State for decades. “Since the days of the Gold Rush, everybody came from somewhere else.”

But that may be changing. California remains the most populous state in the

tion growth rate fell to 0.47%—the slowest growth recorded since data collection began in 1900.

According to Myers, the dip can primarily be attributed to a decline in newcomers.

While immigration from Asian countries has increased, the influx from Latin America has decreased. “The numbers crossing the [Mexican] border are net zero,” he says. “We’re not getting domestic migrants [from other states] either.”

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Why the loss in popularity? “It’s evidence of the housing shortage,” Myers says. Or simply put, it’s too expensive to live in the state. California’s anemic housing supply has driven up rents and home prices sharply since the Great Recession.

Highly educated, affluent people can still enter the housing market, but soaring costs are deterring the workers the state needs to support its whole economy.

He estimates that California must add 2.8 million new housing units by 2025 to keep its workforce robust. But the state isn’t on track to meet that goal. “We need to build 350,000 units a year by my calculations,” he says. Right now, that number hovers closer to 110,000.

Another reason for decelerating population growth is that 18,000 fewer California babies were born in 2018 than in 2017. The declining birth rate ultimately will translate into fewer homegrown workers. And since California can’t rely on newcomers to close the gap, the state’s supply of workers may fall short.

With fewer children in California, they become an increasingly precious commodity.

“The big policy implication is you have to double your investment so that every kid has twice the capacity to learn and contribute to the economy,” he says.

The state simply can’t afford to have children fall behind, especially in underserved school districts. “It’s time to finally get serious about social equity,” Myers says, and education is one way to safeguard California’s future workforce.

Despite the challenges ahead, Myers sees a silver lining in the state’s sluggish population growth. Back in 2007, the Department of Finance projected the populace would swell to 50 million by 2032, but more recent projections predict the state will reach that benchmark in 2055.

That gives California lots of time to digest its previous growth, he says, and to prepare for the future. R AC H E L B . L E V I N spring 2020

TROJAN VOICE JAINIL MEHTA

MUST-SEE TV These five television shows bring together Americans from across the political spectrum.

What do your television viewing habits say about your ideological beliefs?

A recent study from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s Norman Lear Center found that, unsurprisingly, different groups across the ideological spectrum have their own tastes in media and entertainment. Conservatives reported rarely watching TV for entertainment (but they’ll tune into NCIS) while liberals flocked to shows like Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory.

But there is common ground. The study of 3,000 viewers discovered five shows that viewers across political leanings watched (see the list below).

Johanna Blakley, managing director of the Norman Lear Center, suspects that these shows have mass appeal because they all value truth in a time of deep skepticism about fake news. “Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the neutral ground Americans of all political stripes have chosen is storytelling devoted to finding the bad guy, debunking the myth and exposing how silly humans can be,” she says. Maybe we’re not as polarized as we think.

PHOTO BY ROSE EICHENBAUM

THE TV SHOWS THAT BRING EVERYONE TOGETHER

America’s Funniest Home Videos Bones Criminal Minds MythBusters Pawn Stars trojanfamily.usc.edu

Not Missing a Beat Third-year international student Jainil Mehta talks about community—and finding a second home—through his art and the USC Kaufman School of Dance.

Traveling 8,000 miles from Mumbai, India, to USC was a brave decision for both me and my family. I did not expect USC to have so many opportunities and events for an international student like me to feel just like I am at home.

can do to promote my love for dance.

USC gives us the opportunity to create student-led organizations, which we run, fund and promote all by ourselves. Imagine being an entrepreneur when you’re in college!

I haven’t been homesick yet, maybe because I wanted to be independent, but also because I’ve never felt like I was nobody at the university. There are so many cultural organizations you can be a part of where you can meet other people from the same community. The USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance also adds so much to my cultural knowledge. It has expanded my thought process, more than I could have ever imagined.

I started my own organization called Fidaa. Its purpose is to reach out to students, staff and faculty who want to dance for fun. Fidaa keeps the time commitment low (one day a week) and offers beginnerand advanced-level classes where we can dig deep into the dance style and learn the fundamentals.

Last year, I was the choreographer for USC’s premier competitive Bollywood dance team Zeher, which connected me back to where I come from. The joy I had in teaching what I grew up learning was surreal.

This semester I diverted from the competition scene, realizing there is so much more I

We proudly planned the first-ever weekendlong dance convention at USC last October, called Aarambh: The Beginning. It brought together professionals and dance lovers with global dance styles in a positive, enriching space. Many of the convention’s teachers included USC Kaufman faculty members and students who helped spread love to the community. We are here to fight and dance on!

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STUDENT PROFILE GHENA ALHANAEE

The Engineer-Diplomat When she was only 4 years old, Ghena Alhanaee held her mother’s hand tightly as she trudged across sand to get to her first day of school. In those days, desert sand was everywhere in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates city she called home. But by the time Alhanaee graduated from high school, skyscrapers had emerged from the desert and Abu Dhabi had turned into an international business and tourism hub.

The dramatic change inspired her to think about how visionary government leaders and city planners made the impossible possible. It sparked a passion to help secure the region’s future, and Alhanaee decided to help protect the Persian Gulf’s most precious resource: water.

“One-third of oil production is in the Gulf, and so is half of the world’s desalination capacity,” says Alhanaee, who is pursuing a doctoral degree in civil engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “Now, add nuclear energy to the mix. We have one reactor operating in Iran, four being built in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and at least two

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planned in Saudi Arabia. These three industries are so heavily reliant upon each other that a disaster in one will have dire consequences in the others, with global effects.”

Several surrounding countries only have a two- to three-day supply of emergency water, Alhanaee adds.

To develop a plan of action, her first step has been to create a model of these regional interdependencies. She then envisions a linked emergency response plan across countries. Finding a way to bridge differences among industries and governments is no easy task. This pioneering work puts her where diplomacy meets engineering, technology and scientific research.

“The lives of 160 million people who live in this geopolitically and ecologically sensitive region could be impacted by Ghena’s research,” says Najmedin Meshkati, Alhanaee’s advisor at USC and a nuclear safety expert.

In recognition of Alhanaee’s groundbreaking work, MIT Technology Review named her one of the top 20 innovators under age 35 in the

Middle East and North Africa region. The award bears special significance to Alhanaee, who is one of the few women from the UAE pursuing a doctoral degree.

“I’ve been blessed to do this thanks to the support of my family, but not everyone has that,” she says of her mother, a Venezuelan mathematician, and her father, an Emirati physicist. “My parents showed me that education is the key that opens the doors to the world.”

Alhanaee has presented her work internationally and has flourished as a global scholar at USC, which she calls her home away from home. She also has found time to help other graduate students navigate campus life as the Viterbi graduate student liaison.

As she completes her final year at USC, she aims to continue developing her framework through shared support. “What we need is a cross-country governing body that every country in the Gulf can have a seat on and a unified plan in place,” she says.

“We can only do this if we come together.”

DA N I E L D R U H O R A

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PHOTO COURTESY OF GHENA ALHANAEE

A civil engineer strives to prevent a regional catastrophe in the Middle East.

trojan news

When scientists Peter Ratcliffe, Gregg Semenza and William Kaelin were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, they joined an exclusive group.

They became Nobel laureates, obviously. But their selection also marked the third year in a row that the winners of the Nobel Prize also were recipients of the Massry Prize, an honor with strong ties to USC. In all, 19 recipients of the Massry Prize have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

TROJAN TRIVIA: THE GRIDIRON They may eat, sleep and breathe football, but Trojan football players also are powerhouses of multitasking. For one, the team balances athletics with academics: In 2019, players posted USC’s all-time-high NCAA academic progress rate for football. Many student-athletes pursue surprising hobbies, too. Can you match each football player to his off-thefield exploits?

He was a 285pound state wrestling champion in high school.

ATHLETE PHOTOS BY JOHN MCGILLEN; ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PLUNKERT/THE ISPOT

He rides horses in his spare time and wants to start tiedown roping after his football career.

He took ballet in high school, which he credits for improving his pass catching.

The Meira and Shaul G. Massry Foundation established the Massry Prize in 1996 to recognize outstanding contributions to biomedicine and health.

The foundation was founded by Shaul Massry, professor emeritus at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, when he was a faculty member. Every year, a committee of distinguished USC and UCLA professors select one or more honorees who made major contributions to science.

These scientists are then invited to Los Angeles, giving USC and UCLA students, staff and faculty the opportunity to pick the brains of scientists who not only are brilliant but also have good odds of becoming future Nobel laureates. trojanfamily.usc.edu

He is a California state champ in the 100- and 200-meter dashes. His best 100-meter mark: 10.30 seconds.

He tackled baseball, basketball, soccer and the martial art aikido while growing up in Japan.

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A

Wide receiver Tyler Vaughns

2

B

Center Brett Neilon

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C

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D

Wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr.

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E

Tailback Kenan Christon

Defensive lineman Marlon Tuipulotu

ANSWER KEY: 1. C, 2. D, 3. A, 4. E, 5. B

Winner’s Circle

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trojan news

Art Everywhere With four museums and 11 galleries, USC offers an unexpectedly diverse look at the history—and future— of art in L.A.

Whether they’re anatomy instructors, bookstore sales clerks, chemistry students or returning alumni, longtime Trojans know their way around the University Park and Health Sciences campuses. But even students who spend every day at USC might be surprised about the secrets that lie only a few steps away: galleries filled with art and treasured objects.

USC has four museums, and 11 art galleries are spread across the university.

For Selma Holo, executive director of USC Museums and Galleries, bringing the university’s lesser-known cultural treasures to light is her most important job.

“While many USC museums and galleries are known to the public, there are a select few that visitors might not know exist.

But they’re well worth exploring,” she says.

Many of USC’s holdings—from paintings and one-of-a-kind stained glass to sculptures and black-and-white photography— are free for the public to visit. Located along L.A.’s museum alley in Exposition Park, the University Park Campus also has three Metro light rail stations that offer convenient access to the community.

Here are just a few highlights from USC’s gallery collections. To see the full list of locations, go to bit.ly/ USCmuseums. C H A N D R E A M I L L E R

THE SOPHIE DAVIS ART GALLERY Located in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, this gallery celebrates aging as an art form.

With an emphasis on older artists, pieces explore the many stages of life.

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ARTWORK: CEILING MURAL BY SANDRO CHIA; “LOVE” BY ROBERT INDIANA (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ELLISON INSTITUTE); “MRS. YANG” BY BEAR GUERRA

trojan news THE VITERBI MUSEUM This collection includes art, archival papers and electronic devices that trace the development of modern telecommunications through the story of pioneering engineer Andrew Viterbi PhD ’62.

LAWRENCE J. ELLISON INSTITUTE FOR TRANSFORMATIVE MEDICINE OF USC Artwork in the institute’s airy, light-filled lobby captures the center’s inspiring drive to prevent and treat cancer. The institute is located in west Los Angeles near the Metro E Line’s Expo/ Bundy Station.

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Making Change USC comes together to shape its culture and future.

USC has embarked on a multiyear culture change journey that focuses on defining shared values to support its mission to serve its students, patients and communities. These efforts will bring to light what is working well and what needs to change to help the university achieve its utmost potential.

This extensive initiative brings students, staff and faculty together to explore USC’s values, align supportive behaviors and shape opportunities to improve the university's systems, processes and culture. As this journey continues, the university will also engage alumni and external communities to contribute to culture improvements.

Last fall, nearly 20,000 students and faculty and staff members participated in the USC Values Poll to identify current and desired values. Eight town hall meetings and 60 discussion sessions provided a deeper understanding of the poll results, which showed common ground for many desired values. They also revealed some significant challenges to overcome, including bureaucracy and hierarchy.

Next up will be aligning values to behaviors that support strategic plans for leadership development, well-being, diversity initiatives and more. Expect to see programs that will help the university community better define whom it wants to be and how to create the path forward to a stronger USC. For the latest news about the university’s continuing culture journey, please visit change.usc.edu.

WHAT IS CULTURE CHANGE? Culture consists of shared values, as well as the beliefs, actions and associated behaviors that support those values. By building on the values of those who know USC best and care deeply about its mission, the university can enable organizational changes that empower learning, discovery and positive social impact.

VALUES Students, faculty and staff were asked to name the top 10 values in the culture they want to see at USC. These five desired values were named by all three groups:

• Accountability • Diversity • Communication • Ethical • Transparency DIVERSITY Diversity was ranked No. 6 in USC’s current culture but No. 2 in its desired culture, indicating this is something that the community wishes to continue prioritizing.

