USC Trojan Family Magazine Winter 2017

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CA L I F OR N I A W IN T E R 2 0 1 7

$ 4. 9 5

F A M I L Y

T HE SELF-MADE MAN USC Trustee Mark Stevens built success the old-fashioned way. He earned it.

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scene First-year students in the USC School of Dramatic Arts’ MFA program in acting created a moving tribute to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. To mark the centennial of Rodin’s death, they worked with Dean David Bridel to weave together images, text, fragments of Rodin’s life story and music in a movement theater piece performed at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, in November.

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Editor’s Note In an age of science, technology, engineering and math education, arts have a distinctly human place.

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President’s Page Breaking down the barriers among art, technology, creativity and science is one of USC’s loftiest missions.

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Seen and Heard Your take on USC stories from our magazine and the social web.

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News Building a better battery, freshmen set academic records, and initiatives tackle homelessness.

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The Storyteller

By Susan Bell and Elisa Huang Nationally acclaimed professor and author Viet Thanh Nguyen is ready for what’s next.

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The Linebacker’s Long Journey

By Mike Piellucci Five years ago, Nigerian-born Oluwole Betiku had never heard of football. Today, he plays for USC.

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On the Front Lines of Alzheimer’s

By Zen Vuong A visionary Alzheimer’s researcher is more optimistic than ever that treatments lie ahead.

It’s not just in Westworld.

Artificial intelligence is already touching our daily lives.

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One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to cancer. See what makes four oncologists at Keck Medicine of USC enthusiastic about personalized therapy—treatments that are customized to each patient’s individual disease. By Amber Dance

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ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS GASH

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Whether on foot or on wheels, generations of students have made the trek to class on Trousdale Parkway.

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The Self-Made Man As a venture capitalist, USC Trustee Mark Stevens constantly thinks about the future. And he’s determined to make it a better one. By Alicia Di Rado

Class Notes Who’s doing what and where?

64 Now and Again

The Art of the Matter To help creativity thrive in the classroom, Trojans are on a mission to bring arts education to Los Angeles public schools. By Tim Greiving

49 Alumni News

Designs for downtown L.A., student advocates find love and a legacy, and a Trojan goes behind the scenes of the NFL.

When Cancer Gets Personal

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Brain Builders Catching criminals. Translating languages. Even picking out what to wear in the morning. It’s all in a day’s work for artificial intelligence—and the humans behind the technology. By Katharine Gammon usc trojan family

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e d i t o r’ s n o t e The painting pictured is the work of Bobbie Rich, one of the many USC alumni and faculty members who teach, share and promote arts in the community.

The Arts Advocates

How do you quantify the value of art? Go to an auction where a Picasso sketch is up for sale, and the value in dollars soon becomes obvious. But its worth goes beyond matters financial—beyond even its intrinsic value.

For the artist, there is art’s ability to provoke and compel not only thoughts and feeling, but also actions. It can spur questioning about the status quo and propel social change.

Talk with scientists and mathematicians, whose worlds are distinctly quantifiable, and you’ll see they often share their own appreciation for the arts. USC neuroscientist Berislav Zlokovic is a singer and lover of opera. Ask fellow neuroscientist Arthur Toga about scientific innovation, and he shares that there is a certain art and inspiration involved in the design of scientific studies.

Art reaches the intangible recesses of the soul—pain, joy, grief—and aspects of the human experience that make us more complete, creative, observant and compassionate people. That’s in part why the arts outreach undertaken by our USC arts faculty and alumni is so inspiring. In this issue, you’ll read about several members of the Trojan Family who take the arts into communities and to children, aiming to keep arts alive. They’re part of the lasting impact of a complete university—one where arts are valued as an integral part of education.

The quarterly magazine of the University of Southern California E DI TO R- IN - CH IEF

Alicia Di Rado M ANAGIN G E DI TOR

Elisa Huang PRO DU CTI ON MA NAG ER

Mary Modina I NTE RACT IVE CO NT E NT MANAGER

Patricia Lapadula STAF F PH OTOG RAPHER

Gus Ruelas

ART D IRE CTOR

Sheharazad P. Fleming DE SI GN AN D PRO DUC TI ON

Alicia Di Rado Editor-In-Chief, USC Trojan Family Magazine

Julie Savasky

CO NT RIB UTORS

Joi Deaser Emily Gersema Paul Goldberg Judith Lipsett

Russ Ono Susanica Tam Delphine Vasko

PU BLI SHE R

Minne Ho M ARKE T IN G M ANAG ER

Rod Yabut ADVERT ISI NG I NQ UIRIES

Mali Mochow | mmochow@lamag.com

USC Trojan Family Magazine 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140 Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818 magazines@usc.edu | (213) 740-2684

“FLIGHT” COURTESY OF BOBBIE RICH

USC Trojan Family Magazine (ISSN 8750-7927) is published in March, June, October and December by USC University Communications.

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p r e s i d e n t’ s p a g e

A Spirit of Innovation

PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

b y c. l. m a x n i k i a s

“Imagination is more important than knowledge,” Albert Einstein famously said. At USC, we certainly prize pure knowledge—its acquisition and transfer to the next generation—but we agree with Einstein: Using that knowledge to inspire new thought and creativity is our loftiest aspiration.

USC has many friends who share this vision, and chief among them are Mark and Mary Stevens. One of their earliest transformative gifts to our university established the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, which has helped launch 58 startups in the last four years alone, and has raised nearly $60 million.

Beyond this center, the Stevenses have broadly and boldly supported innovation at the university for decades. Another of their gifts drives discovery for medicine and the life sciences, as it established the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute.

With their support, USC has dramatically grown its vast, university-wide ecosystem for innovation, underscoring time and again that the USC spirit is indeed the spirit of discovery.

We have seen this outside the sciences, as well.

The USC Iovine and Young Academy prepares the next generation of pioneering artist-entrepreneurs, while also helping them develop business and technical expertise. Earlier this semester, we broke ground on the academy’s new home, a 40,000-square-foot building at the corner of Watt Way and Exposition Boulevard, set to open in the winter of 2019.

The academy graduates its first class this spring, and its students are already making their mark, creating their own successful startups and life-changing inventions. With this new building, the academy will offer courses to students in other majors, sharing its innovative spirit with all USC students. All of this was made possible through the extraordinary generosity of the academy’s namesakes—two of the most creative minds in the music industry, and two of USC’s greatest champions of innovation: Jimmy Iovine and Andre “Dr. Dre” Young.

Marking another milestone in USC’s growth as a center for innovation, we recently opened the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, housed tfm.usc.edu

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in the single largest research building on either of USC’s campuses. Michelson Hall—built with a landmark gift from retired spinal surgeon Gary Michelson and his wife, Alya—is a state-of-the-art complex, designed with open, shared laboratories that encourage collaboration and new partnerships.

Its team of researchers stands united in the pursuit of medical breakthroughs, but their respective fields are disparate: chemistry, biology, medicine, mathematics, engineering, physics, nanoscience, animation and cinematography. In the coming years, the center will bring together more and more scholars and artists from across USC, providing a home in which our most talented minds tackle our most daunting health problems, namely cancer and infectious diseases.

For these successes, and for keeping USC at the fore of groundbreaking scholarship and art, we should all be grateful to our university’s most passionate supporters, great Trojans such as Mark and Mary Stevens, Jimmy Iovine, Andre Young, and Gary and Alya Michelson. They understand that knowledge is power, but the ability to innovate is truly genius.

(From left) USC Iovine and Young Academy Dean Erica Muhl, Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, Jimmy Iovine and C. L. Max Nikias gathered to break ground on the academy’s new home at the University Park Campus.

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Musings about Trojan life and USC Trojan Family Magazine from mail, email and the online world.

seen and heard

A FINE FELLOWSHIP Nguyen is the fifth USC faculty member to be named a MacArthur Foundation fellow in the last 20 years.

2017 Viet Thanh Nguyen Writer and cultural critic

The Disruptors Groundbreakers got their own groundbreaking when the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy of Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation kicked off construction for its new home. Academy founders Jimmy Iovine and Andre “Dr. Dre” Young donned hard hats and joined USC President C. L. Max Nikias and the academy’s dean, Erica Muhl, to commemorate the launch of the academy’s first building. Media from Billboard to television news shows covered the October event.

How did Iovine and Young, music industry legends and cofounders of Beats Electronics, end up in academia? They wanted to create a place to nurture great ideas—where young innovators with an eye for business, technology and the arts could get their start.

Their $70 million gift to USC in 2013 jump-started the dream.

The academy began with a class of 30 students, and today they’re seniors, with graduation on the horizon. In all, the highly selective program has grown to 114 enrolled students. Said Iovine at the groundbreaking ceremony: “I hope at this school we can help our students to dream big, execute and build the courage to stay in the saddle.”

STAY

IN

2011 Jacob Soll Historian (Europe)

2009 Elyn Saks Mental health lawyer

1997 Luis Alfaro Writer and performance artist

The social media world lit up as news spread that 24 extraordinary visionaries had been named 2017 MacArthur Foundation fellows.

USC joined hundreds of well-wishers on Facebook and Twitter to congratulate USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences’ Viet Thanh Nguyen for earning the prestigious honor. Nguyen holds the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature.

Dubbed the “genius grant,” the MacArthur fellowship awards $625,000 to creative, self-driven thinkers whose work has the potential to benefit society. Nguyen is the author of three books, including The Sympathizer, a New York Times bestseller that won the Pulitzer Prize. Read more about Nguyen and his work on p. 12.

CA N DI D CA M E R A The Trojan Shrine isn’t the only USC statue in the spotlight anymore. Millions have visited the USC homepage on the web and watched TommyCam, which streams the goings-on at the Tommy Trojan statue 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. With the unveiling of the Hecuba statue at USC Village, USC now also hosts HecubaCam. Hecuba, the wife of King Priam, holds court in the middle of the central piazza and stands as a tribute to the strength and spirit of the women of Troy. You can visit usc. edu or bit.ly/HecubaCam to see what’s happening around the sculpture in USC Village, right from your laptop or smartphone.

TOUCH

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2016 Josh Kun Cultural historian

Author’s Acclaim

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TROJAN

PHOTO BY MICHAEL OWEN BAKER

TROJAN CHARGE The race is on in USC’s Residential College Cup competition. McCarthy Honors College and its nearly 600 freshmen join six other first-year residential colleges in a quest for bragging rights—and the coveted trophy—as they compete against each other in games and activities throughout the year.

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trojan news

First in Class Incoming freshmen set new school records for academic achievement.

For the first time in nearly a decade, incoming USC freshmen come from all 50 states. This fall’s first-year students also represent the largest group of freshmen—and most competitive—in school history, with record-high test scores and GPAs. Out of nearly 57,000 applications, the university sent acceptance letters to fewer than 9,000 students for an all-time-low 16 percent admission rate. Here’s what you need to know about this newest batch of Trojans, in numbers.

