Issue: Winter 2004

What’s New - Shelf Life - People Watch

News & Notes on All Things Trojan

Illustration by Michael Klein

Population Explosion

More than 50 new faculty have joined the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences as part of an initiative emphasizing academic innovation and leadership.

Princeton called it “a serious blow” when philosopher Scott Soames, one of that Ivy League institution’s most distinguished and popular professors, decided last spring to join the tide of academic heavyweights surging toward USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Soames is one of 31 new faculty members who arrived at USC College this fall. The author of four major books on philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy, he declares himself thrilled to be part of building a “world-class” philosophy department at USC.

Soames is joined by 10 other senior faculty members, eight associate professors and 12 assistant professors – all new arrivals in the 2004-05 academic year.

Just two years after publicly announcing an ambitious Faculty Hiring Initiative, USC College has passed the midpoint in its drive to recruit 100 new star faculty. “We’re more than halfway there, and we have momentum,” says its dean, Joseph Aoun.

To date, 122 new faculty have joined the college; 52 of those appointments have gone either to senior professors or “rising stars” – mid-career academics clearly about to break away from the pack.

“Our aim was to cast a more visionary look at USC College,” says Aoun. “We did not conduct business as usual.”

Joining Soames, who leaves Princeton after nearly 25 years, are fellow philosophers Andrei Marmor (from Tel Aviv University, with a joint appointment in the Law School) and Jeffrey King (UC Davis); historians William Deverell (Caltech) and Karen Halttunen (UC Davis); culture scholar Anne Balsamo (Stanford, with a joint appointment in the School of Cinema-Television); earth scientist John Platt (University College London); literature scholars John Carlos Rowe (UC Irvine) and Judith Halberstam (UC San Diego); economist John Strauss (Michigan State); and classicist Claudia Moatti (University of Paris).

Moatti, an expert on Roman history from the University of Paris’ campus in Saint-Denis, represents an exciting addition to the classics department, says USC College dean of faculty Beth Meyerowitz. Her appointment moves the college closer to the goal of becoming a premier North American center for the study of ancient Rome.

Another big-name hire is John Carlos Rowe, one of the nation’s foremost Americanists. Coming from UC Irvine’s top-ranked English and comp-lit program, Rowe is seen as largely responsible for spearheading the “new American studies” movement as well as the rise of American studies programs around the world. He is the author and co-editor of a dozen scholarly books on topics ranging from Henry Adams to the Vietnam War. Rowe’s work spans the fields of critical theory, television and film studies, African-American studies, Latin-American studies and women’s studies.

Like Rowe, most of the new faculty straddle more than one discipline. Several have hit the ground running since arriving this fall, forging partnerships with institutions such as the Huntington Library and the Getty Research Institute.

Within the university itself, many of the new scholars are collaborating with faculty in engineering, law, cinema, medicine and communication. These partnerships have a multiplier effect, Aoun believes, providing both the college and its partners with valuable resources they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The strategy, Aoun explains, is to attract scholars who meld fundamental and applied research and scholarship. Most of the new hires are leaders in emerging fields such as computational biology; literary, visual and material culture; urban space; geosystems; geobiology; philosophy of language and mind; art history; and urban and visual studies.

“We have used the initiative to further diversify our faculty, an important priority for us,” he adds, noting that nearly half this year’s hires are women.

The aggressive recruitment of top scholars to complete the Faculty Hiring Initiative will continue, Aoun says. Stay tuned.

Violinist of Autumn

Photo by Dan Borris

Professor Midori

Her stunning career began at age 11 with her New York Philharmonic debut under Zubin Mehta, performing the technically hair-raising first movement of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. She cut her first album at 14, the same year she wowed critics with her unshakable resolve at a Tanglewood concert: soloing on Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade” with the composer conducting, she broke strings on two violins and borrowed a third to finish the piece. Midori has since played with most of the world’s top orchestras. This fall, the 32-year-old virtuoso (whose full name is Midori Goto) joined the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music, where she holds the endowed Jascha Heifetz Chair in Music. Since 2001 she has also been on faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, a position she retains.