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trojan news

ARE YOU LISTENING? Music can make your heart beat faster and your palms sweat. Why does something as abstract as music consistently provoke such intense reactions? USC researchers are using artificial intelligence to find out.

In a recent study, they played unfamiliar pieces of music and monitored how volunteers’ hearts and brains—and even their sweat glands—responded. You’ll find a few tidbits from their work below.

The investigation is about more than just quirky science: Music has been shown to lower anxiety and ease pain, so related discoveries might eventually help patients with mood disorders. C AITLIN DAWSON

QUOTED

“To love, to laugh, to live, to work, to fail, to despair, to parent, to cry, to die, to mourn, to hope: These attributes exist whether we are Vietnamese or Mexican or American or any other form of classification.”

—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and USC Dornsife associate professor of English and American studies and ethnicity, in The New York Times

Shell Shock Engineers draw inspiration from mollusks to lay the groundwork for better protective gear.

BRAIN

A song’s beat—specifically how fast and loud it is—plays a huge role in stimulating parts of your brain. Researchers found that changes to elements like rhythm or the type of sounds used throughout a song lead to a strong uptick in neural activity.

BODY

When a new instrument is introduced in a song, or if the music starts to climb into a soaring crescendo, listeners begin to sweat more. The more instruments are added, the stronger the response.

EMOTIONS

Listeners associate specific emotions with certain notes. An F-sharp in G minor correlates with sadness, for example. Researchers also found that contrasting volumes—like having quiet verses followed by loud choruses—give listeners more emotional ups and downs.

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The luminous shine of mother-of-pearl has long been prized for jewelry and decorative arts. But the interior of mollusk shells, also known as nacre, has more to offer than just a pretty sheen: It’s one of the strongest, most robust materials in the natural world. Drive a truck over a shell and it might crack, but its shiny nacre interior will stay intact.

Inspired by nacre’s lightweight but ultra-strong properties, USC engineers created their own version of nacre using 3D printing. The team—led by Yong Chen, professor of industrial and systems engineering—believes the material could be used for next-generation protective gear like helmets used in sports or vests worn by the military.

Engineers used elecrical fields to form the material, so it is highly conductive. This makes it ideal for use in smart products like wearable technology and biomedical devices.

The next step? Studying how the material conducts heat— not just electricity. GRE TA HARRISON

HE A LT H FI L E S

Teens who vape fruitand candy-flavored e-cigs are more likely to continue the habit than those using traditional flavors like menthol, according to USC researchers. But investigators also found a surprise: Teens’ current top flavor is mint, which could affect public health strategies to cut vaping.

The drugs 35 million Americans take to lower cholesterol might also reduce risk for Alzheimer’s.

USC Schaeffer Center research found that seniors who took statin drugs regularly for at least two years had a 12% to 15% lower risk of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis during the study period.

Breast cancer cells that break free from tumors to go elsewhere in the body may be preprogrammed to prefer certain organs. USC study results shed light on how tumor cells find a new home, which could potentially be used to prevent metastasis.

USC School of Pharmacy investigators have successfully grown testosterone-producing human cells in the lab. The achievement might lead to treatments for millions of men with disorders linked to low testosterone.

spring 2020

FACULT Y PROFILE JOSH NEMAN

A Scientist of the People Josh Neman seeks out the survival secrets of cancer cells so scientists can one day keep them from spreading.

If you or someone you love has cancer, Josh Neman is in your corner.

The USC scientist is determined to stop cancerous tumors on the turf he knows best: the lab bench.

An assistant professor of neurological surgery, physiology and neuroscience at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, Neman studies cancerous cells that spread to the brain. He can explain their tendencies in ways that practically anyone could understand. That’s because he knows these rogue cells well. The molecular neuro-oncologist holds a doctorate in neurobiology and did a fellowship in cancer biology, and he focuses on pediatric cancer and metastatic breast cancer.

Ask Neman what motivates him, though, and he doesn’t talk about cells. He talks about people with cancer.

When surgeons remove a tumor from a patient’s brain, they turn tissue over to Neman, a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, to study it. His lab investigates how tumor cells talk with brain cells and how they can hijack those brain cells for their own benefit.

As he walks a visitor through his lab, he talks enthusiastically about projects from the young researchers in his group.

“Here, look at these,” he says, pulling a clear, round plastic dish from a steel incubator.

The dish swishes with liquid as he puts it under a microscope. Hundreds of metastatic breast cancer cells fill the fluid. They came from a sample brought from a breast cancer patient who had a tumor in her brain. It’s only been a few days since they started growing in the dish but already the cells show their knack for survival, he says. He and students and fellows in his lab are conducting studies to find out why.

Neman gets ideas for research from conferences and journals, like any other

scientist—but he is so curious that he finds inspiration in others’ life experiences, too. When breast cancer patients complained of feeling foggy headed years after completing their chemotherapy, for example, he wondered: Could chemotherapy affect the brain and help cancer to subsequently spread there?

The question spawned research now conducted by his research fellows.

They’re focused on the brain’s barriers, which are meant to keep harmful substances in the blood from entering brain tissue. Their findings suggest that chemotherapy might cause lasting damage to those barriers, potentially allowing metastatic cancer cells to enter brain tissue. The National Institutes of Health and private foundation METAvivor have now funded that work.

Neman brings cancer survivors into his lab and listens to their ideas and suggestions.

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Neman brings cancer survivors into his lab and listens to their suggestions. These patients are trained as advocates and review grants for the Susan G. Komen organization and the Department of Defense’s breast cancer research program, which has supported Neman’s work. He also serves on Susan G. Komen’s L.A. County board, promoting metastatic breast cancer research and awareness however he can.

He even brought the American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) 5K Run/Walk to USC’s University Park Campus. The ABTA funded one of his projects and also supported a medical student who joined his lab to study brain tumors. She is now a Keck Medicine of USC neurosurgeon.

“To have a researcher with that passion is so important,” says ABTA’s CEO, Ralph DeVitto. “The work he’s doing is so challenging, and he’s someone we see as a true ambassador and a true leader.”

ALICIA DI R ADO

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Game Changer USC Athletic Director Mike Bohn is on a mission: Do what it takes to help student-athletes perform well on the field, in the classroom and in the community.

Mike Bohn knows about the life of a student-athlete firsthand. Before he embarked on his 35-year career in athletic administration, he played baseball and football as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. But USC’s new athletic director isn’t one to brag about his glory days.

“I was an all-league ‘clipboard quarterback’—meaning I looked real good in a hat, holding up the clipboard,” Bohn says with a laugh. Pro ball wasn’t in his future (his college baseball batting average

PORTRAIT BY LISA VENTRE/UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI; BAND PHOTO BY PHILIP CHANNING; GROUP PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

MEET MIKE BOHN TITLE

USC athletic director

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS Athletic director at Cincinnati, Colorado, San Diego State and Idaho

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s degree, University of Kansas; master’s in sports administration, Ohio University

FAVORITE SPORT

“When it’s football season, it’s football. When it turns to basketball, it’s basketball. When it’s baseball season, it’s baseball.”

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hovered at a modest .258, he notes), but he never lost his love for sports. Armed with a master’s in sports management, he led athletic departments at the University of Idaho, San Diego State University, the University of Colorado and the University of Cincinnati before arriving at USC in 2019.

USC editor David Medzerian recently caught up with Bohn, holder of the Charles Griffin Cale Director of Athletics’ Chair, as he settled in at Heritage Hall.

Mike Bohn on why he went into athletic administration: I just felt like I can have a bigger impact in this role rather than coaching. When you have the ability to really connect with the community, the fan base and the key constituents who make a program successful—that is always a big challenge, but so rewarding when you are successful.

On what it’s like to be an “outsider” in a position that frequently has been held by a USC alum:

On meeting the Trojan Marching Band with his wife, Kim, on their first day: It was emotional for both of us to be serenaded by the band and to hear “Conquest” in person and the pride the band has in it. The “Fight On” mentality represents something that’s really iconic in college sports. It’s important to embrace that and foster it in others, so they understand the value of having that strong sense of pride in this institution— and creating that sense of support for student-athletes.

My affection, admiration and appreciation for the band go back to high school. We were fortunate enough to win two state championships in basketball [at Boulder High School in Colorado], and I’m not understating it that the basketball pep band probably won a third of our games. The energy, spirit and competitiveness they demonstrated then transpired in the student section.

At every institution where I’ve been, I’m close with the band because they truly are the heartbeat of a program.

It’s funny when people say, “You’re an outsider.” I have respected and enjoyed USC Athletics since I was a kid, and I’ve had the USC fight song on my playlist ever since they had playlists. I have a great understanding of the league, having been in the Pac-12 [at Colorado] when it became the Pac-12.

So I really don’t consider myself an outsider. Yeah, I didn’t go to USC. Well, guess what: I didn’t go to any of the other institutions that I worked at. And I can guarantee you one thing: If you were to cut me, cardinal and gold is going to come out of my veins.

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On his expectations for his coaches and teams:

Fight On to victory

Having the track and the band practice facility right outside my window is a daily reminder of the “Fight On” mentality. “Fight On to victory”— it’s important, as we fight on, that we want to win. And that’s why it’s essential that we have a fan base and a student section that are inspiring our student-athletes across all 21 sports to be competitive.

I believe if we are fundamentally sound in every aspect of administering this program—we block, we tackle, we recruit, we sell tickets, we raise money, we perform well in the classroom, we perform well in the community—we can make “do it like USC does it” our national reputation.

I’m not implying that we’re there yet. But I would like for any parent, athlete, former athlete, alum, faculty member, community member or media member to say, “You know what? Yeah, do it like USC.”

Mike Bohn came to USC already familiar with the Trojans' V sign: He was once athletic director at Pac-12 opponent Colorado.

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A Knack for Numbers The secret to math isn’t getting the right answer, says a USC mathematician. It’s about being curious.

Hanging out in professor Neelesh “Neel” Tiruviluamala’s apartment at USC Village on a Friday night, a student asks, “Can we get a riddle?”

“Ok, here’s the riddle,” Tiruviluamala says, shuffling a deck of cards. “You have 1,000 bottles of wine …”

Anyone who hangs out with Tiruviluamala knows that any party or get-together will likely involve a little math. He’s a mathematician, after all. But he’s also got a knack for breaking down numbers in fun ways.

Tiruviluamala, a faculty member in residence at the William and Leslie McMorrow Residential College, got the idea for math parties from friends. “It started as, ‘Let’s get wine and talk,’ but then I started to tell them a riddle,” he says. Soon, they’d be discussing Cantor’s infinities or Fibonacci numbers. These were friends who didn’t study math at all, but they were absorbed.

Tiruviluamala got his approach from his grandmother, a native of southern

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India. Though she only had an elementary school education, she didn’t let that stop her from busting out equations.

“We would just play games and talk about math together,” he says. “The magic of it is that she would make it fun. Our friends would come over and she would make them do it.

I’m sure some of them didn’t like it, but it’s amazing that she did that.”

She taught him it wasn’t about being good or bad at math.

It was about figuring out a problem.

Rithika Srivathsa can relate to that idea. The senior remembers commiserating with Tiruviluamala about math.

“I said, ‘I don’t know how to evaluate if I’m good or bad at this,’ and he said, ‘This doesn’t matter. What’s more important is, do you enjoy it?’” says Srivathsa, who used to live in his hall.

“Not thinking about it in terms of good

or bad takes the pressure off.

Before, when you gave me numbers, I was like, ‘I don’t want to think about it.’ Now, I’m open.”

She also decided to major in economics mathematics.

Tiruviluamala’s classes in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences are known to fill up within moments of posting. A recent class he devised was “Mathematics for Earthling Ambassadors to Outer Space.”

“The idea is that aliens have come and they want to know how everything works,” he says. “They need people who are socially adjusted who can tell them about GPS, how music is compressed and search engine algorithms—basically how everything in the world works. All of that requires math, when you think about it.”

Tiruviluamala hopes more people will start giving math a chance.

“If someone came to you and says, ‘I don’t like music,’ you’d say, ‘What do you mean?

Any music in particular?’ They’re just like, ‘generally, music’— it would make you sad,” he says.

And don’t worry. If you don’t end up in one of Tiruviluamala’s classes, anyone is welcome to chat with him about math. Just holler when you see him at USC Village, lounging by the fountain or working out at the gym. He encourages it. JOANNA CLAY

A recent class he devised was “Mathematics for Earthling Ambassadors to Outer Space.”

Neel Tiruviluamala makes math so interesting that his courses are reputed to fill up within moments of posting.