M OST REPRESENTED STAT E S

C LA S S S P E C I F I CS

16%

California New York Texas Illinois Washington Florida

Acceptance rate

17%

Freshmen who are first in their families to attend college

16%

M OST REPRESENTED N AT I O N S

U.S. China India Canada South Korea Taiwan

Freshmen who have a parent who graduated from USC

56,675 Number of applications received

3,358 Students in freshman class

FINANCIAL S U P P O RT

2 in3

USC students who receive some form of financial aid

$330 million

The amount of financial aid freshmen received from university sources

U S C S C H O O LS W I T H H I G H E ST ENROLLMENT

37%

USC Dornsife

19%

USC Marshall

17%

USC’s art schools

14%

AC A D E M I C A L L - STA R S

3.76

Average high school GPA of freshman class (unweighted)

651

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Number of students with a 4.0 GPA

USC Viterbi

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5%

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USC Annenberg

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Chef David LeFevre, Fishing with Dynamite

Cheers to ten years TWO WEEKS OF MEMORABLE EATS

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FA C U LT Y

P R O F I L E

V I E T

T H A N H

N G U Y E N

The Storyteller Viet Thanh Nguyen has always gravitated toward books, finding comfort in the written word.

Like many in the Pennsylvania and California areas where he grew up, his family arrived in America as refugees after the Vietnam War, and the young reader grappled with his own sense of identity in a community that seemed largely invisible in American culture. The world of books provided solace.

“That’s how I came to fall in love with books,” Nguyen says, “and how I wanted to become a writer from that moment.”

Nguyen’s deep passion for words has followed him through his adult life, and the professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author

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and a 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. With his MacArthur fellowship—the prestigious $625,000 award comes with no strings attached—he hopes to continue pushing the power of words.

He plans to use part of the fellowship money to support a blog he started seven years ago called diaCRITICS, which focuses on arts, culture and politics from Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora.

“There are such limited opportunities to spotlight these kinds of issues and the writers who work on them,” Nguyen says. “I think much of the MacArthur award for me has gone toward recognizing my work in that area, but I always recognize that there’s been a need to have that space

for diversity of Vietnamese voices and that is what I will use some of the money for.”

Nguyen—who was so shocked when he learned he received the fellowship he had to sit down for the duration of his phone call with the MacArthur Foundation—is also keenly aware of the award’s responsibility beyond just the grant money.

“I have been following the results of the MacArthur Fellowships for years and have seen many writers I admire get them—writers whose work I think is vitally important to the arts and to American culture. I also think it’s humbling because I think about all the other writers today who are also deserving of this award and may not have gotten it and all the writers in the past whose work has made my own possible that haven’t gotten this either. That puts this award into context for me.”

The Sympathizer, Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel and a New York Times bestseller, explores the Vietnam War through the lens of an American-educated spy for the Viet Cong. His follow-up work is a nonfiction cultural companion, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and his latest publication is the short-story collection The Refugees.

“I hope that what people take from my work is the necessity of thinking and feeling from the position of people who are not like them,” Nguyen says.

His writing, he adds, is not narrowly focused on revising Vietnam War history so that Americans learn about Vietnamese people, but instead, ultimately on bringing to light how we all view the world.

“The larger project is really about an expanded capacity for empathy.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

Professor, author and cultural critic Viet Thanh Nguyen wins acclaim for his writing on the effects of displacement and war.

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trojan news

New Day for Patients The W. M. Keck Foundation boosts its longstanding support for medicine.

For Kishi Hundley, help from the USC Housing Law Clinic came just in time. After eight years at the Rolland Curtis Gardens apartments in South L.A.’s Exposition Park neighborhood, Hundley had to move out last year. A relocation allowance of $1,375 wasn’t enough to get Hundley and her daughter into a new home.

“I didn’t have a place to go when I moved out, so I used the money for a motel room, gas and food. That money went fast. I was so weary,” Hundley says. “I’m thankful I got in touch with the USC Housing [Law] Clinic because that’s how I survived.”

Legal representatives from the clinic negotiated a new agreement, helping Hundley and 40 other tenants in 20 units receive about $7,000 each to find new homes. Hundley, who is studying psychology at Los Angeles City College, moved into a one-bedroom apartment around the corner from her old home.

With affordable housing in short supply in South L.A., legal help and advocacy from organizations like the USC Housing Law Clinic can be a lifeline. The clinic provides referrals, information and representation at no charge for residents who face discrimination, eviction, landlord disputes and other housing problems. In the past year, the clinic has managed about 80 matters for clients, including rental agreement negotiations and finding translators for languages like Aramaic and Korean.

“We look to make real impact as we partner with our neighbors on education, economic development and even housing,” says Thomas S. Sayles, USC senior vice president for university relations. The clinic is part of USC Civic Engagement, a university program that supports and promotes more than 400 community initiatives in the neighborhoods surrounding the school’s campuses.

If you’ve visited a doctor on the USC Health Sciences Campus lately, you might have noticed a new name at one of the busiest spots in the medical complex: the Willametta Keck Day Healthcare Center.

A $10 million gift from the W. M. Keck Foundation named the building previously called Healthcare Center 2. The center houses Keck Medicine of USC clinics that cover a wide swath of medical disciplines touching thousands of patients, from primary care to surgical specialties.

Willametta Keck Day, one of the founders of the W. M. Keck Foundation, was the daughter of William Myron Keck and Alice B. Cominski Keck. William Myron Keck founded the Superior Oil Co. in 1921 and created the W. M. Keck Foundation three decades later. One of the nation’s largest philanthropic organizations, the foundation supports outstanding science, engineering and medical research and undergraduate education.

The Los Angeles-based foundation and

its chairman and CEO, Robert A. Day, are strong supporters of USC. With this latest gift, the W. M. Keck Foundation adds to the $150 million it provided in 2011 to launch the Keck Medicine Initiative, which advances USC’s innovative medical research and education. In all, the foundation and members of the extended Keck family have donated nearly $300 million to USC, placing them among the most generous benefactors to the university.

The Keck Medicine Initiative is part of the Campaign for USC, an unprecedented fundraising effort to advance USC’s academic priorities and expand its positive impact on the community and world. When launched in 2011, the campaign had the largest fundraising goal ever announced in higher education — $6 billion. After exceeding its goal nearly 18 months ahead of schedule, the campaign continues to draw unparalleled support for the university’s mission and has been extended through 2021.

ALICIA DI RADO

HUNDLEY PHOTO BY RON MACKOVICH; HEALTH CENTER PHOTO BY RICARDO CARRASCO

A Way Back Home

RON MACKOVICH

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F R O M

T H E

C O L L E C T I O N S

Pigskin Pursuit Armchair quarterbacks and Trojan fans could make their own calls with this board game.

Howard H. Jones wasn’t just a master of the gridiron—he knew his way around a game board.

A legend of collegiate football, Jones coached the USC Trojans from 1925 to 1940. He presided over USC’s “Thundering Herd,” leading the Trojan

Recognized as one of the greatest college football coaches of his day, Howard Jones joined USC in 1925. He reportedly got the nod after a recommendation from fellow candidate Knute Rockne.

Pieces like these goal posts are a classic feature of tabletop games, which are rebounding in popularity today — Madden NFL notwithstanding.

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football teams to four national championships and seven conference titles. His teams went undefeated in five Rose Bowls.

Jones parlayed his football knowledge into the “Howard H. Jones Collegiate Football Game,” a circa-1930s board game produced by Los Angeles-

based Municipal Service Corp.

Ltd. (of which Jones served as president). In the game, a mechanical device launches a ball for kickoffs, field goals and punts. On offense, the player chooses one of eight possible plays to call and then spins an arrow, which stops on

letters. The player on defense then spins the arrow and gets another letter in response. The result of these two spins determines what happens to the ball and what happens in the game.

The color-coded board pictured here, which measures about four square feet, is now ensconced in the USC Libraries’ University Archives, part of Special Collections, which include archives, manuscripts, historic photographs and rare books. The department contains more than 200,000 volumes, more than 1,000 archival collections and more than 2 million photographs.

ALICIA DI RADO

ABOUT USC LIBRARIES’ SPECIAL COLLECTIONS USC Libraries’ Special Collections collect, preserve, promote and foster access to primary source materials—many of which are unique to USC—that support a rich academic experience. University Archivist Claude Zachary manages the collections that document the history and impact of USC and the Trojan Family. Follow them on Twitter at @USCLibraries and @USCSpeCol.

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trojan news Five years ago, Oluwole Betiku had never even heard of American football.

Today he plays at USC.

The Linebacker’s Long Journey Natural talent, strong support and a little luck put a Trojan’s dreams within reach.

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Ever since he was old enough to set goals, Betiku dreamed of leaving Africa.

“Growing up in Nigeria, you’re taught to dream of greener pastures outside the country,” he says. He remembers the respect and prestige achieved by those who had the courage to experience something new. “All my life, I wanted that for myself,” he says.

The problem was getting a chance. He was a skilled basketball player but nowhere tall enough for a pro career. Betiku regularly wandered the streets of Lagos searching for pickup games, though, and it was during one such trip in 2013 that he caught wind of an opportunity. Ten hours away in the town of Uyo, a youth football clinic was

in search of prospects. The program was part of a charitable foundation that scouted those with potential and placed them in American private schools under the care of host families.

Betiku had never even heard of American football, much less played it, but it hardly mattered. He hopped on a rickety bus and did his best to get through a battery of exercises and football drills at the clinic. Within a few months, he had earned a plane ticket to the U.S.

For his junior year of high school, Betiku enrolled at Junipero Serra High School in Gardena, California. The school’s alumni include USC All-Americans like Robert Woods, Marqise Lee and Adoree’ Jackson,

PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

On a Tuesday last September, Oluwole Betiku was spending the afternoon with his mother and older sister. This might not seem out of the ordinary for a USC student-athlete. But Betiku is an ocean and a continent removed from his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria. It was the first time he had seen his immediate family since he left home at age 16.

The sophomore linebacker is an imposing man, 6-foot-3 and well over 240 pounds of what looks like solid muscle, a standout even at one of college football’s most storied programs. “Nobody here parallels to Wole’s raw ability,” says wide receiver Josh Imatorbhebhe, one of Betiku’s closest friends on the team. “He’s unbelievable.”

So, too, is the journey that brought him to Troy.

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All Charged Up

ILLUSTRATION BY DIANA MOLLEDA

“At USC, it’s not just going to be about football. It will be about everything around you as a human being and helping you become a success story.” though Betiku was nowhere near as highly regarded, at least not at first. The growing pains were evident: Betiku remembers jumping offsides as many as five times in a game, and asking coaches if he could play without bulky shoulder pads.