At the USC Thornton School, Midori will develop new approaches to music mentoring, specifically through chamber music, and will teach both classical music and jazz studies majors. Looking beyond the traditional instructional environment, she will also play as an equal member of two new student quartets.

“I’m excited by the opportunity USC will provide to explore music instruction beyond the traditional paradigm of the one-to-one imparting of instrumental skills,” she says. “Participating in the formation of integrated artists who are complete human beings is at the center of my concerns as an educator, as these issues were of vital importance to me as a student. I also greatly enjoy engaging students in a more holistic approach to music education, with all the collaboration and discipline that requires.”

Says USC Thornton dean Robert Cutietta of the appointment: “Midori will be an excellent mentor for our students because she combines the highest level of artistry appropriate to a conservatory and the intellectual curiosity appropriate to a research university.”

A polymath, Midori earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and gender studies from New York University and is currently completing her master’s there in psychology and children’s literature – all while playing 100 concerts a year. In recent years, she has been recognized not only for her performance bravura but also for her devotion to developing new educational and community-based outreach programs: She has inspired underprivileged children through her two foundations, Midori & Friends and Music Sharing. And she recently released her memoir, issued by German publisher Henschel Verlag (Einfach Midori, 2004).

Illustration by A.J. Garces

Not-So-Wunder Kindergartners

They fidget, can’t follow directions or work in groups. Some can’t even execute the simplest drawing. Now a special state commission has recommended that children under 5 be excluded from kindergarten in California public schools. While most educators applaud the proposal to move up the birthday cutoff from Dec. 2 to Sept. 1, some parents have serious doubts. But USC Rossier School education expert Priscilla Wohlstetter says keeping younger kids back is in their own best interest. “What we expect of kindergartners today is far more advanced than what we expected even five years ago,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “As these expectations increase, I am not sure that anyone under 5 should be there.” They should be in good preschools, not at home, Wohlstetter notes, adding that a nationwide push for universal preschool is on the march.

Technology News

Kaitlin Sandeno Photo courtesy of USC Sports Information

Hitting Peak Performance

Using state-of-the-art biomechanical techniques, USC scientists can help athletes and others achieve their personal best.

What makes Lenny Krayzelburg’s backstroke gold-medal material? What sets Kaitlin Sandeno and Klete Keller apart from other swimmers in freestyle? The answer: natural talent, lots of practice, and in some cases, a little help from high-tech biomedical modeling taking place at the USC Biomechanics Research Laboratory.

The lab runs an experimental program to develop state-of-the-art biomechanical modeling techniques for top USC athletes.

“We look at ways to improve a swimmer’s flips, dives and strokes or show sprinters how to spring from the starting line,” says exercise scientist Jill McNitt-Gray.

“In gymnastics, we’ll videotape and model someone’s performance to get a sense of how they are generating vertical and angular momentum when they launch a backflip from the balance beam,” she says. “We can advise them on how to shift their weight just a little or spring up just a little sooner to perfect the performance.”

McNitt-Gray, who holds joint appointments at USC in kinesiology, biomedical engineering and biological sciences, specializes in force impact to the lower extremities. But her experimental modeling technique can be applied to a wide range of skilled performers – athletes, musicians and blue-collar workers – to improve results without overloading the musculoskeletal system.

The field is called “sports biomechanics,” a relatively new niche spawned by the convergence of knowledge in kinesiology, engineering and human biology. Kinesiology has been around for 35 years, but it has experienced a renaissance with new electronics, video and modeling techniques.

McNitt-Gray starts by placing electrodes on the athlete’s body to measure muscle firing patterns and neural control during performance. USC aerospace engineer Henryk Flashner converts this motion, force and muscle activation data into 3-D coordinates and equations of motion. Thanks to computer simulations, researchers can ask a series of “what if” questions about the athlete’s movements. What if he modifies the timing of the arm swing? What if she strengthens her hip muscles? What if he pushes on the ground in a different direction?