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Michael’s Keck Effect

FROM HEART SURGERY TO HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Keck Medicine of USC physicians perform more heart surgeries than anyone else in Southern California.

Our multidisciplinary team of world-class leaders work with you to determine the best treatment option so you can spend time doing what you love.

USC CARDIOVASCULAR THORACIC INSTITUTE • (323) 988-5962 • KeckMedicine.org/heart

trojan health

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TRUE PICTURE A

HEALTH of

BY KATHARINE GAMMON • ILLUSTRATION BY ELISABET TA BIANCHI

to

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trojan health Heart disease is the leading cause of death for American women.

You might think, then, that clinical trials focused on the heart would enroll their share of female patients. Yet, in the U.S., women are underrepresented in studies of treatments for heart failure, coronary artery disease and similar problems.

Why does that matter? Women may respond to medications differently than men. The same drug might cause different side effects, stay in the body for longer or work less effectively. Without enough women participating in studies of new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat disease, the medical world could miss important information that might improve and protect women’s lives.

The need for diversity in medical research goes beyond the male-female divide, though. Though ethnicity, age, geography, race and more can influence how well a patient fares with a particular treatment, much of what the medical world knows about drugs and other treatments comes from clinical trials heavy on middle-aged, white male participants.

Federal regulations have pushed diversification of the nation’s clinical trials since the ’90s, but experts recognize there’s still room for improvement. Even today, relatively few African Americans participate in cancer drug trials, for example, and women remain a minority in studies of HIV/AIDS. At Keck Medicine of USC, physicians and scientists are doing their part to diversify clinical trials. Including a wide array of people from different backgrounds in medical research, they say, is crucial to advancing knowledge that could benefit everyone.

HEART HEALTH

Keck Medicine surgeons have contributed to knowledge about cardiovascular disease and treatment for decades. In 2010, Keck Medicine joined the Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network, the National Institutes of Health’s infrastructure of more than 50 medical centers conducting clinical trials in cardiac surgery.

Now, through a major grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, surgeons at the USC Cardiovascular Thoracic Institute will strive to diversify clinical trials for cardiac surgery.

Heart specialists nationwide recognize the importance of diversity in their studies. Take the example of high blood pressure, or hypertension, among blacks. High blood pressure is linked to stroke and heart problems, and blacks have the highest rates in the U.S. Answers to the best ways to control high blood pressure in blacks—and other groups—can only come to light if large numbers of people of different races and other characteristics volunteer for medical studies.

At Keck Medicine, specialists are doing their part by broadening the base of patients involved in heart surgery studies. These procedures include coronary bypass and heart transplantation, among others.

The researchers’ recent federal grant will help them reach out to a wide variety of patients. Through a partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, investigators will recruit potential participants from areas of Los Angeles County with a large Latino presence.

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Latinos are traditionally underrepresented in cardiac surgery clinical trials, says principal investigator Michael Bowdish, associate professor of surgery and preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “By increasing patient diversity in cardiac surgery clinical trials, we are better suited to address cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of mortality in the United States.”

The grant also enables USC Cardiovascular Thoracic Institute surgeons to go beyond L.A. and partner with physicians in other parts of the country with different demographics. The new grant supports an effort by investigators to pool their data on heart surgery with Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, a large center that mostly serves black and white patients. Medical researchers there are tracking outcomes for their patients, and results are shared with surgeons worldwide.

“Addressing the cardiovascular needs of our community is a top priority,” said cardiothoracic surgeon Vaughn A. Starnes, chair and Distinguished Professor of Surgery and H. Russell Smith Foundation Chair for Stem Cell and Cardiovascular Thoracic Research at the Keck School. “This prestigious award provides us with valuable resources to discover novel and innovative therapies to improve the health of our Los Angeles community and beyond.”

THE ROOTS OF DISEASE

USC has a long history of analyzing health and disease in different populations. Researchers look for patterns in how diseases develop across groups of many thousands of people. Age, genetics, sex and even where someone resides—as well as lifestyle habits—may all play a part.

One of these research efforts, the Multiethnic Cohort Study, calls USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center home. The study probes links between lifestyle and cancer in ethnic groups. With more than 215,000 adult participants in California and Hawaii, it’s one of the three largest ongoing studies of this type in the world.

Keck School of Medicine genetic epidemiologist Chris Haiman co-directs the study. Researchers follow participants over time through questionnaires about their habits and health. Their answers have brought to light invaluable information about differences in cancer risk among people whose ancestry goes back to Africa, Latin America, Hawaii, Japan and Europe, says Haiman, director of the Center for Genetic Epidemiology and holder of the AFLAC Chair in Cancer Research.

Haiman’s research mainly focuses on genetic components of disease. Using the Multiethnic Cohort, he has studied genes associated with aggressive forms of prostate and breast cancer. In his latest project funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), called the RESPOND study, Haiman studies why men of African ancestry are more likely than other men to develop prostate cancer.

Their cancer is also often more aggressive and deadlier.

Genes tell only part of the story of risk, though. Other factors matter, too, like what people eat, how much they exercise and where they live. Los Angeles offers a unique setting to see how these factors all combine to affect health. spring 2020

AT KECK MEDICINE of USC,

PHYSICIANS

and

SCIENTISTS

ARE DOING their PART to

DIVERSIFY

CLINICAL TRIALS. MEDICINE FOR ALL

USC researchers recently marked the launch of the FloridaCalifornia Cancer Research, Education and Engagement (CaRE2) Health Equity Center, funded by the NCI. CaRE2 unites Keck School of Medicine and USC Norris cancer center scientists with colleagues at the University of Florida and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black college.

At USC, CaRE2’s lead investigator is John D. Carpten, professor and chair of translational genomics. He and his colleagues aim to study cancer disparities among blacks and Latinos in more depth than ever before. Findings could turn up clues that may one day improve treatments.

Carpten is passionate about finding answers for cancer patients. But as a longtime researcher of health disparities, he believes that the drive to accelerate therapies can hurt equity. Why? Drug trials are designed to find answers as quickly as possible, he says, and sometimes trying to recruit a broad group of patients could slow a trial down.

Another issue: Clinical trials’ eligibility criteria often exclude potential patients. That is partly so a company can test a drug without too many health complications among trial participants. “In many cases, those criteria might include things like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes or kidney issues,” trojanfamily.usc.edu

Carpten says. “And we know that, unfortunately, a lot of these common complex diseases are prevalent among minority communities, which excludes these patients from clinical trials even if they want to participate.”

Cost can also be a burden. USC Norris cancer center, though, recently launched a program that enables cancer patients to seek reimbursement for the expense of participating in a clinical trial. That could even include travel and lodging. The Improving Patient Access to Cancer Clinical Trials program is funded through the Lazarex Cancer Foundation, which was founded by longtime USC supporter Dana Dornsife.

The FDA and pharmaceutical companies are putting forth real efforts to diversify research trials, Carpten says. But the challenges of diversifying recruitment—the structure of trials, patients’ access to care, cultural barriers and more—require creative solutions. “These changes could end up requiring sacrifices to efficiencies, but they will result in a broader and more significant impact in the end.”

Ultimately, medicine will keep more patients healthy when drug testing becomes more diverse. “By 2050, the face of America is going to look different: The populations now called minorities will no longer be minorities. So we need to prepare for that,” Carpten says. “If we learn how to do it now, we will be more prepared to do the work as we move forward in the 21st century.

I’m excited about where we're going, and I think we’ll get there.” usc trojan family

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TREATING CANCER. CATCHING POACHERS. STOPPING THE SPREAD OF HIV. SEE HOW NUMBERS AND NETWORKS COULD END UP SAVING LIVES. BY CONSTANCE SOMMER ILLUSTRATIONS BY ISRAEL G. VARGAS The los angeles department of Water and Power has a dilemma. A powerful earthquake could wrench apart its underground pipes, cutting off water to millions in a time of need. The agency can’t afford to replace the entire infrastructure with seismically resilient pipes, but it has enough funds to swap out a small portion of the network. What to do?

“That’s where AI algorithms help,” says Bistra Dilkina, a USC computer scientist and expert in artificial intelligence. Dilkina partnered with the department to design a program that can analyze L.A.’s nearly 7,000 miles of mainlines and point out the most critical 50 to 100 pipes for upgrading.

Sophisticated programming and algorithms are behind every smartphone in our pocket, laptop in our backpack and smart device in our homes. But data science goes beyond tech. It’s finding its way into some surprising places—like deep under L.A. streets.

Across USC, researchers are figuring out how to use numbers and networks to improve lives or even save them. From preventing HIV infection to developing customized cancer therapies, their work harnesses the power of math and technology to identify patterns—and solutions—that humans might miss on their own. usc trojan family

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MISSION Stop HIV

Think of a few careers that are all about caring for people—not data—and social work would rank right up there.

Social work professor Eric Rice, though, juggles both. He and his team study the social connections among homeless teens and young adults, using what’s known as network science. It’s all in an effort to slow the spread of HIV. That might be surprising, but not when you consider Rice’s career path.

Back in college, he started as a math major. Then he took a sociology class to fulfill a general education requirement and got so excited that he switched majors.

He went on to pursue a doctorate in sociology at Stanford University.

So began a winding road of meaning and impact that led him to his post today.

He is co-founder of the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS) and an associate professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, where he collaborates with computer scientists to help some of society’s most vulnerable groups.

And that brings us back to one of his projects: hitting the streets to slow the spread of HIV in a group that’s notoriously hard to reach.

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According to national data, as many as 4.2 million young people are experiencing homelessness in the United States. Some reports estimate that nearly 12% of them are HIV positive, partly because unprotected sex and injection drug use are common practices.

With the help of community partners, Rice and his team get to know homeless teens and young adults and identify the relationships among them. They use algorithms to comb through these webs and identify the most connected youths. Reach these peer influencers and you’ll reach their friends—that’s the strategy. The team educates the influencers about how to reduce their risk for HIV and then asks them to spread that knowledge within their social circles on the streets.

As Rice explains, HIV is a “profoundly networked phenomenon” that involves a lot of risk taking.

Last year, more than 860 young people went through the HIV prevention program. “It’s how I go to bed at night,” he says. “I’m doing my part in the world.”

He empathizes with homeless youth, calling them incredibly misunderstood.

“There’s this idea that that they want to be partying out on the streets. The reality is they are from horrible family backgrounds, often with lots of physical and sexual abuse issues. … I thought, wow, I can bring voice to this group. I could help, with my models.”

The surge in homelessness in Los Angeles has only made his work feel more urgent. It has also opened doors to new projects. Rice and his team have begun working with the county’s housing service authority to figure out how best to prioritize access to the area’s limited aid resources. The USC researchers hope to

As Los Angeles’ homeless population has exploded, it has only made Eric Rice’s work feel more urgent.

create personalized intervention strategies by using AI to analyze information that case workers painstakingly collect about their homeless clients. “How do we do data mining,” he says, “to help figure out what seems to work for whom?”

The work has crystallized through USC CAIS, a collaboration Rice co-founded with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering to use data to solve societal challenges.

Though homelessness is a serious issue, Rice strives to find happiness and energy in the work. “I find it to be a very joyful, playful, fun experience to work with these people this way on very hard, seemingly soul-crushing social problems,” he says.

“It’s pretty amazing.” spring 2020

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MISSION Halt Cancer Stacey finley is working on a new way to treat cancer patients. But her approach is more about math and computers than medicine and clinics.

A biomedical engineer, Finley creates computer simulations that can predict how malignant tumors will grow and spread in the body. The simulations could potentially accelerate clinical trials—or maybe one day even replace them entirely. The goal is to transform today’s time-consuming and cumbersome drug testing process.

“One advantage of doing mathematical modeling is that you can learn a lot with the computer that would take a lot more time and resources and financial support to do experimentally” in the lab or with a patient, Finley says.

Consider a type of therapy now common in the cancer world: what are called anti-angiogenic drugs. They block tumors from forming new blood vessels, essentially starving cancer of nourishment from blood.

The drugs’ strategy sounds good, but in practice, some patients do better than others. At her computer, Finley can create models of not one but hundreds of thousands of cancer patients. By running these simulations of the many variants of a particular tumor, “we can pinpoint one potential source of why these patients are responding in different ways to the same drug,” she says.

It’s exactly the kind of work Finley was seeking when she started her postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins University a decade ago. That’s when she joined a lab led by Aleksander Popel, a professor of biomedical engineering who applies mathematical modeling to cancer treatment.

