Charles Mills hoped for a different start to his career on the USC water polo team. In an exhibition match last September against Golden West College, an opposing player’s arm smashed down onto Mills’ wrist as he defended a shot. Initially, Mills says the pain wasn’t too severe. But on his way home that night, the first-year goalie fell off his bike onto that same wrist. The pain kept him up for much of the night.

“That next morning, I knew something was up,” Mills says.

He immediately visited the USC athletic trainers, who directed him to an orthopedic specialist at Keck Medicine of USC. Seth Gamradt gave him the news: Mills had broken the scaphoid bone in his left wrist.

Less than a month into his freshman campaign, just like that, his season was over.

“I was in complete denial,” Mills says. “I thought I had just jammed my wrist really hard — I didn’t think I’d broken it, let alone that I’d be out two months.”

Although Mills says it was a tough pill to swallow, Gamradt and his team immediately shifted the discussion to recovery.

“Dr. Gamradt and his team comforted me and told me I was going to get through this, which helped me not freak out too much,” Mills says. “I was still completely crushed, but I had complete trust in them.”

A surgery, two months in a cast and some physical therapy later, Mills made a full recovery. He credits it to the care he received from the athletic trainers and health care team in the athletic medicine program at USC Student Health, along with his surgeon Luke Nicholson and the orthopedic team at Keck Medicine of USC. In a sport rife with shoulder and hip injuries and the occasional broken wrist, access to top-notch care is crucial.

Fortunately for Mills, his teammates and the roughly 700 other Trojan student-athletes, the athletic specialists from Keck Medicine of USC provide some of the best care in the region.

“The care here, at USC, is completely unmatched,” Mills says. “Everything was super organized, and there was full transparency — I trusted the process, and it worked out 100% well for me.”

His teammate Max Miller — a first-team all-American 2-meter — agrees. He credits the doctors as part of the reason Trojans can continue playing after an injury. “It’s a very comforting feeling to be able to just do my thing in my sport, and then if something ends up happening, I know they’ll find a way to fix it,” he says.

A dream team of sports doctors

When it comes to athletics injuries, few have seen more than Gamradt and Alex Weber. As orthopedic surgeons and team doctors, they’ve been on the sidelines for championship games and witnessed some of the greatest athletes compete at the highest level.

Gamradt — lead physician for Trojan football for the past 11 years — also worked at the professional level with the NFL’s New York Giants before coming to the West Coast. He is an orthopedic surgeon with Keck Medicine of USC and director of Athletic Medicine, a department in USC Student Health that oversees health care for student-athletes.

“It was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down,” Gamradt says. “It’s an incredible institution, and the Trojan Family is real — anytime I’m wearing USC gear when I’m out and about, I’ll always get a ‘Fight On!’”

For the past eight years, Weber has served as a team physician for USC Athletics as part of USC Student Health and Keck Medicine of USC, while also serving as chief of the USC Epstein Family Center for Sports Medicine at Keck Medicine of USC. In addition, he is the medical director and head team physician of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings.

Joseph Liu and Cara Hall have been at Keck Medicine of USC for three years. Both work with the L.A. Kings, and all four physicians provide orthopedic care to all 21 Trojan athletic programs.

“Sometimes it’s an 81-year-old, and sometimes it’s an 8-year-old, sometimes it’s a high school athlete hoping to be a collegiate athlete,” Weber says. “Then sometimes it’s a collegiate athlete trying to be a professional athlete, and sometimes it’s a professional athlete trying to get back to his livelihood. Ultimately, all of those scenarios fall into the same bucket of someone high-functioning losing that function, and getting them back to doing what they love.”

Team mentality

The sports medicine team helps make those moments possible, whether that’s Gamradt working the sidelines of Trojan football games, Weber sitting courtside at men’s basketball games, Hall tending to the Women of Troy in a packed Galen Center or Liu treating the members of the men’s volleyball team.

“Working with the women’s basketball team has really been the best part of the job for me,” Hall says. “It’s such a small team, and we have come leaps and bounds from where we were a few years ago. Seeing them excel at what they do and traveling on the road with them and seeing them make it to March Madness last year — it’s rewarding for everyone involved.”

The team of orthopedic surgery specialists at Keck Medicine of USC are some of the most highly regarded physicians in L.A., so much so that the Kings, a $2 billion NHL team, wanted to partner with them to take care of their athletes.

“One great thing about taking care of the hockey guys is that there’s a culture in hockey that the guys want to play,” Weber says. “We do that within safe parameters — we don’t let people go back when it’s unsafe to be on the ice — but I think the culture in hockey is get fixed up so you can get back out there and play hard for your teammates.”

Sports medicine in the age of social media

As the team of physicians looks toward the future of their profession, they note that social media has had a significant impact on sports medicine, both good and bad.

“There are a lot of what we call ‘Twitter doctors’ who are out there speculating on the injury and how long this athlete’s going to be out. Social media has become the biggest influence on the scrutiny of athletic injuries,” Gamradt says.