McNitt-Gray also works with coaches Mick Haley and Paula Weishoff, who train the USC women’s volleyball squad. The collaboration seems to be paying off: the team scored two consecutive NCAA championships in 2002 and 2003.

She uses these same techniques in a project with the USC-affiliated Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, studying wheelchair propulsion and balance control of older adults. And she collaborates with Peggy Tsutsui of the USC School of Dentistry to optimize the training of dental hygienists.

“If we understand an individual’s body mechanics and control mechanisms, we can help them refine their movements and avoid injury to the body,” McNitt-Gray says. “This goes for dental technicians, athletes, children who play sports and people who are trying to recover from crippling injuries, such as damage to the spinal cord or losing a limb.”

Hit by a Pitch

Baseballs and Bullets

A round from a .45-caliber handgun slams into soft body armor with the same impact as a 90-mile-per-hour fastball whacking a bare chest. That seemingly mundane piece of information could someday lead to a better bulletproof vest; but gathering it was anything but mundane. USC electrical engineer Bart Kosko employed a mix of standard statistical methods and exotic fuzzy-logic techniques to arrive at this homespun baseball metaphor. Studies show handgun bullets won’t kill armor-clad police officers by piercing, but little else is known about the resulting bruising or other physical effects. Based on data from test firings of different caliber bullets into ordnance gelatin-backed vests, Kosko developed a trainable fuzzy system. He and colleagues from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Keck School of Medicine of USC compared these gelatin deformations to bruise patterns from actual body-armored shooting victims. The researchers discovered that the energy of a speeding bullet grows with the square of its velocity; however, slower-moving heavy bullets (.45 caliber) bruise more than high-velocity lighter ones (.22 caliber). To get a more intuitive understanding of a bullet’s actual impact, Kosko compared the data with a baseball hurled by a pitching machine. “Handgun bullets are like baseballs,” he explains. “They do not knock people backwards as in the movies. Instead they bruise soft tissue.” It turns out that while a .45 carries the impact of a major league fastball in the ribs, a .22 is equivalent to being hit by a ball traveling at a leisurely 40 mph.

Doing research at zero-G in the Vomit Comet. Photo courtesy of NASA

Favored Fuel of Astronauts

Next time you’re filling ’er up for zero gravity, remember that solid particles burn longer and safer than gaseous ones.

Researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering say solid-fuel particles may be safer for hazardous work environments on earth and burn more efficiently in the microgravity of space than gaseous fuels, which are more combustible and difficult to transport.

Aerospace engineers Charles Campbell and Fokion Egolfopoulos have made significant progress toward understanding the complex chemical processes that take place when tiny particles of solid fuels burn.

The duo’s findings could lead to safer and more efficient solid fuels for propulsion in space or for maintaining human outposts on the moon or Mars. Their research could also benefit fire-prevention practices.

“Understanding the thermal effects is a first step toward improving fuel economy in both space vehicles and those we use on Earth,” Egolfopoulos says. “It’s also a good start toward preventing spontaneous combustion in dangerous work environments, like in lumber milling, in grain elevators or in mine galleries.”

Funded by NASA, the researchers made detailed studies of solid-fuel combustion, including the effects of gravity on the reaction. They measured the burning characteristics of various solid-fuel particles on earth and in microgravity, using NASA’s KC-135 aircraft – nicknamed the Vomit Comet – to simulate the weightlessness of space.

“It takes some getting used to, but after a while, you learn to conduct the experiment very precisely,” says Mustafa Gurhan Andac, a USC Viterbi School postdoc who ran the experiments in the nearly weightless environment aboard the NASA aircraft.

“You only have about 23 seconds in zero-G, so you have to be sure to finish the experiment and record the data during those precious seconds of weightlessness,” Andac says.