“I thought that having this strong engineering background, very quantitative trojanfamily.usc.edu

Stacey Finley creates computer simulations that can predict how malignant tumors will grow and spread in the body. mathematical background and expertise in doing mathematical modeling…could have an impact in a way that’s very tangible and that is related to something people experience,” she says.

USC Viterbi agreed, bringing her onto the faculty to make a difference in health. Today, the associate professor of biomedical engineering holds a Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair and a spot at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience.

With that support behind her, Finley is tackling colorectal cancer. She teamed up with scientist Shannon Mumenthaler, assistant professor of medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and Paul Macklin, associate professor at Indiana University, to zero in on treatments for the disease. The National Cancer Institute backs the work through a $3.1 million grant.

Finley sees a day when researchers may analyze big datasets to uncover specific details about each cancer patient’s tumor. With that as a map, physicians could create more customized treatment plans than ever before.

“I think this is a really exciting time,” she says. “There’s so much data at our fingertips.” usc trojan family

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MISSION Save Wildlife Computer scientists like Bistra Dilkina have an important role to play in protecting the planet.

Embracing nature used to be Bistra Dilkina’s hobby. Now it is so much more.

As a child in Bulgaria, Dilkina often tagged along with her grandmother on treks through the mountains. Her grandmother led high school students on hiking tours, educating them about native plants and animals as they backpacked from one hut to another for weeks at a time. Later, as a college student, Dilkina turned to hiking and nature for balance in her life—an escape from her studies in computer science.

Then her doctoral advisor at Cornell University landed a major federal grant to spur a new field: computational sustainability. It uses artificial intelligence

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to tackle environmental problems. “I had always loved nature,” Dilkina says, “but that’s my other life. I had never thought of proactively connecting my PhD research with that interest.”

She dove into the field, and a decade later, it’s her passion and profession.

“We’re living in times when natural disasters are happening at increasing rates,” says Dilkina, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at USC Viterbi and associate director of the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society. “As computer scientists, we have an important role to play in that challenge.”

Her work spans a dizzying range of subjects, including how to preserve wildlife corridors and pinpoint where to install seismically resilient water pipes in big cities. What do these projects all have in common? In an age of tight budgets, she uses AI to recommend how to use limited resources for the biggest impact.

In Africa and Asia, for instance, Dilkina’s work employs AI as an aid to police wildlifetrafficking networks. Poaching is a multibillion-dollar problem that involves nearly every continent, she says. Hunters illegally kill or capture endangered animals in forests and jungles, then ship the carcasses or live creatures to collectors in wealthier nations around the globe. One of the reasons poachers are successful is that poorer nations can’t afford to frequently inspect packages or patrol every road. Her work is about identifying where those trafficked animals go and creating algorithms

that help agencies target where to inspect and how to disrupt the flows of contraband. That includes narrowing in on which airports and roads poachers are most likely to use.

“There are different critical points,” she says. “Part of the effort is understanding where those are.”

As a teaching professor at USC Viterbi, Dilkina aims to pique her computer science students’ interest in using machine learning and predictive analytics to improve the world. “Instead of learning about, say, what product people will buy, which tweet they are going to retweet or which website they are going to click on,” she says, “they can predict where there is going to be deforestation next or where people would go in the case of a natural disaster.”

The possibilities are numerous and all around us, she adds. The key is to get computer scientists—professionals and students alike—to start looking for answers in the algorithms. spring 2020

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THE SCIENCE OF SPORT Tech helps athletes train smarter and recover from injury faster.

Wearable gadgets track athletes’ every move, and analytics now touch every sport. See how data and devices are changing the way champions perform.

BY ERIC LINDBERG

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“I would say this data revolution is the wave of the future, except it’s happening right now.”

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PHOTOS BY CODY PICKENS

– S U S A N S I G WA R D, director of USC’s master’s program in sports science

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H E A R T R AT E M O N I T O R Want to hit that lungpunishing anaerobic zone on your morning run? A heart rate monitor can help you stay at the right intensity level during your workout.

The device measures heartbeats per minute, helping athletes train hard enough to boost their VO2 max or easy enough to condition muscle gradually.

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V O2 M A X MEASUREMENT Runners, cyclists and other endurance athletes need strong cardiovascular fitness. One measure of fitness: how much oxygen an athlete can breathe in and send to muscles for exercise. That number is called VO2 max.

Want to make it easier to run or ski faster? Boost your VO2 max. Sports scientists now can measure it with a device that athletes wear in a small backpack.

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Malcolm jones ms ’19 focuses on a computer screen as pictures of balls from different sports flash across it. The rules of the game: Tap only on the footballs. His fingers flick back and forth on the display. The balls soon disappear, and Jones learns his score— prompting a self-deprecating laugh.

This is more than a game for fun. It’s part of testing that measures abilities like peripheral vision and object tracking. For athletes, it's thought that improvements translate to better decisions and reaction times in competition.

The program also symbolizes something else: How measurement is revolutionizing the way people train, heal and compete.

At a time when wearable computers can track blood pressure and sleep quality to promote health, similar advances have hit athletics.

Analytics already has changed the business of sport. Look no further than stats used by pro baseball teams since the early 2000s to sign undervalued talent—made famous in the film Moneyball.

Now teams are shifting attention to performance, outfitting athletes with sensors to help them train hard while staying healthy.

“The data game is about minimizing risk,” Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist and executive director of the USC Center for Body Computing, told attendees at an MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. When the USC women’s soccer coach couldn’t figure out why a team with a legacy of national championships wasn’t winning, data from sensors alerted him that players were running six miles the day before a game, according to Saxon. The aha moment spurred more rest before games, which led to more wins and fewer injuries.

Today, scientists like Jones, a USC biokinesiology doctoral student, help athletes at all levels. To advance the movement, USC’s Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy recently launched one of the first Master of Science in biokinesiology programs with a sports science emphasis.

“Everyone is after the holy grail of predicting performance, injury and health,” says Susan Sigward PhD ’04, associate professor of clinical physical therapy. “Advances in technology allow us to collect a lot of data and give us a greater capacity to store and share it. Sports science practitioners are now on the forefront of figuring out which data is relevant and what it means for performance or recovery.”

USC’s sports science program is collaborating with Nike’s Jordan brand. That enables its students to study athletes at Jumpman LA, Jordan’s retail and recreational facility in downtown Los Angeles. Jumpman LA’s Flight Lab features highspeed cameras, impact-sensing force plates, a virtual reality treadmill and other data-driven gadgets. Local athletes—from elite pros to elementary school hopefuls—flock there for training and skills testing.

“We have our labs at USC, but we were looking for something outside the university to get the public more involved,” says E. Todd Schroeder, associate professor of clinical physical therapy.

“It was serendipity.”

Because USC’s sports science program incorporates data science, biomechanics and physiology, its graduates are attractive to sports teams and tech companies working on exercise apps and other consumer health products.

“Pro teams especially want to be out in front of this movement and using state-of-the-art stuff,” Sigward says. “They want to have their special sauce.” usc trojan family

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Exercise too hard and you risk injury and overtraining. Go too easy and you won’t be at your best on game day. Data-driven tools and new technology ensure that athletes find that sweet spot of building healthy muscle for peak performance while reducing their chances of getting hurt.

BLOOD-FLOW RESTRICTION You might think an injured muscle needs more rest.

But decreasing blood flow to a limb while exercising the muscle during physical therapy releases hormones that aid recovery. Athletes also can use a band or cuff to restrict blood flow during strength training, which current research shows can enable athletes to build more muscle lifting lighter weights.

VR TREADMILL Running on a treadmill feels like a slog to some. But what if you were being chased by an army of sea creatures?

USC researchers are exploring whether virtual reality gaming components could encourage people to stay on a treadmill for longer. And, incorporating data, pressure sensors could alert runners to uneven strides that could lead to injury.

“More than a 10% difference between legs is something we might consider as favoring one side. A larger asymmetry is related to increased risk of injury.”

– MALCOLM JONES, biokinesiology PhD student spring 2020

F O R C E P L AT E S Hard landings can strain joints, especially if one leg bears more impact. Sports scientists use force plates to measure how fast and powerfully athletes jump and how forcibly they land.

Numbers also can tell if athletes favor one side during injury recovery.

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Alexander hamilton was one of the first to try convincing Americans to pay for their sins.

In 1790, the U.S. statesman proposed a tax on whiskey, an unapologetic move designed to help the upstart nation tackle Revolutionary War debt. Hamilton’s proposal not only spurred the Whiskey Rebellion but also introduced the concept of sin taxes into the American consciousness.

More than 230 years after Hamilton’s novel overture, sin taxes—levies on goods seen as harmful, like sugary drinks, cigarettes, plastic bags and alcohol—stir intense public debate.

Proponents argue that they address the societal costs that come from bad behaviors. The health care costs of diseases related to tobacco use serve as one prominent example. They also say it’s a win-win: Why not nudge consumer behavior toward healthful

habits while also boosting funding for programs that benefit the public? Others call sin taxes nothing more than a legislative cash grab that can hobble businesses. Not only do the taxes infringe on individual rights, they argue, but they also often prove to be regressive—meaning that they’re harder on the poor.

As policymakers and economists try to quantify the results of unhealthful human behavior in dollars, can hitting people in the pocketbook create better habits and a better world? Here’s what USC experts have to say.

Over the last 25 years, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Michael Goran has watched childhood obesity rates rise and the quality of children’s diets decline. Worried by what he saw, the researcher began investigating what happens when kids eat a sugar-rich diet—a contributing factor in weight gain—while they’re growing.

He points to one noteworthy modifiable culprit in particular: added sugars. About 70% of processed foods and 80% of snack foods contain added sugar, says Goran, professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The single largest source of added sugar in the average American’s diet isn’t food, though. It’s soda and sugar-sweetened beverages, according to the National Cancer Institute. With more than 60% of young people downing one of these drinks daily, Goran understands why the beverages have emerged as a convenient target for taxes.

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Still, he has mixed feelings on these taxes, which are now levied in U.S. cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia and Chicago.

“It’s concerned me all along that taxes are limited to sugary beverages, when there’s an increased prevalence of added sugars throughout the diet,” says Goran, the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Chair in Childhood Obesity and Diabetes and co-director of the USC Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute.

He remains unconvinced that modest soda taxes will reduce consumption enough to improve human health. But the levies are a reasonable place to start, he says. He hopes that more comprehensive efforts—driven by public education about added sugars— take hold, especially for infant formulas and foods.

“Ninety percent of toddlers consume added sugars in any given day, so we have to attack this problem earlier in life,” he says.

Can raising the cost of bad-for-you goods create a healthier world?

From sugary drinks to carbon taxes, USC experts weigh in.

By Daniel P. Smith Illustrations by Heads of State

In California, Goran has been involved in dialogue with state legislators and other public health leaders about the potential use of warning labels on products with high sugar content.

“Warning labels make a lot of sense,” he says. “What’s wrong with giving consumers information?”

It would be easy to point to Americans’ decreased tobacco use, one of the most significant public health stories of the last generation, as an example of what soda taxes might accomplish. But Dana Goldman doesn’t buy the comparison. He holds the Leonard D. Schaeffer Director’s Chair of the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.

First, Goldman says, stiff taxes on tobacco made it harder for many cash-strapped teens to try cigarettes enough to get hooked on them. But most Americans develop a taste for sugary drinks in childhood, before they have to pay for them.

Second, the dramatic drop in tobacco use coincided with other initiatives, including robust public education and warning labels. Taxes alone didn’t curb the habit, says Goldman, Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy and Economics at the USC School of Pharmacy and the USC Price School of Public Policy.

Finally, he cites a key difference that remains a fundamental issue for soda tax advocates: While the negative effects of tobacco stand clear and well established, consuming food (and calories) is a routine—and necessary—part of everyday life. Scientists know that the usc trojan family

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Carbon, at a Price While experts continue to debate how much sugar harms human health, the vast majority of scientists agree about dangers to our planet’s health. Research has shown that, to combat climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced on a global scale.

That’s why taxes on the production or use of fossil fuels have become commonplace in many countries. Some consider them a sin tax on carbon. But such assessments have struggled to gain traction in the U.S., where car culture depends on cheap energy sources.

Economist Antonio Bento, who has testified before Congress about carbon taxes, says pricing carbon directly would reduce consumption and help slow global warming. He champions installing such taxes now, and at rates high enough to produce change. The rates must compel industry and individuals to find and employ alternatives to fossil fuels, says Bento, a professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Most current experiments with carbon pricing embrace what’s called the cap-andtrade model. California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 pairs increasingly strict caps on greenhouse gas emissions with an auction that allows companies to buy and sell allowances. The law challenged California, one of the globe’s largest sources of carbon, to slash emissions to 1990-era levels. The state reached the milestone four years early.