His potential was obvious, however.

As a senior in high school, Betiku recorded 17 sacks and established himself as one of the top recruits in the country. But it was his story that captivated Tee Martin, USC offensive coordinator.

“As a young 17- or 18-year-old across the world in a place where you don’t know anyone, you have to trust people,” Martin says. “I didn’t want to be just a recruiter. I wanted to be someone that would be in his life. At USC, it’s not just going to be about football. It will be about everything around you as a human being and helping you become a success story.”

At USC, Betiku found academic opportunities, a famed football legacy and a feeling of home.

There are five players of Nigerian descent on the football team, something that Imatorbhebhe, whose brother Daniel also plays on the team, says is no accident.

“You see a lot of Nigerians at USC. It’s because we know what academics can do for you and your future,” Imatorbhebhe says.

Imatorbhebhe’s mother comes from the same tribe as Betiku’s mother, and she has kept a watchful eye on him. Betiku calls senior linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, another Nigerian, his best friend on the team. He frequents both families’ homes for dinners.

Yet he dreams of the day when he returns home to his own family in Nigeria.

He imagines a throng of children crowding around to welcome him, wondering about his experiences the same way he would have at their age.

“I want to give back to them,” he says, “because that country made me who I am today.” MIKE PIELLUCCI

Tired of your cellphone battery dying right when you really need it? USC researchers may have uncovered a secret to creating rechargeable batteries that could last longer.

Lithium-sulfur batteries are better at storing energy than the lithium-ion batteries common in today’s electronic devices.

But they only can be recharged 50 to 100 times. The USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Science’s Sri Narayan and Derek Moy found a way around that. Their “sandwich” approach could speed engineers toward smaller, longerlasting batteries. IAN CHAFFEE Narayan and Moy created a “mixed conduction membrane” (MCM), a small piece of non-porous, fabricated material placed between two layers of porous separators.

Soaked in electrolytes, the MCM is sandwiched between the battery’s two electrodes.

The MCM allows the lithium ions to move and generate a current, but it also acts as a buffer to significantly reduce cycle strain over time.

In addition to their use in cell phones and computers, smaller lithium-sulfur batteries could reduce the weight of future electric vehicles.

The researchers found that the MCM extended battery life four times longer than that of lithium-sulfur batteries without it.

LITHIUM ELECTRODE

POROUS SEPARATOR MIXED CONDUCTION MEMBRANE POROUS SEPARATOR

SULFUR ELECTRODE

App Addiction Since their introduction 10 years ago, smartphones have become a necessity many can’t live without.

Can you go a day without your phone? How about a week? If it feels unimaginable, you’re not alone.

USC researchers are studying how smartphones might be rewiring our brains—and making us dependent. “Internet addiction has some behavioral similarities to hard drug use,” says Antoine Bechara, psychology professor and neuroscientist at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “The similarities between internet and cocaine addiction really lie in those brain systems that drive you toward the reward.” That includes release of dopamine, the reward-and-pleasure neurotransmitter. (An important difference, though, is that cocaine impairs the prefrontal cortex, which leads to poor decision-making, while internet addiction doesn’t.)

“Swiping on apps is inherently rewarding due to a dopamine hit in the brain every time a new message is received,” adds Julie Albright, a psychology lecturer at USC Dornsife. “The affected area is the same ‘pleasure center’ activated by cocaine and other addictive drugs.”

Smartphone dependency is high among the young. A recent survey from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that half of teens in the U.S. and Japan felt addicted to their phones. Older adults may be growing dependent as well. Addiction expert Steve Sussman, professor of preventive medicine, psychology and social work, is studying the phenomenon.

“Consequences associated with smartphone addiction include lack of concentration and decreased performance at school or work; car and other accidents; possible blurred vision; sleep disturbance and financial costs,” Sussman says, noting that ongoing USC research could help develop evidence-based guidelines on treating smartphone addiction. ZEN VUONG

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trojan news To learn more about the Trojan Marching Band and sponsoring a halftime show, visit uscband.usc.edu/give.

Forging An Icon As any true USC football fan knows, it’s not game time until the Trojan Marching Band’s drum major declares battle by stabbing his iconic sword into the playing field.

Since 1992, the same sword has kicked off pre-game festivities and led The Spirit of Troy into countless “Conquest” verses.

A dedicated expert blacksmith (who also works on the drum major’s distinctive armor and plumed helmet) has honed the blade and smoothed out dents, dings and other battle scars for 25 seasons. But so much metal had been worn down over a quarter century that it was time to retire the sword after the 2017 Rose Bowl game.

For the 2017-18 football season, drum major Christopher Rick unveiled a new sword to start a legacy. Weighing about 12 pounds, the sword keeps with traditional style and has

enhancements including a larger hilt for better grip, a thicker blade for longevity and a brass plate at the bottom of the blade for an added design accent.

Trojan fans can enjoy the gleam, but at a respectful distance: Traditionally, no one but the drum major—or football players who lead the band after a game—is allowed to wield the game-day sword, much less touch it.

For diehard fans itching to try it out, the next best thing is an official replica sword given to sponsors of the band’s halftime shows. Though slightly different in design, these are made by the same blacksmith—and they’re close enough to the real thing that Rick uses one as his practice sword.

ELISA HUANG

SCREEN SCORING PHOTO BY CHANDLER GOLAN; MUSIC INDUSTRY PHOTO BY MIDNIGHT HOUR STUDIOS; OTHER USC THORNTON PHOTOS BY DARIO GRIFFIN

Attuned to the Arts New master’s programs stay ahead of major changes in the music industry.

As the music industry undergoes seismic changes, the USC Thornton School of Music helps its students stay at the forefront. The school unveiled five master’s degree programs that prepare students for new and emerging opportunities in education, business,

CO M M U N I T Y MUSIC

Combining skill sets in music education, community engagement and advocacy, this program brings music instruction and performance into nontraditional settings, such as prisons, hospitals, senior living communities and centers for marginalized and disadvantaged people of all ages.

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CONTEMPORARY TEACHING PRACTICE

In collaboration with the USC Rossier School of Education, this program helps teachers stay in step as K-12 classrooms become more culturally diverse. Whether teaching a marching band, jazz sextet or mariachi band, graduates will have the tools to enrich traditional school programs.

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community advocacy and more. The programs vary in length from one to two years, and some are so flexible they enable students to keep existing jobs while they pursue coursework.

ALLISON ENGEL

SCREEN S CO R I N G

A RTS LEADERSHIP

MUSIC I N D U ST RY

Screen scoring has been taught at USC Thornton for decades as a certificate program, but now it has been reimagined as a master’s degree.

Students learn how to compose, conduct and produce music for screens of all types and for live action and animated films, as well as video games and virtual reality.

Artists, arts administrators and cultural entrepreneurs learn the skills needed to lead their own ensembles and organizations. The program draws from resources at USC’s music, art and design, architecture, dance, dramatic arts and cinematic arts schools.

The degree offers four emphasis options: music supervision/ visual media, the live music business, music entrepreneurship and the recording industry.

Courses in artist management, music publishing, music instrument manufacturing/distribution and radio are options, as are business courses at the USC Marshall School of Business.

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Presents, as part of our grand re-opening:

WINDS FROM FUSANG: MEXICO AND CHINA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY December 8, 2017–June 10, 2018 Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century, part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. Winds from Fusang is the first major exhibition on the unexamined influence of Mexican art and artists on the development of art in China in the twentieth century.

46 NORTH LOS ROBLES AVENUE, PASADENA, CA 91101

PacificAsiaMuseum acificAsiaMuseum |

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@USCPAM | @U

@USC_PAM

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trojan news

A Moral Imperative Members of the USC community tackle homelessness with rigor, creativity and compassion. by elisa huang

Share a Meal volunteers, top, deliver food throughout L.A. twice a week. Architecture students, below, develop concepts for temporary housing structures.

On any given night in Los Angeles, thousands of people have no place to sleep and no safe shelter. In the county, about 57,800 people are homeless—up from 39,000 in 2013. The city has one of the nation’s densest homeless populations, and county voters in 2017 approved a special sales tax hike projected to generate $355 million annually to provide services to the homeless.

Last year, USC invited organizations and industries across L.A. to launch a collaborative effort in direct response to the growing crisis. “The challenges are so deep that they can only be addressed by common, concerted leadership of the great institutions of learning, local governments, private philanthropy and business,” said USC President C. L. Max Nikias at the summit.

“We have a moral imperative to help those in our community who are struggling just to survive.” The summit helped groups form partnerships and share ideas for interventions.

Across the campus, USC faculty, staff and students have taken action to combat homelessness and find solutions to the complex problem. Here are just a few initiatives: 2017 HOMELESS COUNT USC partnered with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to conduct the 2017 Los Angeles County Homeless Count.

The survey’s complex legwork required 30 on-the-ground social workers to gather and analyze the data, which have been used to aid in key policy decisions.

CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS STUDY In a two-year study, Ben Henwood, an assistant professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, will explore the needs of L.A.’s chronically homeless. Henwood also helps lead the Grand Challenge to End Homelessness, an effort by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare to end homelessness in 10 years.

SHELTER DESIGN In partnership with the nonprofit Madworkshop, the USC School of Architecture launched the Madworkshop Homeless Studio, where fourth-year students design moveable, modular and replicable structures that can be used as temporary housing.

VIRTUAL HEALTH CARE A recent pilot program supported by the Los Angeles County

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Department of Health Services offers USC Telehealth, a videoconferencing platform, to tenants in Skid Row Housing Trust programs. One hundred formerly homeless residents receive weekly mental health services through an electronic tablet to help them transition to permanent housing.

SHARE A MEAL Share a Meal, a USC student club that’s connected to L.A. nonprofit Khalsa Peace Corps, services areas of South L.A. and downtown where few meal programs operate. The USC chapter, started two years ago by Hana Yokoi ’16, has 150 members. Student volunteers deliver meals twice a week in a food truck. winter 2017

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FA C U LT Y

P R O F I L E

PA U L

A I S E N

On the Front Lines of Alzheimer’s Paul Aisen leads the fight to end a disease that affects millions.

Ask a friend, a coworker or a parent at your child’s school whether they’ve known someone with Alzheimer’s disease.

Chances are good that everyone will nod yes. They’ll also all probably know that there’s nothing that can cure it.

At least not yet.

Leading Alzheimer’s researcher Paul S. Aisen aims to change that. He joined USC in 2015 to direct the San Diego-based USC Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute, or ATRI, the largest academic program in the world working on therapeutic trials against the disease. The Keck School of Medicine of USC rheumatologist spoke to USC writer Zen Vuong about why he’s more optimistic than ever that better treatments lie ahead.

many different institutions, companies and international organizations. It requires administrative support that is unusual in an academic institution. USC basically removed all the barriers that once slowed down our work and has created the environment we’ve always wanted for our Alzheimer’s research.