For Hall, the increased attention has spotlighted her chosen profession, which she hopes will inspire the next generation of sports physicians.

“The number of students that have reached out to me just from finding my name on the [Keck Medicine] website — medical students or even undergrad students who are interested — has exceeded what I was expecting,” Hall says. “Anyone interested in physiology or kinetics and movement from a science or physical therapy perspective, I think there’s probably a growing interest compared to what it used to be, which is great to see.”

Caring for all

While these doctors have treated their fair share of all-stars and all-Americans, they’ve also treated plenty of weekend warriors. Aside from dealing with agents and the financial implications of a top-level athlete’s injury and recovery, they all say that the mission for treating their patients is the same.

“It’s so hard to pick my favorite part of the job because it’s so multifaceted,” Gamradt says. “I get to teach residents, medical students and fellows how to do surgery. I get to care for patients of all ages and make them better with or without surgical treatment, and then I have the added bonus of being the team physician.”

That type of attitude influences the athletes in return. Whether on the field or off, it’s nice to know everyone’s on the same team.

“I still see Dr. Gamradt and the other trainers around campus, and even my full recovery, they’re always asking me how I’m doing and if I need anything — so, it’s not just a one-and-done deal,” Mills says. “I know that they always have my back.”

Eleven USC researchers on Tuesday were named senior members of the National Academy of Inventors, a nonprofit member organization that encourages inventors in higher education.

Election as an NAI senior member recognizes remarkable innovation producing technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society. The honor also represents growing success in patents, licensing and commercialization, while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors.

The USC members of the NAI Class of 2024 are Peter A. Beerel, Yang Chai, Denis Evseenko, Qiang Huang, Justin Ichida, Bart Kosko, Peter Kuhn, Daniel A. Lidar, J. Andrew MacKay, Wei-Min Shen and Travis Williams.

“Today’s announcement reflects the amazing innovation that takes place at USC every day,” USC President Carol Folt said. “These 11 outstanding faculty members — the most NAI inductees from USC in any one year — showcase our unique multidisciplinary, multischool approach. Their work crosses fields of dentistry, engineering, medicine, pharmacy and more to create a future of possibility and opportunity. We salute these inductees for their well-earned recognition.”

The 11 Trojans join 20 current and emeritus USC faculty members in the NAI ranks. They will officially be recognized on June 17 during NAI’s annual meeting.

“This year’s cohort of 11 USC inductees as senior members of the National Academy of Inventors is a huge honor,” said Ishwar K. Puri, USC senior vice president of research and innovation. “The breadth of expertise recognized in this year’s cohort testifies to the wide array of world-leading inventors, engineers, scientists and clinicians at USC. Their innovations have invented tomorrow’s solutions, which improve human lives and fuel economic growth.”

Peter A. Beerel

Professor of electrical and computer engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Beerel has a history of innovation in the area of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI), the process of designing semiconductor chips with millions of transistors. His more recent significant contributions are in the areas of hardware security, superconducting electronics and machine learning.

Beerel joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1994, and he’s currently a full professor and associate chair of the computer engineering division. He’s also a research director and distinguished principal scientist at USC Viterbi’s Information Sciences Institute. Previously, he was the faculty director of innovation studies at the USC Stevens Center for Innovation from 2006 to 2008 and co-founded TimeLess Design Automation in 2008.

Yang Chai

University Professor, George and Mary Lou Boone Chair in Craniofacial Molecular Biology and associate dean of research at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC; University Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Otolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery, and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC

Chai has invented a system meant to regenerate skull bone to address deformities, comprising a 3D-printed scaffold seeded with stem cells. The technology comes out of discoveries from his laboratory about the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind congenital birth defects.

Chai recently launched early interactions with the Food and Drug Administration, on the path to phase 1 trials of the scaffolds in patients. In addition, he continues work toward an innovative tissue regeneration system for patients with cleft palate, a condition that is the major focus of his work. His research is motivated by his own experience as a clinician interacting with parents of children born with deformities to the face and head.

“The surgery was always successful, but I didn’t have any answers about why the birth defect happened, whether a future child in the family may also have one or how it could be prevented,” he said. “We tried to understand the basic mechanisms, then shifted our efforts to use some of the knowledge we gained. We aim to provide a biological solution for a biological problem, instead of using a titanium plate to repair the skull defects.”

An extended version of this profile of Chai appears on Keck School of Medicine website.

Denis Evseenko

J. Harold and Edna La Briola Chair in Genetic Orthopaedic Research, vice chair for research, director of skeletal regeneration and professor of orthopedic surgery, stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC

Evseenko has created a series of treatment technologies that address injury and illness of the joints.

One is an injection designed to calm inflammation in osteoarthritis and potentially supplant joint replacement surgery. (Phase 1 clinical trials are imminent.) Another is a surgical implant that delivers stem cell-derived cartilage to replace damaged tissue from sports injuries and prevent degenerative joint disease, with first-in-human trials likely to begin this year. Most recently, Evseenko and his team have invented a drug to moderate a mechanism of the immune system that misfires and attacks aging cells, with potential application for inflammation affecting multiple body systems.