These cap-and-trade models, Bento contends, tell the market to alter consumption patterns and prioritize innovation. Now, he hopes that an even larger economy pushes the global market to act. That could be China, where Bento is currently working with the country’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment to develop a carbon cap-and-trade program. It is an especially noteworthy development given China’s longstanding struggle with environmental sustainability practices.

“Many in the world are aware of this problem,” Bento says, “and eager to find solutions for a more sustainable future.”

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way some excess sugars are metabolized in the body contributes to an increased risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and fatty liver disease. However, they can’t say definitively that the calories from sugary drinks are more harmful than calories from other junk foods.

Goldman applauds several cities’ experiments to curb consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, but he presses for more time and research to assess how these taxes impact long-term behavior.

Two years after Philadelphia’s soda tax was introduced in 2017, researchers at Stanford and Northwestern universities and the University of Minnesota found that few Philadelphia consumers swapped soda for more-healthful (and untaxed) beverages such as water as a result. But many drove elsewhere to buy sugary drinks.

The results could shift as consumers adapt to the taxes over time—or not. It took years to see whether the campaign against tobacco worked, Goldman notes, and that will likely apply to soda taxes as well. “And if we impose a soda tax and people still drink soda, it runs the risk of becoming regressive over time,” he says.

A higher price puts a bigger tax burden on people who earn less.

“A reasoned view of this requires more research on effective interventions that change behavior, including the taxes,” Goldman says. “With that, we can then have more confidence in the policy.”

Michael Thom once assumed that sin taxes curb unhealthful behavior. But his subsequent research has made him skeptical. The public finance and taxation expert—and author of the book Tax Politics and Policy and a forthcoming one on sin taxes—expresses concerns about the science supporting levies such as the ones on sweetened drinks. “Are we so sure soda is driving obesity?” he asks.

Beyond health concerns, the associate professor at USC Price also notes that sin taxes can be a counterproductive way to raise revenue. The money collected often is funneled back to support interest groups that lobby for these very taxes. There can also be unintended, costly consequences like spurring the rise of black markets for taxed goods.

Consider, too, the taxes and bans on single-use plastic shopping bags that have been enacted in many cities to reduce plastics in the environment. Stores began charging customers for paper bags in part to push customers to bring their own. But a reusable sack made from cotton—which requires significant water to grow—must be reused 131 times before it is better for the environment than a single-use bag, according to the U.K. Environment Agency.

Policymakers, Thom continues, tend to view sin taxes as a tool to raise revenue without cutting spending. Or they may use them as a way to skirt political fallout from increasing property taxes or sales taxes, which touch more people.

“It’s as if policymakers are saying, ‘Don’t drink, smoke or gamble, but we would appreciate if some of you do, because we need the money,’” he says. So what does the future hold? He foresees these taxes becoming more prevalent—especially if policymakers use them as a convenient compromise to stricter all-out bans on the products. spring 2020

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The USC Alumni Association proudly announces the

87 t h A nn ual

USC

Alumni Awards Saturday, April 25, 2020 InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown Asa V. Call Alumni Achievement Award David C. Bohnett ’78 USC Trustee, Technology Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Alumni Merit Awards Patsy Dewey ’58 CEO, Dewey Pest Control Dianne Kwock PharmD ’74 and Lunny Ronnie Jung PharmD ’72 Co-founders, Fox Drug Store, Inc. Mike Nyeholt ’78 Chairman, Swim with Mike Physically Challenged Athletes Scholarship Fund Young Alumni Merit Award Rachel Morford ’07, MS ’07 Principal Director, The Aerospace Corporation Alumni Service Awards Kathleen Burns Campos ’83 Former President, Trojan League of Los Angeles and longtime university volunteer Richard Flores ’83 USC Dornsife Board of Councilors and longtime university volunteer

To RSVP or for more information, visit alumni.usc.edu/awards

FA M I LY

PHOTO BY WILL CHIANG

BACK TO SCHOOL College never ends for Half Century Trojans.

This designation honors alumni who earned a degree 50 or more years ago. Here, Donna and David Rusher ’67 attend commencement, where Half Century Trojans hold a proud tradition of marching in the academic procession.

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family news

Finding His Way During his undergraduate days, Grant Whitney ’12 was a master of campus trivia.

Rain or shine, you could find him striding down Trousdale in the afternoon, dispensing USC facts and figures while fielding questions from prospective students and their families—all while walking backward.

“I loved being a USC tour guide,” Whitney says with a smile.

Today, he is district manager for AbbVie, a global research-based pharmaceutical company based in Chicago. He leads a team in Wisconsin that educates health care providers about options to support patients living with rheumatoid arthritis. It is a far cry from being head tour

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guide at USC, but he points to a common thread: providing timely, accurate information to those who might most benefit from it. “I consider it a valuable opportunity to not only help patients but also hone the leadership skills I began to develop at USC,” he says.

Whitney never planned on going into health care, but his interest was piqued at a USC career fair. The mechanical engineering major came across a health care company that developed heart stents, small mesh tubes used to widen arteries. “It seemed really cool and like a direct application of fluid dynamics, a course I had just taken the previous semester,” he says. It was also

felt gratifying to put patients at the center of his work.

Soon, he was helping out on a variety of the company’s functional engineering projects, including designing and patenting more comfortable ways for Parkinson’s patients to walk around with medication injection pumps.

He enjoyed working behind the scenes in the lab, but when the opportunity came to join the sales and marketing division, he decided to take a risk on a different career path.

“For my personality, marketing seemed like it could fit since it’s very much about communicating with real, live human beings, not just little petri dishes,” he says.

He transferred to AbbVie’s London office as a product and brand manager and immersed himself in learning about therapies for blood cancers. As he worked on drugs that were not yet on the market, he gained a better understanding about regulators and health care payors—such as PPOs and HMOs—and how they perceive the value of new therapies to a larger population. They’re all lessons he hopes to bring back with him to the U.S. health care system as he moves forward in his career.

He has also found that his engineering background comes in handy. “The algorithmic thought process gives me a kind of rigor to look at both straightforward and complex problems with a stepwise approach. There’s not a day that goes by in my life that I don’t apply that process,” he says.

Now in Chicago, he is looking forward to new opportunities with a team focused on a recently approved therapy that is part of the company’s immunology portfolio. He may not have foreseen his path to the health care industry, but he is pleased to have the opportunity to explore different roles within it. All the while, he has kept his sights on the patients at the center of his work. “There’s this kind of human component to all this,” he says. “Whether you’re a doctor or a lab researcher or a health care economist, we’re all in this for people.” ELISA HUANG spring 2020

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE ANDERSON

Young alum Grant Whitney applies his engineering smarts to marketing.

The guiding star on his career journey: working with people.

family news

A Man with a Plan

PHOTO BY KEN LEE

From electric bikes to sustainability startups, Matt Petersen has a plan for a greener L.A. At the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) offices, Matt Petersen MPA ’94 sits at his desk and fiddles with a yellow pin on his lapel that reads “electric commuter.” It’s not a fashion statement but rather a rallying cry for electric-powered wheels of all kinds: scooters, bikes, cars and trains. As a dedicated electric commuter, he aims to pave the way for others to get onboard.

Petersen is president and CEO of LACI, a nonprofit that accelerates green technology by harnessing the creativity of entrepreneurs.

Its downtown Los Angeles office is home to 18 startups that are developing diverse sectors of sustainable innovation, from electric airplanes and better batteries to workforce development and cheaper, greener homes.

Environmental sustainability has been on Petersen’s mind since he was a kid growing up in Modesto, California. His father used to tell the story of how, one day, they walked by

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a neighborhood park covered in litter after a weekend of parties and picnics. “I said to my dad: ‘Look at it. We’ve got to do something to take care of our planet!’” Petersen was 5 years old. The story is now part of family lore.

Another memory he has of Modesto was watching as agricultural land gave way to suburban tract homes. “That really struck me as wrong,” he recalls. “Why are we building this stuff that wasn’t mostly green housing?”

Years later, when he was pursuing his master’s in public administration at the USC Price School of Public Policy, he dove deeper into ecology and systems thinking—the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. “You can’t see environmental sustainability as an ‘issue.’ It’s not a thing over there,” he says, gesturing. “The planet is this system. Our economy is this system.

Sustainability and climate action have to be core to this system.”

After graduation, he put that philosophy into action. His work stints include leading Global Green USA, an internationally recognized nonprofit, and serving as the city of Los Angeles’ first chief sustainability officer. In that role, he helped develop the city’s first long-term plan for conserving water, creating green jobs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He also created Climate Mayors, a coalition of 250 U.S. mayors fighting climate change.

Now, as the head of LACI, he tackles thorny issues from three directions: supporting startups that advance sustainable technology; collaborating with corporate and government partners to transform markets; and engaging with underserved neighborhoods through workforce development and pilot programs so that the benefits of green innovation are more accessible.

The center recently laid out an ambitious roadmap to accelerate transportation electrification in the Los Angeles region. The goal is to reduce air pollution by an additional 25% by 2028, when the Olympics arrive.

It’s a tall order, but Petersen is hopeful about the city’s future—and the intrinsic qualities of its inhabitants. “What makes us unique as the human species? Love, hope and an opposable thumb—I’m optimistic about all three.”

K ATHARINE G AMMON

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family news

In This Together Alumni are reaching out to students to share their wise words and perspective. Meet a few of the many Trojan mentors who are paying it forward.

Caffeine-craving students steadily stream into USC’s Literatea cafe on Friday mornings. As one of them shuffles in and greets Bob Clifford ’85 in line, the alumnus can’t resist some good-natured teasing: “Hey, wipe the sleepy dust outta your eyes.”

Clifford, a founding principal at Liquid Venture Partners, feels right at home among undergraduates: He has long mentored them. Often he is paired with members of Society 53, the governing board of USC’s Student Alumni Society, but the

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student he is mentoring today came to him by happenstance. They met at a USC Price School of Public Policy event a few years ago and have gotten together regularly since then.

The college student is in the SEO Scholars program run by Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, a New York-based nonprofit that prepares first-generation and underserved students for college.

“We’ve never had a formal conversation about me being a mentor; that word has never been used. I just wanted

him to know that the Trojan Family is real—in order to believe in it, there has to be a tangible, credible and sincere extension from alumni to the undergrads,” says Clifford, who is a member of the USC Alumni Association’s Board of Governors. (For Clifford, the Trojan Family is real in another way, too—he and his wife met at USC and their son is currently a student.)

“At first, undergrads can be somewhat skeptical, but over time they figure out spring 2020

To learn about alumni mentoring opportunities, go to bit.ly/TrojansEngage.

A GUIDING HAND Using past experiences to help others succeed also resonates with Maria Jones-Sechrest ’87.

The alum has run her own printing and packaging business since 1997.

In the early 2000s, one of JonesSechrest’s clients mentioned that a tal-

and helps shape your own path.” She and Jones-Sechrest still keep in touch.

“Mentorship doesn’t have to be this daily [thing], I just opened a few doors.

She did all the hard work,” says JonesSechrest, who has been a member of the LAA Board of Directors and the USCAA Board of Governors. She has gone on to mentor other students through LAA and USC Marshall School of Business matching programs.

“For me, it’s the satisfaction of knowing somebody was able to achieve something that they were truly capable of and

“We were the beneficiaries of someone else’s generosity of time and energy once, and now it’s our opportunity to give back.” ented intern had been accepted to USC but was going to turn down the offer due to financial pressure. She was working her way through junior college while supporting her mother and young son.

Jones-Sechrest kicked into high gear. She was a member of the USC Mexican American Alumni Association (now known as the USC Latino Alumni Association, or LAA) and the group had granted her a scholarship when she was an undergraduate. She knew the organization could offer resources to help financially and academically.

The connection to Jones-Sechrest and LAA encouraged that intern to transfer to USC. Leslie Ardon ’05 went on to graduate with a degree in business administration and is now an international merchandising manager at footwear company Skechers.

Being a USC graduate “has been the best thing ever,” Ardon says. “Maria’s mentorship was such a great help. Sometimes you don’t know what lane to take and you don’t feel confident. But when you have a mentor, the relationship really guides you trojanfamily.usc.edu

worked for,” she adds. “There are so many people who are talented in all sorts of different ways, but maybe no one said to them, ‘Hey, let me show you the way. I’ve been down that road.’”