Some of the important new programs we’ve developed here include building an entirely new online infrastructure for testing Alzheimer’s therapies at an early stage. Additionally, we’ve created a new multicenter trial focused on preventing memory loss in an at-risk population and started the latest iteration of international collaboration for research on Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers.

tion against the disease by describing the phase of the disease before symptoms arise in a way that allows for drug development and regulatory approval. This was never possible before because there was no such thing as an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

Our No. 1 goal is to develop effective treatment that slows or even halts its progression at its earliest symptomatic stage.

Our early intervention trial framework should be applied to as many promising trials as appropriate.

Many of our ongoing studies lay the foundation for change, and we anticipate major Alzheimer’s therapeutic advances even within the next three years, but certainly in the next five to 10 years.

How have your research efforts been going since joining USC? The complex work we do requires collaboration from

What do you hope to achieve in Alzheimer’s research?

USC ATRI is establishing the framework for early interven-

What kinds of strategies do you expect to test? A buildup in the brain of a protein called amyloid is a hallmark of

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Alzheimer’s disease, and we believe that fighting amyloid is critical. We intend to launch a global study attempting to reduce amyloid plaques in at-risk populations and a trial approaching anti-amyloid therapy in a new way among patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s. We also want to study new tools to prevent early-onset Alzheimer’s that’s inherited from parents.

LEARN MORE ABOUT CLINICAL TRIALS AT ATRI Interested in participating in Alzheimer’s research?

Visit bit.ly/ATRIstudies and click on “active studies.”

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Health Files

trojan news

Golf as Therapy Senior military veterans might benefit from “a good walk spoiled.”

T R O J A N S

I N

13 in

intervention improves seniors’ walking and standing ability, balance, strength and cognitive processing (actions like paying attention and remembering).

Salem hopes the data will eventually lead to the development of senior golf fitness programs.

As for Rice, he says he feels much more serene and focused after completing the program and can get around the course a little easier. “The study gave me motivation,” he adds. “In fact, I’m going to start going to the gym and try to lose some weight.”

JOHN HOBBS

TO K YO

Students from the USC Kaufman School of Dance closed out the 2017 USC Global Conference in Japan with a performance at the event’s gala dinner. Innovators gathered at the three-day event in Tokyo to explore technology’s impact on the world.

Held in major cities of the Pacific Rim every other year, the USC Global Conference shares influential thinking from USC across sectors including the sciences, humanities, engineering, medicine, entrepreneurship, the arts and entertainment. Kazuo Hirai, president and CEO of Sony Corp., served as keynote speaker at this year’s event.

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The Zika virus does its damage to a fetus by taking advantage of the suppressed immune system in pregnant women, USC researchers found. They believe that women’s unique body chemistry during pregnancy must be taken into account to design an effective vaccine.

Whether sipping decaf or strong java, coffee drinkers tend to outlive non-coffee drinkers. During the course of a USC study, they also had a lower risk of dying from diseases including cancer and diabetes. Benefits started with as little as a cup per day.

L.A. residents can typically save about $52 if they price-shop for an antibiotic prescription at independent pharmacies and use online coupons. But few patients do. A USC Schaeffer Center study found that consumers were deterred by inconvenience, unfamiliarity with medical costs and loyalty to their doctors.

RICE PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSCULOSKELETAL BIOMECHANICS RESEARCH LABORATORY; TOKYO PHOTO BY DAIKI SUZUKI

Crown Rice wasn’t feeling too good about himself.

He was slightly overweight and had to confront the everyday aches and pains of aging. And like many of his fellow veterans, the 68-year-old retired U.S. Army Specialist, who completed a tour of duty in Vietnam, was dealing with the long-lasting mental effects of combat.

“I was just down and out,” Rice says. Then he came across a flyer for Golf Intervention for Veterans Exercise, a study that investigates the effects of playing golf on the physical, psychosocial and cognitive health of older war veterans. “I thought, let me try golfing, maybe that will help me with my morale.”

The 12-week program run by George Salem, associate professor in the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, assesses participants’ agility, balance, grip strength and more before and after joining the program.

Why golf ? The sport is an ideal comprehensive exercise activity for seniors, Salem says. It encourages seniors to socialize, players usually stick with it and it improves concentration and quality of life.

Preliminary study results suggest that golf

One in three cases of dementia is preventable, according to a panel of international experts that included Lon Schneider of the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Good health habits like exercising and spending time with friends could reduce dementia cases by up to 20 percent.

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warrior pose by

THE KECK EFFECT What sets Keck Medicine of USC apart? Our relentless approach. Our unwavering passion to heal.

And, something else ... we’re warriors. Each day, we fight for our patients — battling the most serious and complex conditions imaginable and doing everything possible to ensure a positive outcome.

To read patient stories and share yours, visit: KeckMedicine.org/KeckEffect

For appointments, call: (800) USC-CARE

© 2017 Keck Medicine of USC

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BY AMBER DANCE

Four Keck Medicine of USC oncologists share how they’re working to make cancer a thing of the past through personalized medicine.

© 2017 PHOTO RESEARCHERS INC.

When Cancer Gets Personal It was in Germany some 150 years ago that physicians started to categorize cancers based on where they originated: places like the breast, liver and bone. That system worked well enough for more than a century, guiding doctors in how they treated cancer and even prevent it.

But the approach has changed in recent years. “Maybe there’s a better way to do it,” says USC oncologist David Agus. And it’s based on what switches cancer on or off—not where it lives.

That’s the premise of personalized medicine, a cancer treatment strategy on the rise. The aim of personalized medicine is to get into each patient’s cancer at a molecular level. It asks, what’s going on with this cancer’s genes? Its proteins?

Its chemistry?

The goal, Agus says, is to identify the genetic mutation that turned each patient’s cells cancerous, or a particular chemical process cells are “addicted to”—something the cancer needs to grow and spread. Then, doctors can pick a treatment precisely tuned to that mutant gene or key process. Sometimes personalized medicine aims to stoke a patient’s body to attack its cancer.

“It is a very exciting time with major developments in science that are rapidly impacting individuals with cancer,” says oncologist Alan Wayne of USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

USC Trojan Family Magazine recently spoke with Wayne, Agus and two more of Keck Medicine’s top cancer doctors about the promise of personalized medicine, and what’s coming up next. tfm.usc.edu

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CATEGORIZING CANCERS HEINZ-JOSEF LENZ Oncologist, Gastrointestinal Cancers Until recently, everyone with colon cancer got the same treatment based on the cancer’s pathology alone, says oncologist Heinz-Josef Lenz. But recent advances in technology illuminate other characteristics of cancer beyond pathology, such as tumors’ molecular makeup. These new data influence how physicians prescribe therapy.

Lenz authored some of those very studies.

Earlier this year, he shared his analysis of colon cancer types based on gene expression at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, a major summit of top cancer experts.

Looking at 800 genes across 392 tumors from patients, he and his colleagues found that these cancers fall into four genetically distinct groups.

Each of these four cancer types acts completely differently and is driven by its own pathway, Lenz says. Each also has a distinctive prognosis and responds differently to chemotherapy and targeted drugs.

For example, people with cancer in one category tend to live longer if they receive a medication called cetuximab, which prevents the tumor from interacting with a growth factor, a substance in the body that helps the tumor get bigger. But people whose cancer falls into another category do better on a drug called bevacizumab, which interferes with the growth of blood vessels that fuel a tumor.

Heinz-Josef Lenz Associate Director for Adult Oncology and Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center

OPPOSITE PAGE: Some cancer treatments super-charge a patient’s own immune cells by genetically engineering them to fight cancer.

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trojan health

CUSTOM CELL THERAPY ALAN S. WAYNE Pediatric Oncologist Ask Wayne what he’s enthusiastic about, and he immediately talks about immunotherapy—a treatment that uses the immune system against cancer.

He’s working on a treatment that aims to super-charge each patient’s immune cells. It’s called CAR T-cell therapy.

As part of the immune system, T cells circulating in the blood recognize and attack invaders. But cancer cells sometimes sneak by them. In CAR T-cell therapy, doctors take T cells from a patient’s bloodstream and send them for genetic engineering.

Scientists add a new gene made of different parts, encoding a receptor that will identify the cancer as an enemy. The souped-up cells are transfused back into the patient, where they seek and destroy the cancer.

Wayne has been testing the approach in children with leukemia and other blood cancers. “It is a very exciting time,” he says, pointing to the August FDA approval of Kymriah, a CAR T-cell therapy. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) is one of a select group of sites now offering Kymriah, which was the first FDA-approved gene therapy available in the U.S.

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Alan Wayne Interim Director, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center Director, Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at CHLA

Preet Chaudhary Chief, Jane Anne Nohl Division of Hematology and Center for the Study of Blood Diseases at the Keck School of Medicine

While at the National Cancer Institute, Wayne led the development of one of the first trials of CAR T-cell therapy in children, with a different version than Kymriah, and he was encouraged by the results. Of 21 children and young adults who underwent the treatment, 14 achieved remission. Some of those kids had been expected to die, Wayne says; six had never responded to any other chemotherapy. He is now the lead principal investigator on a larger study to test this CAR T-cell treatment in children with leukemia.

Wayne and a team of investigators led by Jaclyn Biegel, professor of pathology at the Keck School and director of the Center for Personalized Medicine at CHLA, are employing gene sequencing technologies in a new way to identify genetic alterations in children’s cancers. Cancers in kids and teens often result from different mutations than tumors in adults, he explains, so his colleague Timothy Triche, professor of pathology at the Keck School, and a team of CHLA scientists worked with a company to develop a panel to detect the key gene abnormalities associated with children’s cancers. Their sequencing panel, called OncoKids, can identify cancer-related abnormalities in more than 500 genes. For children whose cancers do not respond to standard treatments, OncoKids can help doctors design a more personalized approach, choosing drugs that target the specific mutations found in that cancer.

IMPROVING IMMUNOTHERAPY PREET M. CHAUDHARY Hematologic Oncologist In clinical trials, CAR T-cell therapy shows impressive results, often helping as many as 90 percent of patients and saving people who would likely otherwise die of their cancer. This is thanks to lots of logistical work, Preet Chaudhary points out. Scientists had to figure out how to gather the T cells from the patients, modify them and put them back in, all in a streamlined fashion that could be used for therapeutics. He predicts that in the future, this process will become more and more automated, making it easier for doctors to prescribe and provide CAR T-cell therapy.

But exciting as it is, CAR T-cell therapy comes with serious side effects and risks, Chaudhary says. It can cause the immune system to overreact, sometimes badly enough to result in death. It can be toxic to the brain, causing symptoms such as hallucinations, seizures and comas. And the genetically engineered cells only last for a few months to a year, so patients often relapse.