The team used two smooth-burning flames to compare the consumption of solid and gaseous fuels. One burner slowly spews gas to carry solid-fuel pellets to the flame, while another issues particle-free gas.

“Depending on the prevailing flow conditions and characteristics of the particles, some particles will ignite and burn completely, where others behave as half-inert and burn only partially,” Egolfopoulos says.

The researchers measured particle size, speed and distribution to determine the optimal conditions for efficient combustion.

“In reduced gravity, a low-speed gas was more effective for complete fuel consumption,” Campbell says. “However, when we ignited the pellets in our laboratory at USC, in earth’s gravity, a much higher gas velocity was needed to carry the pellets to the flame. Increased speed caused some of the fuel pellets to burn incompletely.”

NASA is finding additional applications for the work as the space agency looks to longer missions. In trips to the moon or Mars, solid fuels derived from the lunar or Martian soil – or solid carbon, extracted from the Martian atmosphere – may power the return flights to Earth.

Illustration by A.J. Garces

Media Turnoffs

Recent surveys show 60 to 70 percent of Americans who get news online are men, while the gender breakdown among print readers holds steady at 50-50. Editors worry this may be evidence that Web news sites aren’t paying enough attention to women. To advertisers, it’s a heady sign that the elusive 18- to 34-year-old male – that most prized of consumer demographics – is finally within reach. Web users are spending less time with newspapers and magazines in general, USC’s Jeffrey Cole told Wired News. Cole is director of the USC Annenberg School’s Center for the Digital Future. No one’s exactly sure why the online-news gender gap exists. Perhaps women are still catching up to men in wiredness; if so, the gap will diminish in time. Or maybe women simply want different content from the Web. Next up: bride e-zines?

Shelf Life

Faculty Books & Recordings

Photo by Philip Channing

An Anglicized Past

Historian William Deverell examines the Southland’s troubled relationship to – and denial of – its Mexican roots.

Whitewashed Adobe:
The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past
By William Deverell
University of California Press, $30

Los Angeles has long been touted as a cultural crossroads, welcoming immigrants from around the world. Yet a closer look at the City of Angels shows it wasn’t always that way.

In his new book exploring the city’s roots back to the 1850s, historian William Deverell finds that the Los Angeles of the past was anything but inclusive, especially when it came to Mexican and Mexican-American residents.

“Even though Los Angeles was once part of Mexico, the city came of age by cutting ties with Mexican places and people,” says Deverell, a distinguished scholar who left Caltech to join USC’s faculty this fall.

“Throughout the early years of California statehood, there was a very troubled relationship between the growing city of Los Angeles and Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.”

That trouble accelerated in the bloody years of the 1850s, just after the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, and continued well into the 20th century as the modern metropolis – built largely by Mexican laborers – arose.

The goal was to keep Chicanos visible but isolated on the landscapes of the burgeoning city. This came about through a discriminatory wage system, public segregation in schools and political and social exclusion.

Deverell chronicles several developments in Los Angeles history that promoted this separation process: For example, city leaders divided Mexicans – literally and figuratively – from other Angelenos by the decision to fill the Los Angeles River with concrete.

“Proximity to the river had long been one marker of Mexican Los Angeles,” Deverell says. “The river bounded and separated neighborhoods from the commercial districts of downtown. Concrete and fencing drove the point home.”

Other watershed events in this separation include the 1924 outbreak of bubonic plague; the evolution of America’s largest brickyard; and the presentation of the famed Mission Play, a drama tied to regional assumptions about history, progress and ethnicity.

Yet city leaders weren’t shy about capitalizing on Los Angeles’ Mexican culture for commercial or economic purposes. When the city’s business interests were looking to establish an urban identity, they borrowed Mexican cultural traditions and put on a carnival called La Fiesta de Los Angeles.

Deverell’s goal is to show how the establishment of Los Angeles is intertwined with its relationship to – and denial of – Mexican culture.