CARING CONNECTIONS It’s a feeling many mentors share. Clifford, who grew up in the Boston area and has spent more than three decades in investment banking, might not always have a background similar to his mentees but he finds common ground. “It’s not a Q&A,” he says. “It’s just, ‘How’s it going? Where are you from? Tell me about your family.’”

Jameson Lee ’15 attests to the genuine nature of Clifford’s approach. He was paired with Clifford through the USC Alumni Association’s Society 53 mentorship program when he was a junior. Since then, Lee has run every major life decision past Clifford.

“Mentors I’ve worked with in the past come in and say, ‘Hey, here are my three core beliefs about how life works and I’m going to fit this worldview over whatever you’re experiencing,’” Lee says.

“Bob did not do that at all. He put in the time and effort to understand who I was as a person and the context that I was in when we first met.”

Clifford’s ethos of paying it forward is something that Lee shares now too.

Through Society 53, he has been paired with a USC student mentee of his own.

The three generations of Trojans—Lee, his mentee and Clifford—recently had brunch together.

“It’s been very gratifying for me to be a part of Jameson’s milestones. You just don’t take for granted that you’ve become the person who this young man really values,” Clifford says. “The USC campus is the place where it starts, and hopefully it’s not the place where it ends.”

LISA BUT TERWORTH

Bob Clifford

Jameson Lee

Maria Jones-Sechrest

ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC HANSON

that it’s all about the notion of paying it forward, which is rewarding for the mentor,” he said. “We were the beneficiaries of someone else’s generosity of time and energy once, and now it’s our opportunity to give back.”

Leslie Ardon

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Share with USC. Follow the USC Alumni Association on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter today.

And always tag your posts #USCAlumni to share your USC-inspired moments with fellow alumni—more than 425,000 strong, lifelong and worldwide. @USCalumni

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

family class notes 1 9 5 0 s George Demos MS ’59 (GRD) wrote his 15th book, An Introduction to Counseling.

1 9 6 0 s Robert Feiles PharmD ’65 (PHM), owner of Victory Tampa Medical Pharmacy in Reseda, California, sold the independent pharmacy after 38 years of service to the community. He continues to serve as a resource for independent pharmacies that require temporary pharmacist support.

1 9 7 0 s Greg Polito MD ’71 (MED) retired as vice president of medical affairs, surgical services, at PIH Health Hospital in Whittier, California. Previously, he practiced urology for 40 years.

Stephen Ralls DDS ’74 (DEN), EdD ’79 (EDU) is president of the American College of Dentists, where he served as executive director for more than 20 years.

Debbie Shon ’74 (LAS), partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, received the 2019 Women’s Leadership Award and the Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazer Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

Steve Furniss ’76 (BUS), Olympic medalist in swimming and founder of TYR Sport, retired after 43 years in the athletic wear industry. At USC, he was a member of Skull and Dagger and the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and competed in swimming and water polo.

Dennis Neil Jones ’76 (SCJ), MPA ’78 (SPP) received the 2019 Ben E. Nordman Public Service Award from the Ventura County Bar Association in recognition of more than 30 years of public service. He is general counsel for the Ventura County Schools Self-Funding Authority and also trojanfamily.usc.edu

handles construction law cases. He has been with Myers, Widders, Gibson, Jones & Feingold since 1999.

a young adult drama. He is also working on a romantic drama called My Ex-Life for Apple TV+.

1 9 8 0 s Tim Dang ’80 (DRA) was appointed to the Arts Commission, the advisory body of the L.A. County Department of Arts and Culture, which invests in cultural organizations and strives to create more careers in the arts. The USC School of Dramatic Arts faculty member also directed The Joy Luck Club at the Sierra Madre Playhouse.

Bob Gold MA ’80 (SCJ), principal of Bob Gold & Associates, was named the 2019 Communications Professional of the Year at the Los Angeles PRism Awards, held by the Public Relations Society of America.

Cynthia Kania MFA ’80 (DRA) performed in the leading role for the L.A. premiere of Hir at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles.

James P. O’Sullivan ’80 (SPP), a partner at Tiffany & Bosco P.A., received the State Bar of Arizona’s 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award, which recognizes innovative efforts to advance diversity and inclusion in the legal community.

Stanley Heyman ’81, MBT ’84 (BUS), JD ’84 (LAW) is a partner in Barnes & Thornburg’s Los Angeles office, where he specializes in tax and estate planning.

Maria Aranda MSW ’82, PhD ’95 (SSW) is a member of California’s Alzheimer’s Prevention and Preparedness Task Force created by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Russell Cummings EAE ’82, PhD ’88 (ENG) received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Pendray Aerospace Literature Award for his book Applied Computational Aerodynamics: A Modern Engineering Approach.

John Wells MFA ’82 (SCA) is executive producer of HBO Max’s Red Bird Lane,

T R O J A N

T R I B U T E

Earl Paysinger Earl Paysinger EML ’18 joined USC in 2016 as vice president of civic engagement after 41 years at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), where he served with distinction.

Paysinger rose from patrol officer to first assistant chief. During his tenure with the LAPD, the department forged enduring partnerships with neighborhoods throughout the Los Angeles area.

His particular focus was South L.A., as he spent half his career in that community with the department’s 77th division. His hallmark achievements included revitalizing 21 community relations offices around the Los Angeles area. Paysinger also re-engineered the LAPD Cadet Leadership program, which has provided thousands of children with lessons in academic excellence, character and judgment. Its participants have a 91% graduation rate from high school.

In his role at USC, he strengthened community outreach and involvement in the neighborhoods surrounding USC. Through programs like the Good Neighbors Campaign—which provides educational and financial support to local families, businesses and organizations —he tackled everything from small businesses to homelessness while working to elevate residents’ social, physical and economic well-being.

Paysinger grew up in Harbor City, California, and earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from California State University, Long Beach. He was a graduate of the FBI’s Command College and the West Point Leadership Command and Development Program. He also earned an Executive Master of Leadership from the USC Price School of Public Policy.

He died Dec. 16, 2019, at age 64 and is survived by his wife, Miguel, and two sons.

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Scholarships change lives.

“Thanks to this scholarship, I have the time and ability to have a real voice as part of USC’s undergraduate student government, and as the social justice and inclusion chair for USC’s residential student government.”

Diana Fonte Kalmanson Scholar USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Class of 2021

Every gift counts. giveto.usc.edu

B A C K

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T H E

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B U I L D I N G

L.A. Law

USC students of a century ago pursued law right in the middle of the legal scene: downtown Los Angeles’ hotbed of courthouses.

USC’s law school settled into the building at a time when the United States had just seen record numbers of immigrants.

Enrollment at the law school reflected the arrival of these new Americans. A 1912 school yearbook shows Japanese, Filipino, Armenian and Russian Jewish students.

Reflecting the diversity of the city, the school’s second black student also appears in the book, as do women. Students founded Phi Delta Delta, the nation’s first law student sorority, during this era.

ALICIA DI R ADO

PHOTO COURTESY OF USC UNIVERISTY ARCHIVES

USC law students today tackle torts and ponder property law at the USC Gould School of Law on the south side of the University Park Campus. But 100 years ago, students went to class nearly five miles away, in downtown Los Angeles.

From 1911 to 1925, USC’s law school was in the Tajo Building at the northwest corner of North Broadway and West First Street.

Today, the First Street U.S. Courthouse still stands across the street from the site.

The Tajo Building was erected at the behest of Simona M. Martinez Bradbury, widow of millionaire Lewis Bradbury. Architects George Herbert Wyman and William Lee Woollett designed the structure. Fans of the L.A. architecture scene would recognize Wyman as one of the creators of the landmark Bradbury Building and its famous Victorian atrium.

Only a few years later, Mabel Walker Willebrandt LLB ’16, LLM ’17 graduated.

She would become one of the nation’s most prominent female attorneys from the 1920s through the 1940s. Under President Warren G. Harding, Willebrandt served as assistant attorney general. Mirroring the changing faces of Los Angeles, the school also counted You Chung Hong LLB ’24, LLM ’25 as an alumnus. Hong—whose father was a Chinese immigrant who had worked on the railroads—was the first Chinese American admitted upon examination to practice law in California. He specialized in immigration law and became a leading civil rights attorney over the next four decades.

By 1925, USC leaders built a permanent law school on the University Park Campus and students moved south. Thirteen years later, the Tajo Building was demolished. But the area still hosts its share of legal scholars: The L.A. Law Library now stands where so many aspiring Trojan attorneys once studied.

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family class notes John L. Geiger JD ’85 (LAW) is co-author of Creativity and Copyright: Legal Essentials for Screenwriters and Creative Artists.

Brian Goldbeck MS ’85 (ENG), who served in Mongolia as a deputy ambassador from 2005 to 2008, returned to the country in July and met the foreign minister and U.S. ambassador. He gave the presentation “President Bush’s 2005 Mongolia Visit: A Bilateral Relations Milestone” at the American Center of Mongolia Studies.

Susan McCormick Winslow ’85 (DRA) is a tenured English professor at Mt. San Jacinto College in Menifee, California.

Grant Heslov ’86 (DRA) produced the Showtime series On Becoming a God in Central Florida starring Kirsten Dunst.

Jessica Winters Mireles ’86 (MUS) wrote her first novel, Lost in Oaxaca, about a piano teacher who travels to Mexico in search of a missing student.

Dean A. J. Spizzirri JD ’88 (LAW) was appointed assistant general counsel of women and children’s services at MedNax Inc. John Roach EdD ’88 (EDU) is CEO of the School Employers Association of California, which provides education and professional development to superintendents and management team members.

Gabrielle Tierney MBA ’88 (BUS) has been a member of Caridad Partners for nine years and served as chair for the last five years. The giving circle of Bay Area women aims to enhance the health, education and self-sufficiency of women and children in the developing world through high-impact grants to nonprofit organizations.

Terri Watson MS ’88 (ENG) is the sixth president of the National Outdoor Leadership School, a nonprofit school dedicated to teaching environmental ethics, technical outdoors skills, wilderness medicine, risk management and judgment.

Joaquin Sedillo ’89 (SCA) directed two episodes for the third season of Fox’s hit show 9-1-1.

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1 9 9 0 s Jean Conley MBA ’90 (BUS) is CFO, director of finance and administration and treasurer at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit corporation that operates three federally funded research and development centers for the public interest.

James Lord ’90 (ARC) published Surfacedesign: Material Landscapes, a book about major projects designed by his San Francisco landscape and urban design studio.

Scott Armanini MBA ’91 (BUS) is managing partner for Alumni Ventures Group, which manages private, for-profit venture funds for alumni communities.

Darin Goldberg ’91 (SCA) is executive producer and showrunner for Hallmark Channel’s television series Good Witch.

Nick Lim ’92, MA ’92 (LAS) and Joni Lim Ricard ’05 (BUS) took their families, including Fabien Ricard ’05 (BUS), on an Alaskan cruise to celebrate their mother’s 75th birthday.

Mark Gangi ’93 (ARC) joined the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows, which accepts architects who have made significant contributions to the profession and who exemplify architectural excellence.

Andrea J. Wilson ’93, MPW ’08 (LAS) is CEO and co-founder of Cancer U, a for-profit, health tech startup based in Birmingham, Alabama, and founder of Blue Faery: The Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer Association, a nonprofit focused on hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer). Her memoir Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days was published in October.

Christina Conley ’94 (LAS) is part of the Ventura County Sheriff ’s Foundation’s executive board and serves as the chair of marketing and the Shop with a Cop program.

Allen Herbert ’94 (ENG) is vice president of business development and strategy at

NanoRacks, a company specializing in space technology. It recently opened an office in Abu Dhabi’s Hub71, a global tech ecosystem.

David Brenneman ’95 (LAS) is national sales manager for retail at the Justice Design Group, a Los Angeles-based lighting manufacturer.

Scott Nemes ’95 (SCA) is executive vice president of development and current programming at Universal Content Productions, where he oversees all programming for the NBCUniversal-owned television studio.

Prentice Penny ’95 (SCA) is executive producer for HBO’s The Untamed, an epic fantasy tale based on the Asunda line of comic books created by Sebastian A. Jones and published by Stranger Comics. He is also writing and directing the feature film Uncorked for Netflix, which is produced by Jason Michael Berman ’06 (SCA).

Mykle McCoslin ’96 (DRA) was elected president of the Houston-Austin chapter of the Screen Actors GuildAmerican Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAGAFTRA) and represented her members as a convention delegate at the 2019 SAGAFTRA national convention in Los Angeles.