The reason, Chaudhary believes, is that the new receptors added to the cells are “Frankenstein” proteins, stitched together rather simply. “Like Frankenstein’s monster, they do work, but then they sometimes get out of control, and occasionally they can even kill you,” he says. But he also points out that in the short term, CAR T-cell therapy will remain an extremely promising treatment approach for a number of patients.

For the long term, he believes the solution will be found in the more elegant receptors that his lab group has designed, which he thinks will last longer and be less toxic. Early lab studies already show that Chaudhary’s engineered T cells can fight cancer. Now, he hopes to conduct further animal studies and start clinical trials

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MURPHY LIPPINCOTT

He has also found a difference between colon cancer types that he can’t explain with genes. Surprisingly, he says, “the location of the primary tumor is very important.”

Some tumors form on the right side of the colon, he explains. People with these right-side tumors do best on bevacizumab.

Other tumors form on the left side, where the colon descends. Those patients have longer survival, Lenz found, and cetuximab helps them more.

“Even with DNA or RNA analysis, we cannot explain the significant difference between right- and left-sided colon cancers,” Lenz says. He’s now looking into other possible explanations to distinguish leftand right-side cancers. It might be related to something called methylation, he suspects.

Cells attach chemical groups called methyls to genes to turn them on or off, and perhaps patterns of methylation will help explain the left-right difference. But only further research will tell.

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in people, to test whether they work for longer periods with fewer side effects.

physicians all over the world to promote personalized medicine techniques, Agus says. “We’re learning now how to treat and target the right tumor, with the right drug, at the right dose, in the right patient.” •

TARGETING CANCER EVERY WHICH WAY DAVID AGUS Medical Oncologist Imagine you’re planning a trip from L.A. to San Francisco, Agus says. How long will it take you to get there? That depends on a lot of factors—your car’s gas mileage, the time of day you leave, the weather, roadwork and even your bladder capacity.

At the Ellison Institute, which Agus and colleagues founded in 2016, researchers take the same approach to cancer. They want to know every factor that might contribute to how it grows, and how to stop it. And this isn’t just a job for biologists and doctors.

The institute brings in physicists, mathematicians and engineers to inspire new approaches. Computers, crunching data ranging from genetic sequences to the organization of cells in a tumor, are a big part of the equation.

Agus is also excited about research that looks beyond the tumor to its immediate environment in the body. What helps it grow? What gets in its way?

As an example, Agus cites a clinical trial that studied women who had been treated for breast cancer. Breast cancer often moves into bone, so doctors gave half the women an osteoporosis medication to build up their bones. It turned out that the cancer was 40 percent less likely to return among the women who took the bone-building medicine. Something about strengthening the bone kept cancer cells from establishing themselves there.

“If you change the soil, the seed doesn’t grow,” Agus explains.

Now, he adds, that osteoporosis drug is standard treatment for any cancer that tends to move into bone.

Understanding the tumor environment is just a sliver of what’s going on at the Ellison Institute and Keck Medicine.

The doctors not only treat patients locally, but also work with

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It’s All in the Genes

David Agus Founding Director and CEO, Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC

Some personalized cancer therapies interfere with proteins found in abundance on the surface of cancer cells, which can keep the cells from growing or functioning.

Ryan D’Cunha’s symptoms began with a persistent stomachache. Indigestion, he thought. Maybe acid reflux. Doctors tested for gallstones and prescribed a fiber-heavy diet and antibiotics.

But the pain worsened, interfering with his work as a campus supervisor at an elementary school in Riverside, California. He could barely eat. Students asked, “Mr. D, are you OK?” On Christmas Day in 2016, worried family members noticed how much weight he had lost, and took him to the emergency room. A CT scan identified tumors in his colon and liver.

The tumors—at more than 3 inches across— were too big to cut out. His oncologist at the hospital suggested standard chemotherapy to shrink them. When D’Cunha sought a second opinion, she sent him to oncologist Heinz-Josef Lenz at USC. Lenz told D’Cunha that with his type of cancer —on the right side of his colon—chemotherapy probably wouldn’t work well. Instead, Lenz sent D’Cunha’s tumor tissue for molecular testing to find better therapies in the form of clinical trials.

Tests showed his cancer was caused by a mutation in the MLH1 gene. D’Cunha was devastated to learn the cause of his cancer was in his DNA and inherited, meaning his two sisters and three children might also carry the gene. But at the same time, he was thrilled to receive personalized treatment best suited for his disease.

“I was stoked,” says D’Cunha (who notes he picks up language from kids at his job). He was also pleased to participate in research that could lead to treatments or a cure for future patients.

D’Cunha received a combination of two immunotherapies, nivolumab and ipilimumab. Called immune checkpoint inhibitors, they help turn on the body’s own immune response to the cancer.

“Giving immunotherapy in newly diagnosed metastatic colon cancer is revolutionary,” says Lenz, who notes that it was the first such clinical trial in the world. Otherwise, D’Cunha would have received a combination of chemotherapies, which can cause significant side effects.

With support from family and friends, D’Cunha maintained a positive outlook throughout treatment. At age 40, he considers himself blessed to have found USC, Lenz and the trial. “Everybody there has taken really good care of me,” he says.

After seven months of treatment, Lenz offered D’Cunha good news: The tumors were small enough for surgery aimed at curing the cancer. He underwent the operation in September, and hopes the cancer will stay away. D’Cunha plans to earn a teaching certificate, and also wants to find a way to bring his positive philosophy to other cancer patients, perhaps through volunteering or starting a nonprofit.

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If you think music, dance and fine arts education have vanished from schools and neighborhoods, these Trojans have some news for you.

The Art of the Matter Arts education in public schools is dead. May it rest in peace.

Hang on, says Mark Slavkin ’83, MA ’86, director of education at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Slavkin says we’ve been mourning this loss for decades—but our grief may be misplaced.

“I think if we were writing the story in 1999 or 2000, that would be a better premise,” he says. “Since then, there’s been a resurgence and reinvestment in arts education across L.A. County.”

Slavkin should know. After graduating from USC with a master’s degree in political science and then serving in government, he sat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education for eight years. He also worked at the Getty Education Institute for the Arts and as vice president of education at The Music Center. In other words, he has 28

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PHOTO BY PETER HOWARD

BY TIM GREIVING

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PHOTO BY STEPHEN MORTON/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Artists from USC and the community perform as part of Classical KUSC and Classical KDFC Kids Discovery Days.

The events introduce children to the arts, including live music.

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watched the rise of arts education—and advocated for it—from the front row.

For a long time, funding and resources for the arts in California public schools languished, he acknowledges, especially after the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, which limited increases in property taxes. “Lots of things suffered,” Slavkin says. Schools ended up with “large class size, no counselors, no librarians, too few nurses, etc. The arts have been caught up in that inadequate funding challenge along with everything else.”

But overall, he says, “we’ve been in a pretty consistent upswing since early 2000, when Los Angeles Unified School District adopted an arts plan.”

Nationally, much attention has focused on boosting children’s math and science skills. But some say creativity and innovation are getting lost in the emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), so they advocate putting an A—for arts— into the mix: Teach STEAM, not just STEM. Today Slavkin is part of a countywide initiative working with almost 70 other school districts that have recommitted to investing in the arts and are taking steps—each in its own way—to expand arts programming.

But is it sufficient? “I think the point that there’s not enough will always be true,” he says. “There will always be a need for more, and more opportunities for kids.”

That’s where many of USC’s alumni and faculty have answered the call, bringing their distinct skill sets and personal passions to underserved communities—changing lives with art.

EARLY START Vince Womack MMED ’97 and Bobbie Rich ’02 both were surrounded by the arts since they were children. But they’ve seen that many kids don’t have that chance—neither at home nor in school.

Womack is music director at James A. Foshay Learning Center, a K-12 school in south L.A. (and part of the USC Family of Schools). His musical confidence was buoyed by a mother and

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Reaching Out to Neighbors and Schools

USC has a longstanding commitment to K-12 schools around its campuses. Here are just a few of the arts-focused programs across south L.A. and Boyle Heights supported by the university: Our Neighborhood: Youth Artists as Civic Leaders encourages artists ages 15 to 25 to create temporary works of public art after they research their neighborhood’s history and culture.

24th Street Theatre’s After ’Cool Theatre Program provides weekly standardsbased after-school arts education for neighborhood children. The students help write a play and work with professional artists on an original production.

Creative Kids Central, offered

by Classical KUSC and the Creative Kids Education Foundation, offers web-based music education activities for children ages 4 through 10, introducing them to classical music using games and interactivity.

The USC Thornton Outreach Program supplements existing in-school music programs with 70 USC Thornton students who make music, sing and teach more than 5,700 students and families in USC’s neighborhood schools.

older brothers who played, and he strives to give that confidence to his students.

“A lot of students, when they get into a music program, don’t have a parent or a brother or an uncle, someone who did anything in music,” he says. “So the whole ‘I believe I can’ isn’t there. They may have a lot of ‘I’d like to,’ but I think it’s the selfbelief that really drives one through the difficult times.”

His approach includes being honest with students that their relationship with an instrument can be moody: It feels good today, but tomorrow it can feel like pulling teeth. “I try and surround them with different kinds of music experiences— because it’s easy to be a pop music aficionado, but that doesn’t necessarily feed into you nurturing that individual thing that you are,” he says.

Lack of funding can kill an arts program, Womack says, which is why he seeks sponsors and partnerships, including the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, the Harmony Project, Exploring the Arts and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Based in Santa Monica, Bobbie Rich uses the painting mastery she developed at the USC Roski School of Art and Design to stoke the creativity of kids across Los Angeles, from low-income housing developments and Boys & Girls Clubs to high-end bedroom communities.

“I work to create opportunities to connect my students to each other and to different nonprofit events, so that they have the benefit of escaping their bubble while doing good works, like painting murals or putting together care packages for lessfortunate people,” Rich says.

Rich minored in communication and graphic arts at USC and landed a job in the field through a school internship.

That experience taught her that she couldn’t work in an office, she laughs. So she set out as a freelance artist. “I was able to utilize tools that I learned at Roski in graphic design, and also in advertising and business, to advertise myself. I’m a oneperson shop.”

As a child who moved around the country every few years, Rich says she always had access to arts education in public schools. But she knows that’s not the case for a lot of kids today.

“Most of the kids have very limited art,” she says. “Even in high-end private schools, many only have art once a week.

For other kids, sometimes once a month or every two months, parents will come in and teach an art project.” Parents often reach out to her for help. Even if finances are tight, arts remain a priority for many parents and their children, she says.

DANCE’S LIFE LESSONS As professors at the USC Kaufman School of Dance, Moncell Durden and Tiffany Bong are raising the bar for university-level dance education. But they’re also sparking a passion for dance in children at a young age.

