Meet USC College’s New Faculty

Giorgio Coricelli
Assistant Professor of Economics
Ph.D., Economics, 2002, The University of Arizona
Previous Institution: Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS

Giorgio Coricelli studies human behaviors emerging from the interplay of cognitive and emotional systems. His objective is to apply robust methods and findings from behavioral decision theory to study the brain structures that contribute to forming judgments and decisions, both in an individual and a social context. He conducts his research using a fundamentally multidisciplinary approach (neuroeconomics), drawing from behavioral and experimental economics, game theory, neuroimaging (fMRI), neuropsychology (patient studies), and cognitive neurosciences. His awards include the Prix Découvertes 2004 from the French Ministry of Research.

Christelle Fischer- Bovet
Assistant Professor of Classics
Ph.D., Classics and Ancient History, 2008, Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences
Previous Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Christelle Fischer-Bovet specializes in the social and cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean from Alexander the Great to the Romans (4th century B.C. to 1st century A.D.). Her current research combines documentary evidence such as papyri and inscriptions with social theory to investigate the role of ethnicity in the institutions of the new Hellenistic states and to understand the surprising frequency of peaceful ethnic coexistence within them. Her dissertation examined the army in Hellenistic Egypt as a vehicle for land distribution, a provider of group solidarity, and a place of interaction between Greek and Egyptian cultures.

Jesse Graham
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., Psychology, 2010, University of Virginia

Jesse Graham studies morality and ideology, with a particular interest in the different kinds of moral concerns people hold, how these concerns vary across individuals and cultures, and how both moral judgments and ideological commitments can operate outside of conscious awareness. His recent awards include the University of Virginia Faculty Senate Dissertation Fellowship in 2009 and Morton Deutsch Award for best 2007 paper published in Social Justice Research in 2008.

Christian Grose
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ph.D., Political Science, 2003, University of Rochester
Previous Institution: Vanderbilt University

Christian Grose’s research focuses on American politics and legislatures: the executive branch; race and representation; and legislative elections. He is interested in questions examining the rationality of individual decisions constrained by political institutions; and questions at the nexus of political institutions and individual political behavior. His publications include Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is the recipient of the 2010 CQ Press award for the best paper on legislative studies presented at the 2009 American Political Science Association meeting.

Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla
Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
Ph.D., Spanish and Portuguese, 2005, University of Cambridge
Previous Institution: Newcastle University

Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla’s areas of expertise are Spanish and Latin American cinema and visual cultural studies, gender theory and critical theory. His honors include the Virginia Commonwealth University Early Career Development Award in 2006 and a grant from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council in 2005. He was a visiting scholar at New York University in 2009, and he is the author of Queering Buñuel: Sexual Dissidence and Psychoanalysis in his Mexican and Spanish Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2008).

Robin Jeshion
Professor of Philosophy
Ph.D., Philosophy, 1995, The University of Chicago
Previous Institution: University of California, Riverside

Robin Jeshion’s research interests include the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science (especially at their intersections). She has written about
the representational and referential functions of language, particularly with singular terms; the social-psychological-linguistic function of proper names; the linguistic representation of spatial location; and differences between conceptual and perceptually based thought. She edited New Essays on Singular Thought (Oxford University Press, 2010) and served as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from 2005 to 2006.

Alexander Marr
Associate Professor of Art History
D.Phil., Modern History, 2005, University of Oxford
Previous Institution: School of Art History, University of St Andrews

Alexander Marr researches the history of science, intellectual history, and the history of art and architecture in the Early Modern period. His most recent book is Between Raphael and Galileo: Mutio Oddi and the Mathematical Culture of Late Renaissance Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2010). His awards include the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2008, and he has held fellowships at The Queen’s College (Oxford), St John’s College (Oxford), the Institute for Historical Research (London), and the Max Planck Institute for History of Science (Berlin).

Matthew Michael
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Ph.D., Molecular Biology, 1996, University of Pennsylvania
Previous Institution: Harvard University

Matthew Michael studies the cell division cycle, with an emphasis on understanding how the cycle is organized and regulated, and how perturbations to cell cycle regulation can lead to human disease. He has been a fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, a Searle Scholar, and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar.

Sri R. Narayan
Research Professor of Chemistry
Ph.D., Electrochemistry, 1988, Indian Institute of Science
Previous Institution: NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Sri R. Narayan’s research focuses on the fundamental and applied aspects of electrochemical energy conversion and storage to reduce the carbon footprint of energy use through renewable energy generation and by providing energy alternatives to fossil fuel. He is developing electrochemical routes to liquid fuel from carbon dioxide and sunlight, developing advanced materials and systems technologies for commercialization of fuel cells and batteries, and enabling renewable energy generation by developing large-scale electrical energy storage systems. His recent honors include NASA-JPL’s Mariner Award, recognizing leadership in fuel cell research.

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, 1998, University of California, Berkeley
Previous Institution: Brown University

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is a qualitative sociologist who engages questions concerning transnational families, migrant women’s labor, migrant citizenship and human trafficking. Her research fields include gender and feminist studies, the family, migration, international development and labor. Her awards include the 2009 Association for Asian American Studies Social Sciences Book Award for Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions (Stanford University Press, 2007), which Parreñas co-edited. She is currently writing a book on the labor and migration of Filipina hostesses in Tokyo’s nightlife industry.

Remo Rohs
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences
Ph.D., Biochemistry, 2003, Free University of Berlin
Previous Institution: Columbia University

Remo Rohs studies how proteins recognize their specific DNA binding sites and carry out their unique biological functions. His work emphasizes that the nucleotide sequence of a binding site is only a small part of the story, and that the three-dimensional structures of both macromolecules must be taken into account to fully understand protein-DNA recognition. Some of his most recent publications contribute to the understanding of Hox specificity, p53-DNA binding, and nucleosome positioning. His awards include a Minerva Fellowship from the Max Planck Society for postdoctoral studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

Susumu Takahashi
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Ph.D., Physics, 2005, University of Florida
Previous Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara

Susumu Takahashi’s research focus is developing novel magnetic resonance approaches to solve problems at the intersection of physics, chemistry and biology. In particular, his current interest is to build a magnetic imaging system with a single spin resolution. He is the recipient of the Tom Scott Memorial Award, presented by the University of Florida, and he is the co-author of “Microwave Spectroscopy of Q1D and Q2D Organic Conductors” in The Physics of Organic Superconductors and Conductors (Springer, 2008).

Joshua West
Wilford and Daris Zinsmeyer Early Career Chair in Marine Studies and Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences
Ph.D., Earth Sciences, 2007, University of Cambridge
Previous Institution: University of Oxford

Joshua West researches topics concerning the chemical and physical processes at the surface of the Earth. In 2005, he was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship from the United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council.