“What I am most interested in are the ways proximity to Mexican people, to Mexico itself and to a recent Mexican past both troubled and intrigued Anglo-American arrivals and new settlers in the region,” he says.

Los Angeles’ history of racial exclusion holds lessons not only for historians but for urban planners, Deverell believes.

“If the city of the future is to work at all, we must look closely at how patterns of exclusion, segregation and cultural appropriation were established and sustained,” he says. “Then we have to work together to make sure that they no longer function.”

The Los Angeles Times calls Whitewashed Adobe a “masterly book, which can be approached as a work of history, cultural criticism and social commentary.”

– Gilien Silsby

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Photo by Mark Tanner

Kids Endorse Divorce

Children suffer no long-term harm from growing up in a broken home, a USC sociologist finds in a 20-year study.

We’re Still Family:
What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents’ Divorce
By Constance Ahrons
HarperCollins, $24.95

Does divorce leave lifelong scars on children? It’s a complicated question psychologists have pondered for more than 50 years. In We’re Still Family, USC sociologist Constance Ahrons gives voice to a group that’s seldom consulted: the adult children of divorce.

The good news is that the majority have not suffered long-term consequences. In most cases they grow up to be effective adults who sustain family connections and commitments. Many emerge stronger despite – or even because of – their parents’ divorce and remarriages.

However, one-fifth of the grown children say they suffer from “lifelong emotional scars that didn’t heal.”

The book’s findings are based on interviews with 173 Generation X-ers – the offspring of participants in Ahrons’ landmark 20-year study of postdivorce families. Their average age is 31; most were between 6 and 15 at the time of the split. Ahrons had previously interviewed their newly divorced parents in 1979, research that culminated in her 1994 landmark book, The Good Divorce: Keeping Your Family Together When Your Marriage Comes Apart.

The topic of divorce enjoyed a flurry of media attention in the early 1970s when the National Center for Health Statistics reported that one out of two marriages would fail. At the time, Ahrons revolutionized the concept of an amicable divorce.

In her new book, Ahrons finds that nearly 80 percent of the now-adult children say their parents’ decision to split was a good one, and more than half say their relationships with dad improved after the divorce.

“The truth is that while some divorces result in family breakdown, the vast majority do not,” Ahrons concludes. “While divorce changes the form of the family from one household to two – from a nuclear family to a binuclear one – it does not need to change the way children think and feel about the significant relationships in their families.”

Among Ahrons’ other findings:

• 78 percent report that they and their parents are either better off or not affected by the divorce.

• 60 percent say their parents have cooperative relationships 20 years after divorcing.

• Two-thirds feel close to their stepfathers. Only half feel close to their stepmothers. Almost all feel close to their half-siblings.

“Children of divorce have routinely been viewed by society as the unfortunate victims of broken homes,” Ahrons says. “I think my findings will show that is far from the case.”

Ahrons wasn’t expecting the results to be so positive. “It is rare that children don’t find their parents’ divorce distressing,” she says.

“What I was not prepared for is the striking direction of the long-term findings: They clearly and boldly contradict our deeply entrenched stereotypes that children remain angry and bitter about their parents’ divorce.”

According to an article in USA Today, We’re Still Family will “comfort divorced parents and their children – and discomfort those who believe divorce is consistently negative for kids.”