For Evseenko, election to the NAI validates the time and effort he has devoted to driving his discoveries from the lab to application.

“It’s meaningful to know that all the small steps we took, day after day, to move us forward toward our goals were leading in a fruitful direction,” he said. “I had to make some difficult decisions along the way, and this recognition tells me that they were the right ones.”

An extended version of this profile of Evseenko appears on the Keck School of Medicine website.

Qiang Huang

Professor of industrial and systems engineering, and chemical engineering and materials science, USC Viterbi

Huang is an expert in the field of smart manufacturing.

Huang’s research focuses on how machine learning can be harnessed for additive manufacturing (3D printing). His work also covers quality control theory and methods for personalized manufacturing, domain-informed machine learning methods for smart manufacturing, and nanomanufacturing analytics. Huang holds five U.S. patents on 3D printing accuracy control. The Huang Lab has been developing fabrication-aware machine learning algorithms and computation-driven quality control tools to make 3D printing smarter.

Justin Ichida

John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Endowed Professor in Regenerative Medicine, associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, Keck School of Medicine

Ichida centers his research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare, deadly neurodegenerative disorder that occurs during middle age and disrupts the ability to control muscle movement. He has developed a technology that can turn cells from ALS patients’ blood samples into nerve cells.

The invention is one of the first successful attempts to drive the development of adult cells backward to the stem cell stage and then coax them to grow into a different type of cell. From the Petri dish, he and his team can then delve into the mechanisms behind the illness — which are yet poorly understood — and test potential treatments.

“ALS has a huge unmet need,” Ichida said. “It’s hard to study by traditional methods because we don’t know what the genetic causes are for most patients. Our technology allows us to unlock insights that we couldn’t otherwise.”

An extended version of this profile of Ichida appears on the Keck School of Medicine website.

Bart Kosko

Professor of electrical and computer engineering, USC Viterbi; professor, USC Gould School of Law

Kosko has enjoyed an eclectic career at the university. He came to USC from Kansas on a scholarship for music composition, then earned bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and mathematical economics, inspiring his neural work. The university hired him in 1987 to join the then-new Neural, Informational and Behavioral Sciences program. He has also published several textbooks, trade books (including, in 1993, Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic) and novels.

Last year, Kosko received the prestigious Donald O. Hebb Award from the International Neural Network Society for his careerlong contributions to the field of neural learning.

Peter Kuhn

Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; professor of medicine and urology, Keck School of Medicine; professor of biomedical engineering and of aerospace and mechanical engineering, USC Viterbi; director, Convergent Science Institute in Cancer, USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience

After early success in drug development for cancer, Kuhn turned his sights to leading the charge in advancing liquid biopsies, a type of blood test that detects and characterizes circulating tumor cells. Although he focuses on breast cancer, a disease his mother faced, his inventions have been applied for treating prostate cancer as well. His technology has been in use for oncology care since 2016.

A personal highlight was when others started using his invention and the thrill derived from seeing that success: A colleague published a clinical study showing that one of his inventions was effective in differentiating between which patients would benefit from one treatment over another in fighting cancer.

“That was the best day of my life, and I didn’t even know about the study before it came out,” Kuhn said with a smile. “It wasn’t just seeing this striking result. It was knowing that they could do it without me. There are a lot of hurdles, and it’s an incredible feeling when something makes it through — and makes a difference for patients.”

Extended versions of this profile of Kuhn appear on the USC Dornsife website and the Keck School of Medicine website.

Daniel A. Lidar

Professor of electrical and computer engineering, chemistry, and physics and astronomy, USC Viterbi

Daniel A. Lidar was recognized for his inventions in the area of quantum computing, which have led to six issued patents. These patents cover areas such as quantum teleportation, error correction, and optimization.

Lidar joined USC in 2005, and he is the holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering. He has joint appointments in electrical and computer engineering as well as chemistry and physics. He’s also the director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology and the co-director of the USC-Lockheed Martin Center for Quantum Computing.

Andrew MacKay

Gavin S. Herbert Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences

MacKay’s lab is focused on engineering protein-polymer tools that hold the potential to transform the development of precision, multifunctional drug carriers.

“Drug delivery in the eye and cancer is often limited by access to and retention at the target site,” explained MacKay, who has six issued U.S. patents, with four focusing on ocular applications of his technology. “Our strategy is to repackage drugs and functional peptides into protein-polymers that control release and reduce toxicity.”

“Our group has recently made significant breakthroughs by assembling polypeptide ‘microdomains’ on the surface of and inside living cells,” added MacKay, who holds secondary appointments in biomedical engineering and ophthalmology and serves as executive editor for the journal Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. He also serves as a panel reviewer for the U.S. National Institutes of Health, primarily as a member of a nanomedicine-focused study section. “When decorated with functional proteins, these polypeptides are helping us to precisely modulate cellular biology and design new therapies.”