2 0 0 0 s Ehren Tool ’00 (ART) was featured in The New York Times Magazine about his work creating stoneware cups that explore the grief and suffering from armed conflict.

Matt Harry MFA ’01 (SCA) published Cryptozoology for Beginners, a middle-grade fantasy novel that is a follow-up to Sorcery for Beginners.

Eric Ladin ’01 (DRA) plays Gene Kranz in the Apple TV+ miniseries For All Mankind.

Mandana Mellano MA ’01 (SCJ), a former Ogilvy and Fallon executive, founded spring 2020

A LU M N A

P R O F I L E

J I N G M A I

O ’C O N N O R

P h D ’0 9

The ‘Rock’ Star

PHOTO BY JOCHEN STIERBERGER

A paleontologist finds countless exceptional fossils within reach—and the freedom to be herself.

Sitting prominently on the desk of paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor PhD ’09 is a cast of Qiliania graffini, a fossilized bird she named after Greg Graffin, lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion.

“Graffin signed it and they sent it to me as a thank you, and I keep it here as one of my little crown jewels,” she says. As a leader in the field of paleontology, O’Connor is no stranger to rare prizes. In 2019, she led a team of researchers to discover a perfectly preserved, 99-million-year-old bird’s foot.

She also received the Schuchert Award, in recognition of talent under age 40, from the Paleontological Society. But the cast is one of her favorites.

She has been dubbed the “the punk rock paleontologist,” but the pierced and tattooed researcher admits that—with the exception of Graffin’s band—she actually is not that into punk. If you walk past O’Connor’s office at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, you’re more likely to hear faint dance music, punctuated with the occasional Irish folk song.

The daughter of a Chinese American mother and an Irish American father, O’Connor grew up listening to traditional Irish music, celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival, dancing and playing violin with her parents in a folk band. But unlike her siblings, she wasn’t particularly academic as a child, preferring to draw comics over studying.

At Occidental College, she majored in geology and became fascinated with evolution.

Intrigued by the way birds adapted to almost every ecological niche, she specialized in prehistoric feathered dinosaurs and other fossils as a PhD student at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

She credits her USC doctoral advisors, Luis Chiappe and David Bottjer, for helping her find her path: “I’ve had a blessed trajectory in academia. I was just really lucky every step of the way.” Last September, O’Connor shared the stage with Bottjer as they were honored as best junior and best senior paleontologist by the Geological Society of America.

From her Beijing base, O’Connor is close to the Jehol Biota, an ecosystem known for its diversity of well-preserved fossils dating from between 131 million and 120 million years ago. She counts herself lucky because the fossils here, she stresses, cannot be seen anywhere else in the world.

She is determined to help other young scientists—especially women—have experiences similar to her own. “For women in

trojanfamily.usc.edu

science, it’s very difficult,” says O’Connor, who admits she cried after her first two professional conferences.

“I bounced back and stood up to the challenge, but a lot of women don’t. They just quit. And that really sucks.” She tries to encourage young colleagues to return to academia because she knows firsthand that a career in paleontology can be a “wonderful,

rewarding journey.” And there are still so many answers to dig up.

“Birds are incredible creatures. …Think of ostriches. Or penguins, which can’t fly anymore but can live in harsh environments and basically fly underwater. There are just a million and one incredible bird facts out there, and millions more yet to be discovered.” S U SAN BELL

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P R O F I L E

L A F C

D E N T I S T S

Dental Defenders When a Los Angeles Football Club player chips a tooth or hurts his jaw, a Trojan dental team aims to keep him smiling.

With two minutes left to play, the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) trails its crosstown soccer rival, the Los Angeles Galaxy, by a goal.

Two players stretch for a ball in the air and their heads collide. As the LAFC player lies on the field clenching his mouth, medical personnel rush onto the field.

At times like this, Wayne Nakamura ’78, DDS ’82, Daryn Nishikawa DDS ’10 and Kent Ochiai ’83, DDS ’87, GCRT ’89 are ready to spring into action. They’re the on-call dental team for LAFC.

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Familiarity with the fast-paced world of competitive sports is key for the dentists.

“The importance of understanding injuries that can occur during practice, training or games really only comes from past experiences in similar sports,” Ochiai explains.

The Trojan dental team’s sports dentistry knowledge comes from extensive experience in the amateur and the elite circuit, including with Chivas USA, Occidental College Athletics and U.S. Olympic teams.

But it’s not just emergency care that the LAFC dental team provides. During

preseason, the dentists conduct dental screenings and recommend mouthguards, which aren’t required during play. “Since many of the players come from all over the world to play with LAFC, they often do not have a regular dentist, so we become a dental resource,” Nishikawa says.

Though they’re sports fans, the dentists admit that LAFC goals aren’t the only things that get them pumped up during the game.

“I made a mouthguard for one of the LAFC players during preseason screenings.

On the stadium’s big screen monitor, I saw him take off the guard, then replace it,” Nakamura says. “It was a thrill to know that someone took to heart our recommendations to protect their teeth and mouth.

Hopefully, as role models, they’ll encourage younger players to do the same.”

YA S M I N E P E Z E S H K P O U R

spring 2020

PHOTO BY IMAD BOLOTOK

A LU M N I

Do you have news to share? Send it along with your name, school and class year to classnotes@ usc.edu and it may appear in a future issue.

Peony, a talent recruitment and advisory practice for the media, advertising, marketing, technology and entertainment industries in Los Angeles.

years of PR experience at agencies, law firms, small businesses and large companies, handling all aspects of media relations and communications.

Maria Gandera EdD ’02 (EDU) was named superintendent for Coachella Valley Unified School District in Thermal, California.

Tricia J. Taylor JD ’04 (LAW) was appointed to a judgeship in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Gov. Gavin Newsom. She previously served as a deputy district attorney at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and was a law clerk in the Law Offices of Marvyn B. Gordon and at the Children’s Law Center.

Jared Yeager ’02 (SCA) is executive producer for games and interactive experiences for 20th Century Fox properties at The Walt Disney Company.

Aaron Goodman ’03 (LAS) joined Baker McKenzie and serves in its Litigation & Government Enforcement, Global Compliance & Investigations and Securities Litigation groups.

Megan H. Chan ’05 (SCJ) joined Google News Lab as the news ecosystem lead.

Joey Chavez ’05 (SCA) joined streaming service HBO Max as executive vice president of original dramas.

Scott Price PhD ’03 (EDU) is superintendent at the Lennox School District in Inglewood, California.

Jason Donner ’06, MCG ’08 (SCJ) is president of the Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association in Washington, D.C.

Vander J. Dale MSW ’04 (SSW) serves in the Department of Defense as an alcohol prevention specialist at the Marine Corps Air Station, located in Iwakuni, Japan.

Soo Hugh ’06 (SCA) is showrunner for Pachinko, an Apple TV+ series based on Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel about four generations of a Korean family.

Sarika Desai ’04 (LAS/MED) and Jennifer Yee JD ’12 (LAW) were finalists for the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce’s Athena Award, which recognizes excellence in business and leadership, dedication to the community and support and mentorship of other women.

Ben Malcolmson ’06, MCG ’07 (SCJ) is author of the memoir Walk On: From Pee Wee Dropout to the NFL Sidelines—My Unlikely Story of Football, Purpose, and Following an Amazing God, which is in development to become a motion picture.

Will Hess MFA ’04 (SCA) wrote, directed and produced With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, an award-winning documentary about the comic book icon. He is currently writing, directing and producing a documentary about the history of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Jamie Knollmiller ’04 (ARC) founded Knollmiller Architects, a boutique architecture firm in Irvine, California.

Joseph Marchelewski ’04 (LAS/SCJ) is president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

He is senior account manager at Juris Productions PR and has more than 18 trojanfamily.usc.edu

Jeff Prugh MFA ’06 (SCA) opened a second location of Hi-Fi Espresso in Redondo Beach, California.

Shawna Thomas MA ’06 (SCJ) was part of the Vice News Tonight team that won six news and documentary Emmy Awards for its groundbreaking coverage of Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

Wendy Birhanzel EdD ’07 (EDU) is the superintendent for Colorado’s Harrison School District 2, where she has worked to create a partnership with the Dakota Foundation and Legacy Institute to allow students to attend two years of college for free.

Nikki Hyde ’07 (DRA) was assistant stage manager for La Traviata at the L.A. Opera.

Christina Medina ’07 (SCJ) is vice president of artist relations at Billboard.

Patrick Becker ’08 (SCJ) is senior producer for CNN’s New Day. Stephen Edlund ’08 (DRA) directed the national tour A Bronx Tale, a musical based on the acclaimed film.

Jaclyn Kalkhurst ’08 (DRA) was a line producer for Tales of Clamor at the Aratani Black Box Theater in Los Angeles.

Colin Stutz ’08 (SCJ) is senior editor for industry news at Billboard.

Donald Webber Jr. ’08 (DRA), who played Aaron Burr in the national tour of Hamilton, joined the original musical Gun & Powder at the Signature Theatre in Virginia.

Les Starck ’09 (BUS) and Charly Ligety MBA ’18 (BUS) published Let’s Do Us: Interactive Guidebooks for Taking Your Relationship to the Next Level.

2 0 1 0 s Katie Durko ’10 (SCJ) is a co-founder of The Edit, a female-led creative social media agency.

Mike Gan ’10 (SCA) wrote and directed two movies: School Spirit, a horror film on Hulu, and his theatrical film debut Burn, a thriller set in a gas station.

Peter Arceo EMBA ’11 (BUS) is a general manager at San Manuel Casino and is a member of its executive leadership cabinet, which supports the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians in its governmental and commercial endeavors.

Scott L. Menger ’11 (LAS) has joined the Los Angeles office of law firm Carlton Fields.

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family class notes

Connor Kelly-Eiding ’11 (DRA) performed in The Wolves at the Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles.

Uduak-Joe Ntuk MS ’11 (ENG) is California’s oil and gas supervisor, managing the state’s Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources to oversee public safety related to the oil, natural gas and geothermal industries.

Maxim Dobrushin ’12 (LAS) completed his PhD in English literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is founder and president of Quantum Lógos, a marketing agency.

Annie Dingwall ’13 (MUS) and Justin Klunk ’13 (MUS), who form the band RAINNE, performed at the Hollywood Bowl for 97.1 AMP Radio’s seventh annual We Can Survive concert for breast cancer awareness alongside Taylor Swift, the Jonas Brothers and Billie Eilish.

Janette Flores EdD ’13 (EDU) visited more than 20 higher education institutions in India as part of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program to engage in dialogue about issues in higher education.

Brenna Clairr O’Tierney MA ’13 (SCJ) is a director of communications at USC. Previously, she oversaw external and internal communications for Royal Dutch Shell.

Brandon Rachal ’13 (DRA) performed in the Antaeus Theatre Company’s Native Son, which also featured Taylor Cullen ’17 (DRA) as stage manager.

Richard Troy Bradley MPA ’14 (SPP) is director of human resources for Midwest City, Oklahoma.

Madigan Stehly ’14 (DRA) won an Emmy Award in the Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety

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Special category for his work on Fox’s Rent.

He previously won an Emmy Award in the same category for Grease Live!

Khaled Ridgeway MFA ’18 (SCA) wrote and directed the indie comedy-drama Death of a Telemarketer.

Ani Ucar MA ’15 (SCJ) was part of the Vice News Tonight team that won a news and documentary Emmy Award for “Moment of Truth: Kavanaugh and Ford.”

Gus Ross ’18 (MUS) and non-degreed alumnus Luke Eisner first started music duo VOILÀ in their USC dorm rooms.

Their song “Stand Tall” is now featured in Netflix’s movie Tall Girl.

Steve Vivian EMBA ’15 (BUS) is vice president of finance and accounting for Nissin Foods, which is known for brands such as Cup Noodles and Top Ramen.

Yingzhi Yang MS ’15 (SCJ) joined Reuters in China as a tech correspondent.

Julio Vincent Gambuto MFA ’16 (SCA) wrote and directed his debut film Team Marco, which premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

Sam Arroyo MSW ’17 (SSW) is a mental health case management clinician at the County of San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency.

Rosalind Conerly EdD ’17 (EDU) is the associate dean of students and director of the Black Community Services Center within Stanford University’s Centers for Equity, Community and Leadership.

Inda Craig-Galván MFA ’17 (DRA) wrote Black Super Hero Magic Mama, which had a world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse.

Mike Mikawa JD ’17 (LAW) joined the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Technology Task Force, which is part of the Bureau of Competition in Washington, D.C. The task force monitors competition in U.S. technology markets, investigating any potential anticompetitive conduct and taking enforcement actions when warranted.