– Gilien Silsby

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Books and Music

		LAGQ Guitar Heroes CD by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet Telarc $18 With compositions inspired by Frank Zappa, John McLaughlin, Chet Atkins, Jimi Hendrix, Pat Metheny, Steve Howe and Django Reinhardt, this recording transcends genre labels. The LAGQ, comprised of USC Thornton School guitarists Bill Kanengiser and Scott Tenant, spans classical, pop, New Age, bluegrass, jazz, rock and heavy-metal styles. “These guys are amazing,” says Amazon.com. “What is this uncategorizable CD? A joy – that’s what.”
		Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession by Richard Wightman Fox Harper, $28 Where else but in America would people ask: “What would Jesus drive?” or “How would Jesus vote?” The savior holds a unique position in Yankee culture as both a sacred and a secular hero. USC historian Richard Wightman Fox explores how Jesus has influenced 400 years of American thought, from Puritan predestination to manifest destiny to the public piety of modern presidents. The New Republic calls this book “an extraordinary blend of historical sophistication, theological discrimination and spiritual understanding ... rich and fluent in the complexities of religious life.”
		The Legacy CD by the Frank Potenza Quartet Azica $16 USC Thornton School jazz guitarist Frank Potenza pays homage to Gene Harris in this collection of standards played in the style of the late, great pianist’s eponymous quartet, of which Potenza was a member. “The music is very straight ahead swing, the kind that makes people tap their feet and feel good,” he writes. According to JazzTimes, “Potenza dips deep into his bluesy, Harris-honed reservoir … but this pony is capable of more than just one trick.”

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People Watch

Movers & Shakers

Illustration by Tim Bower

Star of the Guitar

Pepe Romero celebrates his return to USC – and his father’s legacy to the world – with a festival of darkness and laughter.

You had to feel for 11-year-old Tim Callobre performing at his first master class with the great Pepe Romero. Newman Recital Hall had been pitched into blackness at the maestro’s behest – so that the prodigy might play the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 without distractions. A pint-sized pro, Callobre plucked from the darkness a bright and noticeably self-assured interpretation.

That episode was but one in a week’s worth of adrenaline- and laugh-producing events during a summer guitar festival at USC in memory of Romero’s father, composer-performer Celedonio Romero.

Besides daily master classes with students from around the world, Romero gave a recital and a gala concert to fund a guitar scholarship in his father’s name.

Romero has played for princes and kings, a pope and an American president. Four years ago, Juan Carlos I of Spain knighted him and brothers Celin and Angel in a special ceremony held at USC. After a 20-year absence, this star of classical guitar is again a fixture at the USC Thornton School of Music. Romero had shaped a generation of faculty here in the 1980s; since 2000, he has been training a new generation of USC Thornton students.

“We are here to celebrate the guitar in the spirit of my father,” Romero told an audience of guitar enthusiasts on the festival’s first day. Dressed casually in Hawaiian shirt and sandals, Romero spoke passionately of his avocation. “Our job,” he said in his endearing Spanish accent, “is to open the door and enter the temple of music in which we learn about ourselves. As players, we try to hold the door open so we and the audience can enter that magic place. What matters is not technically how well we play but how well we keep the door open.”

In an evening conversation, Romero told lovingly of his one and only teacher.

“My father had an unusual way to get me to practice,” he quipped. “He paid me.”

He reminisced about childhood drills with older brother Celin, who would administer slaps for every botched note; Pepe reciprocated with kicks. He described how his dad’s anti-Franco politics had forced them into exile and how the Romeros rose from rags to renown as the “Royal Family of the Guitar.”

At the last master class, Romero greeted young Callobre’s well-lit rendition of Granados’ Spanish Dance No. 5 exuberantly: “Gorgeous. Congratulations!” And he reached to shake the boy’s hand, one door-opener to another.

Technology Meets Terpsichore

Photo by Philip Channing

Teaching Robots to Rumba

As a kid Margo Apostolos dreamed of playing shortstop for the Chicago Cubs. Even after settling on a career in dance, she took her art beyond the hurdles normally facing little girls in tutus. At Stanford, she supplemented her choreography studies with courses in sports medicine, biomechanics, kinesiology and mechanical engineering. Watching a robotic arm at work one day, she wondered: Why can’t it move more gracefully? “The moment I met the robot, I knew I was meant to make it dance,” she says. Soon Apostolos was pioneering the field of robot choreography. Projects for NASA have included work on a less-jerky robotic satellite repairman and an early prototype of the Mars rover. At USC, she has conducted research on facial expression and human-computer interactions. She encourages her students to keep pressing the envelope in terpsichore-inspired research combinations. “Dance is a catalyst,” she says. “It can be coupled with so many different things.”