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“They had an African dance class, and they brought me in as a hip-hop instructor,” he says. “That got me interested in using dance to connect particularly with African-American kids, getting them to understand the richness of their cultural heritage, but also understanding life practice through the lens of dance.”

Durden’s love for music began as an infant, when his dad installed speakers over his crib and piped in jazz and classical music, and he’s poured himself into studying dance through the prisms of neuropsychology, anthropology, linguistics and ethnomusicology.

“For me, teaching dance has never really been about dance,” he says. “If I’m teaching movement, forms and such to a community that creates those, it is getting them to investigate deeper into where they come from, why they come from. My focus is knowing your why from your what.”

In 2010, Durden founded Intangible Roots, a dance group “created to look at the intangible identities of movement, the things that you can’t quite put your finger on,” he says. He’s working on a documentary, Everything Remains Raw, and a certification program for a new teaching method he calls BEATS (short for body, emotion, attitude, time and space) designed to help people learn how to teach social dances.

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USC Kaufman instructor Moncell Durden has taught and choreographed for community and youth art programs.

back when she was 10 and living in San Francisco.

“I went to a more traditional Irish Catholic private school, and there wasn’t really much arts at all,” she says.

“When I was in the sixth grade, there was a performance that came to our school, and it was like a timeline of dance. The last 10 minutes was the first time I ever heard hip-hop music and saw hip-hop dance, and that moment literally changed my life. I was sitting in the second-to-last row, no idea what was going on up until the moment [when] I saw the entire school just come to life through the music and the dance. And it just activated me.”

When she got to high school, there was no hip-hop program—so this shy, introverted 16-year-old built her own.

After majoring in dance and psychology at Santa Clara University, she joined the nonprofit organization Culture Shock Los Angeles and developed its education and outreach programs. usc trojan family

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BUILDING A PIPELINE At the USC Thornton School of Music, Peter Webster is envisioning the future of music education. USC Thornton Dean Robert Cutietta invited the veteran teacher and administrator from Northwestern University to be a scholar-in-residence, teaching part time and applying his life’s research to redesigning the school’s music education program.

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ABOVE: Bobbie Rich brings art programs to organizations across Los Angeles.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Classical KUSC and Classical KDFC have staged arts events for kids at museums in Los Angeles and San Jose.

KUSC also recently put on its first Playground PopUp concert, featuring LA Opera artists, at an L.A. school.

Traditionally, conservatory-level music schools attract students who aspire to be the first-chair trumpet player for the LA Philharmonic rather than those who would make excellent music teachers, Webster says. The term “music educator,” too, often comes with the connotation of someone only interested in teaching K–12 in public schools. He wants to change all of that, and it started with a name change: USC’s graduate music education program is now called “Music Teaching & Learning.”

“We’ll be graduating people who will have an extraordinary impact in California,” he says. “They will be going out equipped to not only maintain the long tradition of Western art music, with bands or Western choirs, but they also will be schooled in popular music, jazz, folk and music of world cultures, and equipped with composition and improvisation skills, as well as the ability to involve kids in music technology labs, songwriting and stuff like that. This is a different kind of music educator that we imagine.”

A new master’s degree, Community Music, aims to prepare graduates to teach in settings such as outreach programs and neighborhood centers instead of elementary, middle and high schools. “They will be entering the community and working with adults and senior citizens and young children to carry the message of music forward,” Webster says.

“These new degrees are so important for helping to improve what we hope to be the cultural climate of music in the

PHOTO COURTESY OF BOBBIE RICH

“I started to realize that I had a deep love for teaching and education,” she says, “and that’s when I built my own company, UniverSOUL Hip-Hop. We actually gear most of our programs to sixth-grade level. It’s a great age for students to really explore identity, culture, heritage—and a sense of body awareness and respect for themselves and each other, and all the social elements that you really see come to life in hip-hop.

“I’m pretty much that dancer that I saw when I was in the sixth grade.”

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schools, by basically changing the paradigm,” he adds. “I also think that the climate for economics is changing for the better.

Schools are finding ways of opening up the coffers a little bit to support music programs. We hope we can add to that and be part of that conversation as the world changes.”

Which brings us back to Mark Slavkin, the bringer of good news about the future of arts education. For his part, Slavkin and the Wallis have developed several ways of supplementing arts opportunities for schoolchildren, including hosting matinee performances of their regular programming.

“A lot of the kids are from much more underserved areas,” he says, but “even schools with the greatest arts program in the world can’t provide that same experience, of seeing professional artists in a professional setting.”

The Wallis’ other main effort is working one on one with K-12 schools throughout L.A., consulting with teachers and administrators and developing arts programs tailored to each school’s needs. “We want to be that spark or catalyst that helps them move forward,” he says.

That’s a hope shared by other Trojans across Los Angeles and around the world.

“All I needed to do was experience [dance] one time,” Bong says, “and it really ignited the leader in me. I learned all of my life skills and leadership skills through dance.” •

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Young at Art

Arts education changes young lives: It fosters talent and careers, creates an outlet for selfexpression and opens doors to new cultures and ideas. But there’s also a growing body of research that suggests that art boosts young brains.

A recent study conducted by USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute revealed that instrument instruction appears to accelerate brain development. Neuroscientists compared schoolchildren learning to play musical instruments with peers who weren’t. They found that the young musicians had more-developed auditory pathways, which connect the ear to the brain.

The more-developed pathways could potentially jumpstart a child’s abilities in areas beyond music, such as language and reading.

A 2015 Korean study proposed that music and dance instruction may reduce the risk of depression and increase self-esteem in children. A 2013 study by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, based in France, suggested that music education strengthens IQ , academic performance, word decoding and phonological skills; that theater education strengthens verbal skills; and that students who study visual arts are stronger in geometrical reasoning.

These studies aren’t unequivocal, though.

“What is more clear is the benefit that the arts have on psychological capacities for imagining other perspectives and continually reinventing oneself,” says Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, an associate professor of education, psychology and neuroscience at USC who focuses on the role arts exposure plays in the development of wellbeing, self-expression, purpose and relationships. “We know something about the development of the underlying neurological mechanisms that support those capacities, so we can infer things that we think are probably happening with brain development.”

So what can be inferred?

“Engagement with the arts gives you ways to think about problems as multifaceted,” she says, “and as being open-ended with no single correct answer.”

Immordino-Yang studies emotional development, especially in adolescents, and she has a research project funded by the National Endowment for the Arts that looks at intergenerational storytelling and its effects on cognitive development, emotional wellbeing and creative thinking.

We know arts education helps kids and adults express themselves, she says, “where you actually represent what matters to you, and what your experiences are, and what you feel like, and what you believe. That’s really critical for healthy human development for learning and for brain development. It is the person underneath the scores that we care about.”

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in depth USC Trustee Mark Stevens has invested to create a better world, and he and his wife, Mary, have donated more than $100 million to grow USC for the next generations.

The Self-Made Man

BY ALICIA DI RADO

PHOTO BY CODY PICKENS

C. L. Max Nikias was this close to taking an early flight home to Los Angeles. For a week, Nikias— an electrical engineering professor at USC—had marched diligently through the offices of Silicon Valley computer firms from Mountain View to San Jose. It was May 5, 1995, and the digital media and internet revolution had begun. While Cinco de Mayo revelers were tilting back happy-hour margaritas in Palo Alto bars on a late Friday afternoon, Nikias was still working on the last leg of his week-long trip.

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in depth He was trying to recruit tech company leaders to write letters supporting USC’s underdog effort to win federal funds for an integrated media systems innovation center on campus.

The exhausted professor couldn’t bear to trudge to one more boardroom. He had never met the last man on his schedule: Mark Stevens ’81, MS ’84, a 35-year-old venture capitalist and USC engineering alumnus. Let’s skip the meeting, Nikias told a staff member.

“I know this is not a corporation, this is not the CEO of a company,” Nikias remembers the staff member replying. “We’re probably not going to get a letter from Mark Stevens, because he’s a VC, but he’s got a whole network of contacts. He knows so many other CEOs and companies.”

So instead of heading to the airport, Nikias walked into a modest conference room in Sequoia Capital’s Menlo Park office. What he found was a welcoming man wearing jeans, a polo shirt, sneakers and an unpretentious smile.

As it turns out, Stevens was happy to help. He signed up more than a dozen tech firms to back USC. But the meeting would come to have a far greater impact on USC than snatching a National Science Foundation grant away from rivals UC Berkeley and Columbia University. It would mean more than Nikias could ever have imagined.

Mark Stevens, right, and C. L. Max Nikias celebrating the opening of USC Village

served as a USC leader for nearly 17 years, joining the USC Board of Trustees in 2001. He was the university’s youngest trustee for much of his tenure.

Nikias and Stevens have worked on projects and sat together at USC football games, through frustrating losses (“before the Pete Carroll era,” Nikias says) and dominant wins enjoyed in the rain.

Their mutual respect may stem from their shared desire to seize opportunities and build results. They’re also both electrical engineers. “We both come from humble beginnings,” Nikias says, “so that keeps us grounded.”

That brings us to how Stevens first arrived at USC. When he was considering colleges, USC was the obvious choice: It had a strong engineering school and he could attend without saddling his parents with debt, thanks to scholarships and grants he had cobbled together. USC also was nearby and familiar.

He grew up about 10 miles away from campus on the edge of Culver City, a then-untrendy Westside enclave heavy with middleclass defense and entertainment industry employees. His first job was at a Jack in the Box. In many ways, his parents were typical of Culver City in the 1960s and 70s. Neither had attended college, but they earned enough. They supported their children’s education at good local public schools, and it was a happy home. Stevens’ father learned electronics through the U.S. Navy and became an electronics test engineer at Hughes Aircraft, while his mom, a child of Italian immigrants, was a secretary. The elder Stevens repaired broken televisions as a side gig; he met his future wife when he visited her parents’ home on a house call.

The couple couldn’t lavish expensive gifts or globe-trotting trips on young Mark and his sister, but they provided love, solid values and time together. He emphasizes this, in part, because he and his sister, Lisa, a 1983 USC Marshall School of Business graduate, were adopted. He says it in a matter-of-fact way, and moves on.

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PHOTO BY KAREN BALLARD

BECOMING A TROJAN Today Stevens and Nikias laugh about the memory.

“I think we were scheduled for an hour-long meeting, and we spent two hours together,” Stevens says of that day.

After he graduated from USC in 1981, he had stayed in touch with his fraternity brothers and, like many USC football fans, donated to Cardinal & Gold. But that 1995 appointment was his reintroduction to the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and to the university.