Wei-Min Shen

Associate professor of computer science practice and a research associate professor in computer science, director of the Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory, USC Viterbi; associate director of the Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems at USC

Shen’s research interests include self-reconfigurable and metamorphic systems, autonomous robots, machine learning and artificial intelligence. He is the author of Autonomous Learning from Environment, a book that explores how machines learn from their environment based on “surprises.”

He has served as chair and committee member for international conferences and workshops in robotics, machine learning and data mining, and as editorial board members for scientific books and research journals. His research activities have been reported by leading scientific journals such as Science and Nature, and in media outlets including CNN, PBS and Discovery.

Travis Williams

Professor of chemistry, USC Dornsife

Williams, who holds 10 patents and numerous awards recognizing the inventive value of his work, said being named an NAI senior member is a result of USC’s visionary support of innovators like himself.

“NAI recognition falls out of the university’s deliberate decisions to invest in patenting bizarre things from my lab, tenuring someone who quit working on what he was hired to do, and stoking innovation through the Wrigley Prize and the [National Science Foundation’s] I-Corps hub,” he said. “While I’ve been an enthusiastic product of my environment, USC Dornsife and the university engineered this through a generations-old commitment to innovation and public impact.”

Williams’ research has borne considerable fruit, including Closed Composites, which aims to recycle carbon fiber materials from old aircraft parts, and Catapower Inc., converting used oil from deep fryers into biodiesel and environmentally sound antimicrobial agents. Williams has even co-developed a method to turn plastic waste from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into compounds to make pharmaceuticals and other useful products.

An extended version of this profile of Williams appears on the USC Dornsife website.

About the National Academy of Inventors

The NAI was founded to recognize and encourage inventors with U.S. patents, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and create wider public understanding of how its members’ inventions benefit society. The academy now comprises 4,600 individual members at more than 300 universities, governmental agencies and nonprofit research institutes worldwide.

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USC’s Caitlin Dawson, Landon Hall, Greta Harrison, John Hobbs, Darrin Joy, Laura LeBlanc, Michele Keller, Paul McQuiston and David Medzerian contributed to this report.

A new study by researchers at USC explains why kids aren’t getting a cheap, effective treatment for diarrhea.

Contact: Nina Raffio, raffio@usc.edu or 213-442-8464; Jenesse Miller,jenessem@usc.edu or 213-810-8554

Health care providers in developing countries know that oral rehydration salts (ORS) are a lifesaving and inexpensive treatment for diarrheal disease, a leading cause of death for children worldwide — yet few prescribe it.

A new study published in Science suggests that closing the knowledge gap between what treatments health care providers think patients want and what treatments patients really want could help save half a million lives a year and reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics.

“Even when children seek care from a health care provider for their diarrhea, as most do, they often do not receive ORS, which costs only a few cents and has been recommended by the World Health Organization for decades,” said Neeraj Sood, senior author of the study, senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and a professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy.

“This issue has puzzled experts for decades, and we wanted to get to the bottom of it,” said Sood, who also holds joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Marshall School of Business.

A closer look at childhood illness in India

There are several popular explanations for the underprescription of ORS in India, which accounts for the most cases of child diarrhea of any country in the world:

• Physicians assume their patients do not want oral rehydration salts, which come in a small packet and dissolve in water, because they taste bad or they aren’t “real” medicine like antibiotics.
• The salts are out of stock because they aren’t as profitable as other treatments.
• Physicians make more money prescribing antibiotics, even though they are ineffective against viral diarrhea.

To test these three hypotheses, Sood and his colleagues enrolled over 2,000 health care providers across 253 medium-size towns in the Indian states of Karnataka and Bihar. The researchers selected states with vastly different socioeconomic demographics and varied access to health care to ensure the results were representative of a broad population. Bihar is one of the poorest states in India with below-average ORS use, while Karnataka has above-average per capita income and above-average ORS use.

The researchers then hired staff who were trained to act as patients or caretakers. These “standardized patients” were given scripts to use in unannounced visits to doctors’ offices where they would present a case of viral diarrhea — for which antibiotics are not appropriate — in their 2-year-old child. (For ethical considerations, children did not attend these visits.) The standardized patients made approximately 2,000 visits in total.

Providers were randomly assigned to patient visits where patients expressed a preference for ORS, a preference for antibiotics or no treatment preference. During the visits, patients indicated their preference by showing the health care provider a photo of an ORS packet or antibiotics. The set of patients with no treatment preference simply asked the physician for a recommendation.

To control for profit-motivated prescribing, some of the standardized patients assigned as having no treatment preference informed the provider that they would purchase medicine elsewhere. Additionally, to estimate the effect of stockouts, the researchers randomly assigned all providers in half of the 253 towns to receive a six-week supply of ORS.

Provider misperceptions matter most when it comes to ORS underprescribing

Researchers found that provider perceptions of patient preferences are the biggest barrier to ORS prescribing — not because caretakers do not want ORS, but rather because providers assume most patients do not want the treatment. Health care providers’ perception that patients do not want ORS accounted for roughly 42% of underprescribing, while stockouts and financial incentives explained only 6% and 5%, respectively.

