USC Dornsife News Briefs highlight faculty research studies, newly published books, awards, grants and other news showcasing faculty members’ work at USC Dornsife. All USC Dornsife faculty are eligible to submit content.
(The diverse opinions expressed in News Briefs do not necessarily represent the views of USC Dornsife administration or USC.)
Luke Fidler, assistant professor of art history, has been named a 2025–2026 Fellow of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. Centered on the theme of “Scale,” the residential fellowship brings together scholars and artists for a year of collaborative research, writing and teaching. Each fellow receives $62,000 and teaches one seminar for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Fidler specializes in the art of early- and high-medieval Europe, with an emphasis on the German-speaking lands, Scandinavia and the British Isles.
Arieh Warshel, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and Quantitative and Computational Biology, has been elected a Member of the National Academy of Artificial Intelligence. Warshel, who holds the Dana and David Dornsife Chair in Chemistry, was also elected an honorary member of the Serbian National Academy of Sciences.
USC students put their bioscience research in the spotlight at the inaugural, USC Dornsife-hosted BioFestival, competing for a share of $30,000 in grants and cash prizes.
Remo Rohs, founding chair of the Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology and professor of quantitative and computational biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy, computer science and medicine, has been named a 2025 Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology.
A new discovery about how tiny protein clusters form in cells could pave the way for treatments for Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD), a rare genetic disorder that causes muscle weakness and heart problems.
Vera Gluscevic, associate professor of physics and astronomy, is among 20 early career scientists selected for a Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. The award is one of eight projects funded in the inaugural year of Scialog: Early Science with the LSST, a three-year initiative supporting foundational research for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Gluscevic will receive a $60,000 award to support her work on “A Unified Model of Stellar Systems in LSST-Y1 for Dark Matter Inference” with Alexander Ji of the University of Chicago.
Percival Everett, Distinguished Professor of English, was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for his novel James. Awarded by the American Library Association, the medal and accompanying $5,000 prize honors the best books for adult readers published in the United States. James has already received the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and is a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award.