Since then, Nikias has become USC president, and Stevens has parlayed his analytical prowess, engineering knowledge and business acumen into a net worth said to be in the billions. He was a managing partner of Sequoia Capital until 2012, and is now managing partner at his family office, S-Cubed Capital. Stevens also has winter 2017

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PHOTOS BY STEVE COHN

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) C. L. Max Nikias and the USC community honored Mark and Mary Stevens in 2015 for their $50 million gift, which endowed and named the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. Directed by neuroscientist Arthur Toga, standing at the far right in the photo at bottom right, the groundbreaking institute officially opened the doors to its new home on the Health Sciences Campus in November 2016.

Sean Stevens, a USC student and one of the Stevenses’ sons, is pictured at far left in the image. Mark and Mary Stevens received honorary degrees at USC’s 2016 commencement in recognition of their many contributions to the university.

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It’s telling that he embraces his adoption with practicality. The only reason he would investigate his birth parents’ identities, he says, is to get health information to share with his doctor. It’s a reflection of the logical, systematic orientation of an engineer.

Not that he’s driven by cold facts and numbers, though.

“I’m analytical, but I don’t let analytics drive everything,” he says. Take his interest in sports, for example. As a basketball fan and now a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors, he’s intrigued by sports analytics, but he refuses to let statistics overshadow his enjoyment of the game itself.

The game is where the thrill is.

And this begins to get at the root of his success.

HIGH-TECH’S GROUND FLOOR Academic success started early for Stevens.

In the middle of first grade, he was so bored that his parents had the school move him to second. He read book after book and was fascinated by maps. At Culver City High School, he took so many Advanced Placement courses and junior college classes that he earned enough credits to add economics as a second USC undergrad major, besides electrical engineering.

From the beginning, he wanted not to be just a technical wizard or a coder, but instead, to have a 360-degree view of the world. “That’s where non-engineering subjects are super important,” he says. “What USC has done with encouraging students to do a minor or a second major in a different field is wonderful.”

Skipping a grade meant that he was shorter and skinnier than his peers in high school, and that he started USC only six months after his 17th birthday. College was the time to catch up, in both size and maturity. Good friend Kurt English, a fellow electrical engineering major, had rushed Phi Kappa Psi freshman year and urged him to try it. For someone eager to grow beyond the “intense” world of engineering, the fraternity opened doors.

Even at Phi Psi, Stevens balanced school and social life with precision. Saturdays were dedicated to football and the “kind of crazy” guys in his house, while Sundays transformed him into a silent monk, hammering out engineering problem sets. Rest breaks grew even more precious

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“The great thing about being a venture capitalist is you get to see the future. You get to see around corners, because you’re backing entrepreneurs who are seeing the future.”

when he started working at Hughes Aircraft 20 hours a week in exchange for tuition, but that work experience also served up the first of his many risk-reward choices after graduation.

“I don’t want to be an aerospace engineer at a big aerospace company for the rest of my life, like Dad.” That’s what Stevens remembers thinking when he decided to trade the stability of Hughes for a technical sales position at an upstart company called Intel. Look beyond safe solutions and the simple lure of a paycheck, he tells young people today. Take calculated risks.

He took a pay cut to go to Intel, but it would be worth it.

As the personal computer industry grew quickly, so did Intel, along with Stevens’ standing at the microprocessor company. But the great market potential lay in software, he sensed. Needing to boost his knowledge and adapt, he turned again to USC’s engineering school. Night classes offered remotely through the school’s Distance Education Network netted him a master’s in computer engineering.

Within a few years, he returned to school again—this time at Harvard—and earned his MBA in 1989. That set up another major decision.

MBAs tended to work as consultants or investment bankers, Stevens says, but neither was the right fit for him. Then there was Intel, and going back there would be just that: going backward.

So he scanned the landscape, homed in on part of the tech world with the biggest growth potential and started writing letters to the people who were investing in it.

Did any Silicon Valley venture capital firms need the expertise of an MBA who spoke the language of semiconductors and microprocessors?

Enter Sequoia Capital.

THE TROJAN GOES NORTH Sequoia, a Menlo Park-based firm that invested in early-stage tech companies, paid less than Intel. Gone were the sales commissions and company car.

It was another gamble.

“At that point in time, the venture industry was sort of small by today’s comparisons, or even by the dot-com boom’s comparisons,” Stevens says. The stock market had just crashed, recession was on the way and plucky venture capitalists were pooling resources to invest. But as he notes, “the best investors, not just in the venture world, but across all different asset classes, are counterintuitive thinkers, and they look for opportunities when others don’t see them or don’t want to.”

As Stevens was learning the business, Sequoia had backed two “little” companies that went public: Cisco and Electronic Arts.

They were harbingers of what was to come. Soon Stevens was sitting with the founders of Yahoo! in their Stanford bungalow as they shared their plan to make a table of contents for the internet.

They had no idea how they’d make money, but Sequoia bet on them anyway. Companies like Google would follow.

He was involved in the birth of semiconductor giant Microchip Technology, which grew out of a buyout of a division of General Instrument. Stevens nurtured the spinoff, recommending new leadership and dealing with legacy business. (“The previous CEO was a 6-foot-5 Texan who kept a loaded gun in his desk in his office,” he says.) winter 2017

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in depth Another point of personal pride is prominent chip-maker NVIDIA, where he still sits on the board. He has served as a director at many startups that became big acquisitions.

That’s not to say failure eludes him. His first investment at Sequoia tanked, losing millions. It’s investors’ money, so it’s nothing to laugh about, he says, “but if you run into a venture capitalist who says, ‘I’ve never lost money,’ then one of two things is happening.

One, they’re lying, or two, they’re not taking enough risk in their portfolio.”

Yes, take risks, but don’t take foolish risks. That’s where Stevens’ brand of analytics with a holistic perspective comes in.

To invest, he looks for startups born at the right time: They’re meeting a need for a big enough market, right when that market is poised for growth.

He refers to this ability to understand emerging trends, recognize a market and predict the market’s timing as “seeing around the corner.”

“The great thing about being a venture capitalist is you get to see the future,” he says. “You get to see around corners because you’re backing entrepreneurs who are seeing the future. Entrepreneurs, by their nature, are iconoclastic. They’re different. They’re weird.

They see things that 99 percent of the population doesn’t see.”

To decide whether to invest in a venture or field, Stevens reads books. Magazines. Articles online. He survives on six hours of sleep a night partly because he consumes information so voraciously. All of those data points whirl together to create informed intuition—the ultimately human hunches that have led to exhilarating business gambles worth millions of dollars.

The wins.

INVESTING IN USC More than 300 miles south of Menlo Park, in a glass-walled research center on the USC Health Sciences Campus, eminent USC neuroscientist Art Toga mulls over how he’d describe Stevens.

Champions of Philanthropy THE GIVING PLEDGE

This movement started in 2010 when 40 of America’s highestnet-worth people and couples came together in a promise that they would give away more than half of their wealth. Today it includes more than 170 signatories in 21 countries.

Mark Stevens, seen here with Athletic Director Lynn Swann, remains a diehard USC football fan.

Mark Stevens ’81, MS ’84 and his wife, Mary, are committed to the Giving Pledge, a promise among the world’s wealthiest people to commit more than half of their fortune to charitable causes that leave the world a better place.

“There are three things you can do with your wealth when you’ve been blessed to build fantastic wealth over your life,” Mark Stevens says. “You can give it to the governments through excessive taxes. That’s not a very efficient conduit for your wealth. You can give it to your kids. That’s not a good option, because that causes all kinds of unintended consequences. Then, you can give it to charity.”

The drive to give back started before the couple even met. Growing up in middleclass households, both sets of parents provided an example by regularly giving to charity despite modest means.

Today, still early in their philanthropy, the Stevenses have donated millions of dollars for scholarships and student activities to Mary Stevens’ alma mater, Santa Clara University, where she serves as a trustee.

They also have contributed to several school foundations and supported cancer research at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and neuroscience at Stanford. Environmental sciences and sustainability are also interests.

At USC, their generosity has endowed several programs and centers critical to the university mission. These are among them: The USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which applies innovative imaging and information technology for the study of the brain—shedding light on diseases from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s The USC Stevens Center for Innovation, a resource that translates the discoveries of USC researchers into products for public benefit through licensing, collaboration and the promotion of innovation

PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

The Stevens Academic Center at the John McKay Center, where studentathletes can study, talk to academic advisers and attend programs The USC Caruso Catholic Center, a community for about 10,000 Catholic USC students, alumni and friends

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY ELLAPHANIT IN THE ROM

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in depth “He’s analytical, but in his own experiential way,” Toga says.

“In areas that are not quantifiable, he compares elements from prior experiences to take a leap. There’s an art to that.”

Toga has gotten to know Stevens in the last two years: In 2015, Stevens and his wife, Mary, donated $50 million to name the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which Toga directs.

The institute works to demystify the brain, one of the last, most puzzling frontiers of medicine. Both men share a personal interest in brain disease; Stevens’ father and Toga’s mother, aunt and grandmother are among the millions hit by Alzheimer’s.

With high-profile research findings and brain imaging technology found in few other places, the institute stands out internationally. Toga praises Stevens’ approach to his gift as an investment in the institute’s leadership—just as he would a promising business. The investor stays involved, checking on progress and inquiring about scientific approaches, but never too much.

“He has made the program possible,” Toga says. “If I want to build the program and take it even further, I need to be able to attract the best talent in the world. I have to be able to put a package on the table to entice sought-after researchers. He has enabled that.”

Starting with his first gift of $100 in 1993 and that first meeting with Nikias in Silicon Valley, Stevens has grown ever closer to USC over a quarter of a century. He has volunteered countless hours to boards across USC, including the USC Health System Board, and has spoken at student events and taught classes. He co-chaired USC Viterbi’s fundraising initiative in the early 2000s when Nikias was the school’s dean, and he continues to provide financial support, giving more than $100 million to the university at last count.

Mark and Mary Stevens’ giving stretches across the University Park and Health Sciences campuses, touching many areas of the university. They believe in nurturing students’ spiritual life, so they gave generously to help create the USC Caruso Catholic Center. And as a big USC Trojans supporter, Stevens believes great athletes can also be great students. He donated $10 million to establish the Stevens Academic Center, which supports studentathletes’ success in school.

Among Stevens’ beneficiaries is the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, USC’s technology transfer office, which he founded with a $22 million gift in 2004. Jennifer Dyer, the center’s executive director, notes that Stevens’ guidance on tech transfer has helped make the Stevens Center more business savvy, helping to significantly grow the number of licenses of USC-owned technology and almost doubling the university’s intellectual property income.

She also praises Stevens for his warmth and for always having time to mentor others and share expertise. Last year, he spoke to young USC entrepreneurs at the center’s Student Innovator Showcase, she says, sharing technology trends and encouraging them to “be curious, be passionate, be thoughtful and be fair. Most importantly, have fun along the way.”