Patients expressing a preference for ORS increased prescribing of the treatment by 27 percentage points — a more effective intervention than eliminating stockouts (which increased ORS prescribing by 7 percentage points) or removing financial incentives (which only increased ORS prescribing at pharmacies).

“Despite decades of widespread knowledge that ORS is a lifesaving intervention that can save lives of children suffering from diarrhea, the rates of ORS use remain stubbornly low in many countries such as India,” said Manoj Mohanan, co-author of the study and professor of public policy, economics, and global health at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. “Changing provider behavior about ORS prescription remains a huge challenge.”

Study authors said these results can be used to design interventions that encourage patients and caretakers to express an ORS preference when seeking care, as well as efforts to raise awareness among providers about patients’ preferences.

“We need to find ways to change providers’ perceptions of patient preferences to increase ORS use and combat antibiotic resistance, which is a huge problem globally,” said Zachary Wagner, the study’s corresponding author, an economist at RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School. “How to reduce overprescribing of antibiotics and address antimicrobial resistance is a major global health question, and our study shows that changing provider perceptions of patient preferences is one way to work toward a solution.”

About the study

In addition to Sood, Wagner and Mohanan, co-authors of the study include Rushil Zutshi of RAND Corporation and Pardee RAND Graduate School and Arnab Mukherji of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

This research was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (Grant 5R01DK126049).

People doing jobs once considered non-controversial — public health workers, librarians, election workers, school board officers — are increasingly bullied online, threatened and swept into the vortex of partisan vitriol.

Public officials face an alarming rise in “swatting,” a dangerous practice in which SWAT teams are summoned to their homes by fake emergency calls. Online vigilantes dox private individuals and elected officials by publishing private phone numbers and home addresses on websites and social media. USC experts fear the trend is having a chilling effect on democratic processes.

“These modern realities are a major deterrent for careers in politics. Officials understandably fear exposing their spouses, children, extended families and themselves to the threats and ugliness on social media,” said Kamy Akhavan, executive director of the USC Center for the Political Future at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “Public officials today have the highest levels of scrutiny and the lowest levels of privacy that public officials have ever experienced. Everyone has a camera in their pocket, politics are hyperpartisan, and social media and mainstream media incentivize scandal.”

Akhavan pointed to examples of high-profile cases of harassment and assault. In October 2022, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked in the couple’s San Francisco home by a partisan radical, who has since been convicted and is in prison.

Last month, former U.S. Rep. Katie Hill settled her “revenge porn” case against her ex-husband. Hill resigned in 2019 after he and conservative outlets published nude photos of her online without her knowledge or consent.

Such examples underscore the risk of harassment and violence facing government and elected officials in an era of social media, viral conspiracy theories and political polarization.

“For these reasons, plus the unbelievably high cost of campaigns and the closed nature of partisan politics, fewer people want to run for public office,” Akhavan said.

Polarization of public life: Distrust in expertise

Disinformation and confusing health messages during the COVID-19 pandemic increased distrust of medical and scientific expertise. A JAMA Network Open study found that 66% of physicians reported online attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, a jump from 23% in the months prior to the pandemic.

Orange County’s chief health officer resigned in 2020 after receiving a death threat in response to mandating face coverings. And that wasn’t the only case. From March 2020 to January 2021, there were 120 resignations, 58 retirements, 20 firings and 24 other departures among health officials in the United States, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health.

Rita Burke, an associate professor of clinical population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, recently published a related study in Frontiers in Public Health.

“For most, this was a new experience leaving them unsure of where to turn for help. As a result, there has been an exodus of public health officials from health departments significantly weakening our public health infrastructure,” Burke said.

School governance on democracy’s front line

With the pandemic, Americans began paying closer attention to school boards. These unpaid, usually nonpartisan voluntary bodies are charged with oversight of their school district policies, including key decisions about masking — or not masking — and remote education.

Since then, school boards have become one of democracy’s front lines, often serving as proxies in the country’s cultural wars. Personal threats and attacks are resulting in resignations and turnover among board members, school health officers, superintendents, librarians and teachers.

“Education and educators have been drawn into the societal debates that find citizens on both sides of major issues about our youth, their curriculum and how they should be taught. The divide impacts districts, their leaders and every teacher,” said Maria Ott, who holds the Irving R. and Virginia A. Melbo Chair in Education Administration at the USC Rossier School of Education.

“Actions such as angry protests and lack of civil discourse model behaviors that communicate lack of trust in our schools and for those who have dedicated their careers to preparing the nation’s future citizens. We need to value our right to disagree respectfully and model what we aspire to for our students and remember that our schools are the heart of our communities and our democratic society.”

Universities provide a path to solutions amid polarization of public life

It’s clear the country needs to find a way to lower the temperature in public discourse. USC experts believe the key — perhaps unsurprisingly — is education and the campus setting itself. That’s why in 2018 USC launched the Center for the Political Future with director Robert Shrum, a Democrat, and co-director Mike Murphy, a Republican. They’re longtime political strategists and friends.

