Faculty-Led Research Initiative

Faculty Lead: Ian Ehrenreich
Molecular and Computational Biology, Biological Sciences

The goal of the center is to nucleate and grow synthetic biology in Dornsife and at USC. Synthetic biology is a discipline at the interface of the life sciences and engineering focused on the design and construction of living systems, both for fundamental research and real-world applications that benefit society.

Faculty Lead: Assal Habibi
Brain and Creativity Institute, Department of Psychology

The center is designed to serve as a collaborative hub for USC faculty committed to investigating music at neurobiological and social levels, and to promoting the application of resulting knowledge to foster human well-being and social flourishing.

Faculty Lead: Darby Saxbe
Psychology

An interdisciplinary group of USC faculty study family systems, close relationships, and mental and physical health across the lifespan.

Faculty Lead: Karen Tongson
English, American Studies and Ethnicities, Gender and Sexuality

The Consortium on Gender, Sexuality & Race in Popular Culture brings together faculty researchers from across USC, Southern California, and beyond, to explore and contextualize shifts in representations of gender, race, and sexuality in public culture, while translating that research to the public square.

Faculty Lead: Jan Amend
Earth Sciences/Marine Environmental Biology

Taking a radically different approach in the search for new natural products with benefits for society, the initiative explores new classes of natural products that can be produced by and harvested from microorganisms that inhabit the largest but woefully understudied ecosystems on Earth — the
coastal and deep oceans, and the continental and marine subsurface.

Faculty Lead: Travis Williams
Chemistry

The Plastics Problem research group develops enterprise-ready solutions to reclaim value from waste plastics to help create a more sustainable future.

Faculty Lead: Will Berelson
Earth Sciences

The Urban Critical Zone conducts research and teaches students about urban system complexity using novel measurements, data harvesting and modeling, and empirical behavioral analysis.

Faculty Lead: Bill Deverell
History

The West On Fire places western wildfire in historical context to learn from dozens of disciplinary and other sets of fire knowledge, and to broaden public awareness of the the American west’s relationship with fire in the past, present, and future.