Jonathan Von Mering ’17 (DRA) performed as Lazar Wolf in the national tour of Fiddler on the Roof.

Nicholas Cline EMHA ’18 (SPP) is the system director of environmental services and supply chain management for Alameda Health System, a hospital system based in Alameda County, California.

T R O J A N

T R I B U T E

Randy Lein Randy Lein, the Pac-12 Men’s Golf Coach of the Century, led the Trojans from 1984 through 1992. Under his leadership, USC made it to the NCAA Championships all nine years and earned two Pac-10 titles.

Lein was the Pac-10 and District VIII Coach of the Year in 1986 and his teams won 23 tournaments and finished in the top 10 at the NCAA tournament in 1984, 1986 and 1991. He coached 21 All-Americans, including 1985 U.S. Amateur champion Sam Randolph, who was college golf ’s player of the year in 1986.

The California State University, Northridge, graduate came to USC after serving as head pro at Westlake Village Golf Course in California. As an associate coach at USC for four seasons, Lein shared Pac-10 coach of the year honors in 1980 with USC Head Coach Ron Rhoads.

After leaving USC, Lein spent 19 seasons as head coach at Arizona State University, where he was named the Pac-12 coach of the year five times. His Sun Devils won the 1996 NCAA Championship and earned eight Pac-10 titles.

They also won 44 tournaments and finished 10 times in the NCAA top 10.

Lein was inducted into the Golf Coaches Association of America Hall of Fame in 2009.

He died Dec. 30, 2019, at age 69.

spring 2020

LEIN PHOTO COURTESY OF USC ATHLETICS

Jason Issokson MA ’11 (SCJ), MM ’11 (MUS) plays second violin for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under the group’s new music director, Jaime Martín.

Obituaries of members of the Trojan Family appear online at news.usc.edu/tributes. Please submit obituaries to classnotes@usc.edu.

Henry Solomon ’18 (MUS) is featured in the music video for Haim’s single “Summer Girl” as a saxophonist following the singers as they walk through Los Angeles.

Aidan Carberry ’19 (DNC) and Jordan Johnson ’19 (DNC) formed JA, a choreographic collective, and performed with the house band on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series.

Seira Murakami ’19 (DRA) was stage manager for the World War II-era play Defenders at the Broadwater Black Box Theater in Los Angeles.

Christine. She joins sisters Madelyn, Rosalyn and Ashlyn.

Kent Rohe Milton ’52 (SCJ) of Auburn, California; Oct. 5, 2019, at the age of 91.

Naomi (Ishibashi) Tam DDS ’08 (DEN) and Keith Tam DDS ’08 (DEN), a son, Edison Takatoshi.

John F. Tylicki DDS ’52 (DEN) of San Jose, California; Oct. 5, 2019, at the age of 90.

Jordan (Danny) Stroh ’13 (LAS) and Christopher Stroh, a daughter, Everhett Cooper.

Allison Elliott Tudhope ’15 (LAS) and Zachary Tudhope, a daughter, Elliott.

I N

M E M O R I A M

Gerald Anchor ’54 (LAS) of Scottsdale, Arizona; Oct. 10, 2019, at the age of 86.

John Hogue Beal ’54 (LAS) of Riverside, California; Sept. 28, 2019, at the age of 87.

Albert Carmichael ’54 (BUS) of Palm Desert, California; Sept. 7, 2019, at the age of 90.

Jaimie Pangan MM ’19 (MUS) received a Hollywood Music in Media Award nomination in the category of Contemporary Classical/ Instrumental for her song “Farewell.”

Charles Johnston MD ’45 (MED) of Calistoga, California; July 6, 2019, at the age of 97.

M A R R I A G E S

John Edwin Mohr ’47 (BUS) of Oakhurst, California; Sept. 17, 2019, at the age of 96.

Richard Gallagher MD ’58 (MED) of Santa Rosa, California; Aug. 22, 2018, at the age of 86.

Helen Lydia Dolan ’48 (DRA) of Los Angeles; Oct. 2, 2019.

Gale Berke Chapman ’59 (EDU) of Davis, California; May 11, 2019, at the age of 82.

Eleanor “Lucky” Ascher Lappen ’49 (LAS) of Los Angeles; Sept. 17, 2019, at the age of 92.

Rex Johnston ’59 (BUS) of Los Angeles; Dec. 15, 2019, at the age of 82.

Tyler Brown ’10 (BUS) and Madeline Nichols MA ’16, OTD ’17 (OST) Eric Basler ’12 (LAS) and Jordann Zbylski ’12 (DRA).

Tim Baumann ’13 (LAS) and Sophie Matthews ’13 (SCJ).

Catherine Shieh ’13 (LAS) and Andrew Frangos.

Michelle-Dawne Magaña MSW ’15 (SSW) and James Michael Huston.

B I R T H S Kelli Kline Sarna ’07 (SCJ) and Alexei Sarna, a daughter, Charlotte Eloise. She is granddaughter of James J. Kline ’78 (BUS) and Jerrilynn Johnstone Kline ’80 (LAS), MAT ’10 (EDU) and great-granddaughter of Shirley DeLong Johnstone ’52 (EDU) and William S. Johnstone Jr. ’52 (LAS), LLB ’57 (LAW).

Brian Alan Nielsen MS ’08 (ENG) and Ginger Nielsen; a daughter, Brooklyn trojanfamily.usc.edu

Henry Perry “Hank” Mitchell ’49 (BUS) of Pensacola, Florida; Sept. 21, 2019, at the age of 96.

Manuel L. Real ’49 (BUS) of San Pedro, California; June 26, 2019, at the age of 95.

Manuel De Leon MFA ’50 (ART) of Tucson, Arizona; Dec. 6, 2019, at the age of 93.

Samuel Mayerson LLB ’50 (LAW) of Rancho Palos Verdes, California: Sept. 20, 2019, at the age of 96.

David Vincent Kirkpatrick PharmD ’54 (PHM) of Tucson, Arizona; Jan. 19, 2020 at the age of 93.

Richard R. “Dick” Clements LLB ’60 (LAW) of Long Beach, California; Aug. 1, 2019, at the age of 86.

Robert Partridge Schalk LLB ’61 (LAW) of Petaluma, California; July 1, 2019, at the age of 88.

Karl Frank Spinner PharmD ’64 (PHM) of Costa Mesa, California; Nov. 7, 2019, at the age of 80.

William Fisk ’65, MS ’67 (EDU) of Elizabeth, Colorado; Oct. 3, 2019, at the age of 75.

William Camil LLB ’51 (LAW) of Los Angeles; Aug. 9, 2019 at the age of 92.

Thomas Ramsey LLB ’65 (LAW) of Long Beach, California; at the age of 83.

Marilyn Alexander Green ’52 (EDU) of Manhattan Beach, California; Dec. 16, 2019, at the age of 89.

Richard H. Nalick MD ’66 (MED) of San Marino, California; Sept. 1, 2019, at the age of 85.

William S. Johnstone Jr. ’52 (LAS), LLB ’57 (LAW) of Glendale, California; Oct. 20, 2019, at the age of 88.

Lawrence Riley Martin DDS ’66 (DEN) of Longmont, Colorado; Oct. 21, 2019 at the age of 78. usc trojan family

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USC Day of SCupport Changes Lives.

Make May 4 Your Day to Give Each year, on the USC Day of SCupport, USC alumni, parents and friends come together to demonstrate the power and generosity of the Trojan Family.

On Monday, May 4, 2020, we invite you to join us by making a gift of any size to the USC school, program or initiative most meaningful to you.

dayofscupport.usc.edu | (213) 740-7500

Michael Scarpace ’69 (LAS) of Westlake Village, California; Nov. 5, 2019, at the age of 74.

Grandison Greer Allen MS ’68 (ENG), MPA ’71 (SPP) of Honolulu; Dec. 4, 2019 at the age of 79.

James R. Casey MPA ’72 (SPP) of Culpeper, Virginia; Aug. 26, 2019, at the age of 83.

Sylvia Weishaus MA ’72, PhD ’78 (LAS) of Sherman Oaks, California; Aug. 26, 2019 at the age of 99.

Frank Alfano ’74 (BUS) of El Cajon, California; Sept. 5, 2019, at the age of 69.

Leo Nestor MM ’75, DMA ’79 (MUS) of Washington, D.C.; Sept. 22, 2019, at the age of 71.

Eric M. Warner ’78 (LAS) of Annapolis, Maryland; Oct. 24, 2019, at the age of 67.

Nancy Suzanne Holloway ’83 (LAS) of Bakersfield, California; Oct. 15, 2019, at the age of 58.

John J. Vranich MS ’91 (ENG) of Boston; May 17, 2019, at the age of 55.

Deborah J. Gill MA ’94, PhD ’00 (LAS) of DuBois, Pennsylvania; Oct. 3, 2019, at the age of 59.

Jennifer A. (Schems) Van Sickle ’95 (BUS) of Durham, North Carolina; Oct. 22, 2019, at the age of 46.

Supachai Saravasi ’00 (ARC) of Granada Hills, California; Oct. 25, 2019, at the age of 50.

Michael Patrick Maloney MFA ’07 (SCA) of Marin, California; Nov. 19, 2019, at the age of 39.

FACULTY AND FRIENDS Vern Bengtson of Santa Barbara, California; Nov. 9, 2019, at the age of 78.

Ed Cray of Palo Alto, California; Oct. 8, 2019, at the age of 86. trojanfamily.usc.edu

Ronald Fairly of Indian Wells, California; Oct. 30, 2019, at the age of 81.

Mardik Martin of Los Angeles; Sept. 11, 2019, at the age of 82.

Wendelin “Bill” Joseph Paule of Covina, California; June 3, 2018, at the age of 90.

Together we are Good Neighbors

L E G E N D

LAS

USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences ACC USC Leventhal School of Accounting ARC USC School of Architecture BUS USC Marshall School of Business SCA USC School of Cinematic Arts SCJ USC Annenberg School for

Communication and Journalism DNC USC Kaufman School of Dance DEN Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry

of USC DRA USC School of Dramatic Arts EDU USC Rossier School of Education ENG USC Viterbi School of Engineering ART USC Roski School of Art and Design GRN USC Leonard Davis School of ​ Gerontology GRD USC Graduate School LAW USC Gould School of Law MED Keck School of Medicine of USC MUS USC Thornton School of Music OST USC Chan Division of Occupational

Science and Occupational Therapy PHM USC School of Pharmacy BPT Division of Biokinesiology and

Physical Therapy SPP USC Price School of Public Policy SSW USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School

of Social Work

USC Faculty and Staff partner with L.A. nonprofits to change lives.

Support the USC Good Neighbors Campaign.

Jill Barone, Matt DeGrushe, Edmundo Diaz, Michelle Dumas, Leticia Lozoya, Kristy Ly, Jane Ong, Alex Rast, Stacey Wang Rizzo, Julie Tilsner, Jane Viera and Deann Webb contributed to this section.

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uscpage trojan family TFM Spring2020 Third vertical R5.indd 1 2/13/20 10:56 AM

Steps to the Future Before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, about 6,000 students were enrolled in day classes at USC. By the first few months of 1946, though—after World War II had ended— that number had soared to 8,300. An additional 3,500 students attended class during the evenings.

Thanks to the G.I. Bill, returning servicemen swelled USC enrollment. More than 100 faculty members were hired in 1945 to teach the growing student body. Many worked double shifts, as classes were held from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., as well as on Saturdays.

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The student influx also changed the landscape of the University Park Campus. Founders Hall (now known as Taper Hall) and a dentistry building, student clinic, cafeteria and other structures sprang up in the post-war years. In 1950, the university began acquiring the public streets within the bounds of Exposition and Jefferson boulevards, McClintock Avenue and Figueroa Street to create a more unified academic campus.

In the inset photo from 1952, cars still cruised down University Avenue past Doheny Memorial Library and Bovard Administration Building. Just one year later, the busy street was closed to traffic and became the University Park Campus’ main pedestrian thoroughfare: Trousdale Parkway.

ELISA HUANG

spring 2020

PHOTO BY DUSTIN SNIPES; ARCHIVAL PHOTO COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

Have a photo to share? Send it to 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-2818 or magazine@usc.edu.

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WE TAKE ON THE TOUGHEST CASES As one of the nation’s leading health systems, Keck Medicine of USC is relentlessly focused on providing the best possible outcomes for the most complex conditions. That’s the Keck Effect.

(800) USC-CARE • KeckMedicine.org/toughestcases

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