The center is known for bringing together students, leaders and experts from all political parties and organizations who might normally stand on opposite sides of the room to come together and discuss political matters.

“Here at the center, we believe in respecting each other and respecting the truth,” Shrum said before he introduced the Jan. 22 debate at Bovard Auditorium among candidates hoping to win a California Senate seat.

William Tierney, a University Professor Emeritus and founding director of USC Rossier’s Pullias Center for Higher Education, said colleges and universities are “a natural space where civil conversation should occur.”

“Higher education is a key component of the democratic public sphere,” he added. “We have to find ways to have difficult dialogues where students, faculty and staff are able to puzzle through the seemingly intractable problems that confront us. If we are unable to have those conversations on our campuses, then where will they occur?”

Julie Marsh, a professor of education policy at USC Rossier and at the USC Price School of Public Policy, sums it up: “Schools are one of the few places in which individuals from different backgrounds come together and have opportunities to deeply interact and potentially recognize commonalities. Schools can prepare students to be critical consumers of information and to learn how to treat others as equal members of civil society.”

A recent $4 million federal grant supports a center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC where researchers aim to improve health protections for children against air pollution. With a $4.5 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a USC Information Sciences Institute researcher could set new benchmarks for measuring progress in quantum computing. And more than $7 million in government grants support USC Stem Cell researchers in their efforts to find new therapies for kidney disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

It’s been a banner year for USC researchers. A new federal report confirms that as of June 30, 2023, USC reached a new high-water mark in annual research expenditures — $1.04 billion — with significant investments in USC President Carol Folt’s “moonshots” in computing, health affairs research and sustainability paving the way.

“This ranking recognizes the incredible work being done by USC’s game-changing researchers here and around the world,” Folt said. “Our ambitious moonshots in advanced computing, health and sustainability will continue to accelerate the growth of our research enterprise in every way imaginable.”

The latest federal Higher Education Research and Development Survey puts USC within an exclusive pack of 13 private universities whose research expenditures top $1 billion annually. Research expenditures are a nationally recognized measure of a university’s discovery and innovation enterprise.

The report shows that USC ranks first on the West Coast and fifth in the nation with $112 million in research spending in computer and information sciences in 2022. Among private universities, in research spending on social sciences — a category that includes economics, political science, public policy analysis and gerontology — USC’s $76 million trails only Harvard University.

Other funding and research spending highlights over the past year:

• Paul Aisen was USC’s most highly funded scientist in 2022 with $52 million from federal sources, foundations and private industry. Aisen directs USC’s Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute, the nation’s largest center for organizing Alzheimer’s clinical trials.
• Folt’s announcement of the USC Frontiers of Computing initiative in May 2023 pledged more than $1 billion of investment into computing research and education by 2030. But even prior to that announcement, leading grant recipient Massoud Pedram of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering received $15 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing program, one of only two such awards announced in 2022.
• Feifei Qian of USC Viterbi received $3 million from NASA to create robots that move like lizards, snakes and insects.

“This milestone in research expenditures reflects USC’s ongoing rise as one of the top private research universities in the United States,” said Ishwar K. Puri, senior vice president of the USC Office of Research and Innovation.

“I’m incredibly proud of our researchers and graduate students who are winning competitive grants that fuel discoveries that make life better for people in Los Angeles and around the world,” Puri said. “The collaboration across our university and with other institutions is what drives USC’s ability to create new knowledge and innovative ideas that truly make a difference in society.”

USC’s research expenditures are expected to keep rising, with a boost from the USC Stevens Center for Innovation. The center recently named Erin Overstreet as its new executive director. Overstreet will oversee the university’s commercialization of USC-driven property, bridging the sectors of discovery, education and venture capital.

The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, within the U.S. National Science Foundation, collects information on research and development spending from over 900 institutions each year. Higher education is a key component of the U.S. research and development system, helping drive innovation as well as scientific and technological breakthroughs.

USC’s expenditures for federal fiscal year 2022 showed a 14% increase ($130 million) since Folt’s arrival in 2019.

The National Institutes of Health is USC’s most significant source of research funding ($387 million), followed by the U.S. Department of Defense ($107 million) and the National Science Foundation ($72 million). The fourth largest in 2022 was pharmaceutical company Cognition Therapeutics ($21 million), followed by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s stem cell research agency ($11 million).

USC research: Pushing the boundaries of computing

Folt’s announcement of the Frontiers of Computing initiative reaffirmed USC’s status as a leading computing research institution. The new report shows that, in computing and computer science research spending, USC is outranked only by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University.

Other USC computer scientists and researchers in adjacent fields received funding to push the boundaries of current computing technologies in 2022. For instance, Itay Hen of the USC Information Sciences Institute received $4.5 million for three years from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop quantitative benchmarks in quantum computing to measure progress toward specific goals.