Medicine Meets Math

Illustration by Tim Bower

Number-Cruncher to the Docs

Most statisticians predict how many soccer moms will vote Republican or how many pre-teen boys will get Playstation cartridges for Christmas. USC’s David Conti helps medical researchers predict the probabilities of disease. Conti is a biostatistician. “Basically, I use statistical methods to determine how genetic variation leads to disease outcomes or traits,” he says. At the Keck School of Medicine’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Conti crunches numbers on everything from prostate cancer to the effects of smoking.

“This is a great time to be doing this kind of work,” he says. “The Human Genome Project started us off, but there’s so much to be done. We can read the letters of the genome now, but we don’t know what they say. My job is to help do some of the translation.”

Conti helps medical researchers design experiments and create models to tease out gene variations linked to a specific biomedical or behavioral condition. He’s currently working with researchers in the Keck School’s Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center, asking questions such as: What is the relationship between aggression and smoking? And how do genetic variations factor into this relationship? Conti also works with basic scientists to narrow the search for genetic variations linked to neurodegenerative and neuropsychological diseases. In addition, he’s studying the best way to identify which polymorphisms – present in essentially every known gene – are worthy of further investigation and which are completely silent.

Mad About Malaria

The future looks bright for this epidemiology-loving Fulbright.

Growing up in Utah and Northern California, Sulggi Lee knew very little about Uganda; and she certainly never expected to live there one day. But after winning a Fulbright scholarship, the MD/PhD student is doing just that.

With two years of medical school under her belt and her dissertation on breast cancer genetics all but complete, Lee is spending this year in the malaria-riddled East African nation. On a basic-science level, she’s researching genetic variations associated with human resistance to malaria and the parasite’s increasing resistance to standard drug therapies. But she’s also making a measurable difference in people’s lives.

“When you do medical research in a developing county, a lot of it isn’t about the science so much as about making an immediate impact on public health and government policy,” says Lee. “That’s what is so powerful about international work: you have a direct connection with the population you’re helping.”

Her efforts are already being felt. “While I am here, I hope to train Ugandan public-health students in epidemiology and biostatistics,” she says. She’s also transferring the genotyping skills she learned at USC to local lab technicians.

Lee is one of three students from USC’s Health Sciences campus awarded prestigious Fulbright scholarships for 2004-05.

Looking ahead to the five to seven years remaining in her medical education, Lee knows she’ll be hip-deep in rotations and hospital rounds come next summer. “I realize that this [Fulbright] is my window of opportunity to really explore international infectious disease research as a trained epidemiologist before shuttling back into the clinical stuff.”

Milestones

Bensussen

Health products manufacturer Gale K. Bensussen, who is president-elect of the USC Alumni Association, has been elected to the university’s Board of Trustees. Bensussen is president of Carson, Calif.-based Leiner Health Products, one of the world’s largest makers of vitamins, nutritional supplements and over-the-counter drugs. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the USC Marshall School of Business in 1970 and holds a law degree from Southwestern University. As a member of the USC School of Pharmacy’s Board of Councilors, he led the effort to establish the Laboratory for Analytical Research and Services in Complementary Therapeutics. The endeavor is the first of its kind at any pharmacy school in the nation.

Zelinski

USC cognition scientist Elizabeth Zelinski has been named interim dean and executive director of the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center and the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, succeeding Edward L. Schneider, who has returned to the gerontology faculty. The school’s associate dean for academic affairs, she has joint appointments in gerontology, psychology and gender studies, and is principal investigator of the Long Beach Longitudinal Study, which evaluates cognition, memory and language comprehension in older adults.

Wernig

Financial manager Ruth Wernig has been elected treasurer of USC, succeeding William C. Hromadka, who held the position since 1987. Wernig joined USC in 1984 as a treasury associate – a position in which she managed the university’s internal endowment portfolios and its investment managers. Since 1998, she has served as associate treasurer.