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 Research Briefs do not necessarily represent the views of USC Dornsife administration or USC.)
Out of more than 400 submissions, Prof. Dorinne Kondo's play, "Seamless," has been distinguished as one of just four productions to be featured at the prestigious New Works Festival. This poignant show delves into the life of a modern Japanese American woman seeking to understand the profound impact of the World War II camps on her family and subsequent generations.
Benjamin Uchiyama, associate professor of history, has earned an Award for 20th Century Japan Research Award from the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies and the University of Maryland Libraries. The annual award supports research in the libraries’ Gordon W. Prange Collection and East Asia Collection on topics related to the period of the Allied Occupation of Japan and its aftermath, from 1945 to 1960.
Nearly one in three Angelenos struggles to access food as the county sees the highest rates of food insecurity since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, according to a USC Dornsife Public Exchange study.
Sonya Lee, professor of art history, East Asian languages and cultures and religion, has earned a gold medal in the religion (Eastern/Western) category of the Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Awards. The medal recognizes her book _Temples in the Cliffside_ (University of Washington Press, 2022). The IPPY Awards aim to reward those who exhibit the courage, innovation and creativity to bring about change in the world of publishing.
Viet Thanh Nguyen, University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature, has been chosen as the 2023–24 Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard University. The Norton Professorship recognizes individuals “of extraordinary talent who, in addition to their particular expertise, have the gift of wide dissemination and wise expression.” Past honorees include T.S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges and Czeslaw Milosz. As a recipient of the honor, Nguyen will deliver six lectures over the course of the academic year.
Iony Ezawa, assistant professor of psychology, received the Marna Barrett Award for Excellence in Psychotherapy at the Society for Psychotherapy Research Annual Meeting held in Dublin this summer. The award, which includes a $10,000 prize, recognizes and supports “research excellence for the study of psychotherapeutic treatments of mental disorders that disrupt lives and inhibit the pursuit of well-being.” Ezaway received the award in part for her commitment to improving mental health treatment, supervision and training and her track record of scholarly excellence without large-scale funding.
Henrike Moll, associate professor of psychology, has earned the 2023 American Psychological Foundation Joseph B. Gittler Award. The prize, which includes $4,500, recognizes psychologists who make and are expected to continue making scholarly contributions to the philosophical foundations of psychological knowledge.
Juhi Jang, professor of mathematics, has received a Frontiers of Science Award at the inaugural International Congress of Basic Science held this past July in Beijing. The award recognizes her paper “Expanding large global solutions of the equations of compressible fluid mechanics,” co-authored with Mahir Hadžić of King’s College London and published in Inventiones mathematicae in 2018. Frontiers of Science Awards honor “top research, with an emphasis on achievements from the past five years which are both excellent and of outstanding scholarly value.”
A key figure in the Human Genome Project, he also invented technology used in COVID-19 tests.