“The U.S. government is interested in knowing whether and how exactly the quantum computers of the future are going to reshape technology and society as a whole,” said Hen. “Our team at ISI, together with colleagues from USC main campus as well as external partners from the academe and the industry across the United States, is developing the necessary methodology that would allow us to provide the government with the best possible answers.”

Krishna Nayak, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at USC Viterbi, received a four-year, $1.3 million grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to develop next-generation MRI equipment. Nayak has worked on real-time magnetic resonance imaging of the human heart and vocal tract airway.

USC research funds are advancing drug development

“It’s all preclinical at the moment, but we’re getting to the stage where our leading drug candidates are getting ready to be patented. And those are going to be USC patents — the drugs are going to be invented at USC and will be owned by USC,” said Steve Kay, director of the Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience and Provost Professor of Neurology and Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine. “We have a program for drug discovery in colorectal cancer, and we’ve got some early-stage results that look really encouraging.”

Kay, who also co-directs the Rosalie and Harold Rae Brown Center for Cancer Drug Development at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, attests to the power of collaborative funding for accelerating research projects into new therapies for patients. Last year, a new class of small molecule drugs moved into phase one clinical trials — a project led by Kay. The molecules are the first to target circadian clock proteins, which play a key role in the recurrence and spread of glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer.

As recipients of NIH Director’s Awards, USC Stem Cell scientists Justin Ichida ($5 million) and Zhongwei Li ($2.5 million) secured funds to pursue potential therapies for ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) and kidney disease.

The awards, which honor exceptionally creative scientists proposing unconventional approaches, allow Ichida to pioneer an improved approach for using patient-derived cells to discover drugs that may treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS. Li will combine natural developmental cues with bioengineering to direct stem cell-like progenitor cells to begin self-assembling into a synthetic kidney.

Of USC’s work in developing Alzheimer’s treatments, Kay notes that “Aisen is at the center of this huge hub of clinical trials that are testing all of these Alzheimer’s drugs. USC is heavily involved and influential in how Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials are designed, how patients are recruited and how companies are brought in to fund these clinical trials. They’re right at the cutting edge.”

Research for a sustainable future

Reducing Southern California’s infamous air pollution through more sustainable policies, practices and technologies starts with pinpointing sources and impacts. A portfolio of awards and publications at the intersection of environment and public health are advancing Folt’s ambitions toward a sustainable future.

For example, the NIH awarded USC researchers $4 million to create a research center aimed at protecting children from near-roadway and regional air pollution released by various industries, including through the transportation of goods, urban oil and gas production, and wildfires.

The Southern California Center for Children’s Environmental Health Translational Research, led by Rob McConnell and Jill Johnston of the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine, examines how these threats disproportionately affect children, especially in marginalized communities and communities of color, in California and worldwide.

Public health researchers made important contributions in 2022. For example, one study described how the risk of death surges when extreme heat and air pollution coincide — a sobering finding in light of the warming climate and ongoing challenges in reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Other work detailed dangers posed by “forever chemicals” called polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are found in fast-food wrappers, pizza boxes and waterproof fabrics, and are linked to liver cancer. The investigative team also includes engineers developing methods for PFAS decontamination because the chemicals have seeped into groundwater supplies in California and elsewhere in the nation.

“To address urgent public health problems, we look for creative, solution-oriented approaches that blend everything from data science to community-building,” said Howard Hu, professor and Flora L. Thornton Chair of the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine. “Our goal is to translate research into specific, actionable strategies to protect and improve human health.”

 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s February 2024 argument session promises to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing issues, including former President Trump’s legal immunity, First Amendment protections for online speech, challenges to the EPA’s pollution control measures, and the potential future of abortion access in the United States.

USC experts are available to discuss key issues on the Supreme Court’s docket.

Contact: Nina Raffio, raffio@usc.edu or (213) 442-8464; USC Media Relations, uscnews@usc.edu or (213) 740-2215

Presidential immunity: Can Trump run in 2024?

“The Supreme Court had to step in to clarify President Trump’s eligibility to appear on the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment’s insurrection clause. The case raises a tangle of legal issues that place the Supreme Court in a political crossfire,” said Jeb Barnes, professor of political science at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

“The Court has not been this central to a presidential election since it decided the 2000 election in Bush v. Gore. Back then, the Court had a deep reservoir of public support. Today, its approval ratings are lagging and its legitimacy has been questioned from the left and right. Under these circumstances, there is more than President Trump’s status as a candidate at stake in this case, the standing of the Court itself is on the docket.”

Contact: barnesj@usc.edu

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Additional Experts

Christian Grose is an expert in American government, political institutions; political representation; the politics of the policy-making process; electoral behavior and campaigns. Grose is professor of political science and public policy at USC Dornsife and the academic director of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Contact: cgrose@dornsife.usc.edu

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Lee Epstein is an expert in law and legal institutions, especially the behavior of judges. She teaches courses on constitutional law, judicial behavior, free speech and the U.S. Supreme Court. Epstein is the university professor of law and political science; and Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Distinguished Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law.

Contact: lepstein@law.usc.edu

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Freedom of speech on social media

Do state laws regulating social media content moderation violate the First Amendment rights of users? That’s the question at the heart of two landmark cases — NetChoice LLC v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice LLC — that will be argued jointly before the court on Feb. 24. Experts say the outcome of the cases could set a precedent for how platforms operate and users interact online, shaping everything from political discourse to misinformation control.

Erin Miller is an expert in theories of speech and free speech rights, and especially their application to mass media. She is an assistant professor of law at USC Gould.

Contact: emiller@law.usc.edu

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Wendy Wood is an expert in the nature of habit, including behaviors that influence the spread of misinformation on social media. She is provost professor emerita of psychology and business at USC Dornsife.

Contact: wendy.wood@usc.edu

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Morteza Dehghani is an expert political and moral language, textual and semantic analysis and morality. He is a professor of psychology and computer science at USC Dornsife.

Contact: mdehghan@usc.edu

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Federal agency power and environmental protections

The Supreme Court has signaled that it is ready to overturn Chevron deference, a decades-old legal principle that determines who decides the meaning of ambiguous laws passed by Congress — judges or the federal agency tasked with enforcing them. Experts warn this potential power shift could have major implications for environmental regulations, public health and other critical policy areas.

The Court will also consider industry challenges, submitted through its fast-track appeals process or “shadow” docket, to the EPA’s “Good Neighbor” air pollution plan. This Clean Air Act rule shields downwind states from industrial pollution drifting across state lines.

“The Biden Administration is already (or should be) working on the assumption that the EPA will get no deference from the Supreme Court on any statutory interpretation issue related to climate change,” said Robin Craig, an expert in environmental law and the Robert C. Packard Trustee chair in law at USC Gould. “This is mostly relevant to the Clean Air Act, and the Court has made it abundantly clear that it is not giving the EPA any breathing room to adjust the statute to climate change realities.”

Contact: rcraig@law.usc.edu

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Additional Experts

Clare Pastore is an expert in public interest law who has spent her career suing agencies on behalf of civil rights plaintiffs and low-income communities, which has often included litigating cases directly related to Chevron deference. Pastore is professor of the practice of law at USC Gould.

Contact: cpastore@law.usc.edu

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Max Aung is an expert in environmental justice and an assistant professor in the Division of Environmental Health at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Aung recently spoke about the risks of PFAS or “forever chemicals” at a press conference where California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state is enforcing new requirements for companies to disclose forever chemicals.

Contact: maxaung@usc.edu

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Abortion pill access

For the first time since overturning Roe v. Wade and its federal protections for abortion in 2022, the justices will revisit the abortion debate through a set of new cases —  FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine — which will determine whether to restrict access to mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill.

Aya Gruber is an expert on criminal law and procedure, violence against women and critical theory. Gruber is professor of law at USC Gould.

Contact: agruber@law.usc.edu

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Sofia Gruskin is an expert in global health, reproductive rights, and health equity. She directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and has joint appointments at USC Gould and the Keck School of Medicine.

Contact: gruskin@usc.edu

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Dima Qato leads interdisciplinary research efforts focusing on equity-driven drug utilization, access to medicines, and pharmaceutical policy. Qato serves as the Hygeia Centennial chair and associate professor at the USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She is also a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.

Contact: qato@usc.edu

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Brian Nguyen is an associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the Keck School of Medicine. Nguyen is an expert in family planning, reproductive health and gender equity.

Contact: nguyenbt@usc.edu

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Gun control, domestic violence and the Second Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue rulings in several cases with potential impacts on gun control, free speech and firearm technology. In USA v. Rahimi, the Court will consider whether a federal law prohibiting gun ownership for individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Other cases incude NRA v. Vullo, which will define the boundaries of free speech for state employees and its implications for how they discuss sensitive topics like gun control in their professional capacities, and Garland v. Cargill, which will determine the legal status of bump stocks.

“Firearms are used in over half the intimate partner deaths in America. Homicide is the leading cause of death of women who are pregnant and post-partum. One in three women will experience intimate partner violence over their lifetimes. This is a life-threatening, chronic existence for many women in this country,” said Annalisa Enrile, a teaching professor and expert in violence against women, gender equity and global justice at the USC School of Social Work. “We have to start taking intimate partner violence more seriously. This is not just about upholding policies to limiting access to firearms in domestic violence cases.”

Contact: enrile@usc.edu

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Additional Experts

Gregory Keating is an expert in torts, legal ethics, and the law of negligence as it relates to risks of death and devastating injury. Keating is the William T. Dalessi professor of law and philosophy at USC Gould.

Contact: gkeating@law.usc.edu

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Adam Zimmerman is an expert in mass tort law whose scholarship explores how class action attorneys, regulatory agencies and criminal prosecutors provide justice to large groups of people. Zimmerman is a professor of law at USC Gould.

Contact: azimmerman@law.usc.edu

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