Stevens’ openness and accessibility inspires students and faculty who want to pursue their own startups, says Yannis Yortsos, dean of USC Viterbi, who notes that Stevens has helped the school develop new activities surrounding innovation and tfm.usc.edu

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E X P E RT G U I DA N C E

Mark Stevens’ savvy advice has helped USC grow the licensing of its technology through the USC Stevens Center for Innovation.

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entrepreneurship. He also has contributed toward a USC Viterbi venture fund designed to invest money in USC-related startups and then reinvest returns into the university.

The time is right for this sort of investment in USC-related tech activity, Yortsos says, especially in computer science.

“If you put together our efforts in the computer science department, the Information Sciences Institute and the Institute for Creative Technologies, we have the largest federal expenditures in computer science in the country.”

That sort of leadership sits well with Stevens, who thrives on identifying champions. He relishes seeing USC excel.

In recent years, Bay Area friends who are alumni of UC Berkeley and Stanford University increasingly have approached him to write letters of recommendation for their children who are applying to USC, he says. Of the Stevenses’ three children, one is a sophomore at Stanford and his twin brother attends USC, but Stevens gets “special glee” writing those USC letters. He also seems to enjoy seeing USC rise in academic reputation and watching its alumni move into top tech firms or create startups.

That zeal for backing a winner also plays out in sports, of course. Dyer remembers calling Stevens when the Warriors won their first of two NBA championships after he became a minority owner of the team.

“They were going to have a victory parade that day, and he was so excited. We should all hang on to that kind of excitement.”

To Nikias, that enthusiasm applies both to Stevens’ favorite teams on the field and the companies he funds. “Mark is very competitive, and he wants to win.”

Ultimately, winning comes down to Stevens’ enjoying the talents he was given and skills he earned: his uncommon ability to study, analyze, predict the future and place what’s usually the right bet.

“I continue to invest in young companies today not because I need the money,” Stevens says. “I do it because it’s exciting and fulfilling.” •

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OBJECTS PHOTO BY MEIKO TAKECHI ARQUILLOS

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BY K AT H A R I N E G A M M O N I L LUS T R AT I O N S BY C H R I S G A S H

USC researchers hone artificial intelligence to thwart international criminals and instantly translate thousands of languages, and they’re just getting started.

Brain Builders Artificial intelligence isn’t the future. It’s already here.

AI is in our pockets, through smartphones that can understand voice commands and the flick of a finger. You can find it in computers that can match your resume to a job posting or your dating profile to your soul mate. And it’s in chatbots that navigate social media feeds and driving apps that guide you on your commute home.

“We are at a place today where it’s much easier to answer the question: Where isn’t it going?” says Premkumar Natarajan, director of the USC Information Sciences Institute.

It has even attained the role of personal stylist, Natarajan says. “Who would have thought, a few years ago, that you would stand in front of a TV with a tiny camera that captures you in high-res, and ask it, ‘Which clothes should I wear?’”

AI has been around for a long time, but it was found mostly in simple technology like a car’s anti-lock braking system or a coffee maker set to a timer. Now, artificial intelligence takes on more complex tasks like rating fashion or brewing coffee when it senses daylight, Natarajan says.

While many people attribute AI’s growth to technical advances, Natarajan credits the momentum to information availability. “When you have lots and lots of data, you can design algorithms to learn from massive amounts of data,” he says. “The thing that has enabled us to design things is the explosion in the field of deep learning: a class of algorithms that exhibit essentially unlimited catfm.usc.edu

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pacity to learn from more and more data.”

Those two complementary phenomena— data and algorithms that learn—are driving a future in which AI is part of everyday life. “If the world is a sponge, AI is water,” Natarajan says.

“It’s dripping slowly and occupying every vacant space of that sponge.”

While AI is here today, in the present, it may also forecast what’s to come. Natarajan studies predictive analytics—in other words, he uses technology to look into the future. “I know, it sounds like computational astrology,” he laughs.

But deep data tools that can analyze social media feeds could potentially predict whether governments will fall. Measuring hospital parking lot flow could assess whether a flu epidemic will peak in your zip code.

At USC, researchers like Natarajan are working on dozens of projects in areas where artificial intelligence has been under study for decades—like language—and where the tools are just starting to make forays—such as efforts to combat human trafficking or diagnose autism.

TALKING TECH Anyone who has used the Google Translate app, which can instantly decode words from more than 100 languages, is a beneficiary of the work of USC’s Kevin Knight.

Knight, a professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has worked in automatic language translation and

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is when a machine or device behaves in a way that’s smart—perhaps even like a human being. AI might conjure visions of the sentient robots in Westworld, but it’s usually found in objects like smartphones or cars.

A refinement of AI is machine learning.

That’s when machines learn for themselves, changing and developing as they come to understand a task.

Other elements of AI include natural language understanding and speech recognition, to name a few.

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Can We Trust AI?

Premkumar Natarajan Director, USC Information Sciences Institute

Kevin Knight Professor of Computer Science

From Westworld to Terminator, the fictional world is full of murky ethics surrounding artificial intelligence. But USC researchers who create artificial intelligence systems don’t worry that these systems will start to attack humans—at least not anytime soon.

“At the moment, I don’t think AI poses more of a threat than any other computing technology, but in the long run it can,” says Paul Rosenbloom, director for cognitive architecture research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. “At some point, we have to view AI systems as if they are beings—maybe like animals, or perhaps like people—and from there, we have to figure out the rights and responsibilities that need to be assigned to them.”

Our society makes different rules for children and adults—for example, young people can’t vote before they are 18 and can’t get a driver’s license before 16, Rosenbloom points out. In the same way, future societies may apply differing rules for AI systems.

Rosenbloom also wonders what would motivate an AI system to do good in the world. “Some motivations that people have, like honor and responsibility, we need to carry over. But others, like having a family, don’t necessarily carry over,” he says. By understanding and imbuing AI with the right set of motivations, scientists could perhaps bake morality into AI. Shri Narayanan, USC professor of electrical engineering, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology and pediatrics, says that since machines were created, people have always wrestled with a central question: How much do we trust them?

Despite the concerns, Narayanan focuses on the good that AI could do for people around the globe. “I hope that collectively as a society we are mindful about how we build and use things,” he says.

“This is true of all instruments: fire, mechanical tools, everything.

This is a debate that we have had for a long time and will continue to have.”

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poetry, and they hope one day to create stories and even movie scripts as algorithms grow more sophisticated in analyzing style and prose. In a 2016 contest for computer-generated poetry, Knight’s group’s entry won first prize. (Visit bit.ly/ComputerSonnet to take a look at the poem.)

In the future, Knight says you may be able to order a movie or story that’s completely customized to you. But beyond creating independent works, artificially intelligent machines could assist humans in their own creative pursuits, like helping an author overcome writer’s block by offering suggestions of new directions to pursue.

The technology is progressing quickly, but engineers still haven’t entirely figured out how to get machines to write creatively to a human standard. “Four years ago, we were still struggling to get the subject to agree with the verb,” Knight says. “Now machines can read human works and produce similar sorts of documents.

The challenge is to get it to where you’ve got a beginning, a middle and an end to a story. These things have a topic, but they tend to wander.”

Translation and poetry may also usher in a new era of how humans interact with computers. Work on so-called virtual humans would mean that no one has to learn an operating system ever again, says William Swartout, a USC Viterbi research professor of computer science and chief technology officer at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies.

The institute is creating virtual humans that are more dynamic than just a voice like iPhone’s Siri or Echo’s Alexa, Swartout says.

They’re visible, embodied characters, like avatars. “Because they have bodies, they can not only use their voices like natural speech, but also use body language, which opens up all kinds of capabilities,” he says. In particular, virtual humans can pick up on body language like eye contact and gestures, which researchers know are important to build rapport. Studies have shown that people can feel more comfortable talking about sensitive topics with a virtual human than a real person, Swartout adds.

Virtual humans have applications in training, teaching and therapy, but they also represent a new way of communicating with machines. “Everyone is familiar with the desktop metaphor that has been around for 30 years now, and it has been successful,” Swartout says of computer operating systems. “But I actually think virtual humans are a new metaphor for interaction. Instead of interacting with a screen, you’re interacting with a character who can give advice and be empathetic.”

That means that in the future, dealing with a computer could be as simple as talking to it as if it were a person. The computer, as a virtual human, could bring social factors to the interaction. A computerized tutor, for example, could convey not only knowledge, but also a passion for its topic.

FIGHTING CRIME Artificial intelligence is also moving into law enforcement. One project at USC works to combat human trafficking by pulling vast quantities of information from internet forums, chats and online databases.

Software called Domain-specific Insight Graphs trawls the open web and dark web to give law enforcement officers valuable clues left behind by criminals. It helps them search for children and teens who might be trapped in the escort industry. Unearthing information like a phone number, location, alias and photos can

PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATIONS BY MURPHY LIPPENCOTT

machine translation since the early 1990s.

He’s fascinated by tools that can seamlessly bridge the divide between languages.

While most of the work has focused on translation of languages to English, Knight is interested in expanding across more languages. “There are 4,000 languages on Earth, and for many of them, translation just doesn’t exist,” he says.

This language barrier especially matters in times of disaster. Agencies and nonprofits must prioritize humanitarian assistance based on need. “If we can’t understand the tweets and the blogs, it makes it hard to organize,” Knight says.

But there’s another reason to tackle machine translation: opening up the world to everyone. “You should be able to go anywhere in the world and, wearing augmented reality glasses, you should be able to read signs in your own language,” Knight says. “I should be able to speak to anyone on the phone, anywhere in the world.”

Artificial intelligence is also reaching over into a creative side of communication called natural language generation: computers’ ability to talk or write in a conversational, human way. Knight’s research group designed algorithms that can generate original

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WALKWAYS PHOTOS COURTESY OF HARLEY ELLIS DEVEREAUX (HED)

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be the break that law enforcement needs to locate human trafficking victims.

Craig Knoblock, a USC Viterbi research professor of computer science, says the technology is powerful because it can sift through about 200 million pages of data, and the amount of data is constantly increasing. “Before this, law enforcement agencies would typically have to go and do Google searches,” he says.

“Those searches lacked a history, so you can’t see what was there last week or last year.”

The software is part of a system developed at USC and funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. More than 400 law enforcement groups have signed up to get access to the software, and the researchers have received reports that it has significantly improved agents’ ability to find and prosecute traffickers.

or how to stop poachers, or how to most effectively use our limited resources to prevent terrorist attacks,” Tambe says. Using artificial intelligence to address these challenges, he adds, “is a win-win-win: great for solving the problem, for research and for students.” •

HEALTHIER HORIZONS When it comes to diagnosing medical problems or understanding conditions, artificial intelligence offers a new way to see beneath the surface. Work by engineer-scientist Shri Narayanan, USC professor of electrical engineering, computer science, linguistics, psychology and pediatrics, is especially illuminating.

Narayanan, who holds the Niki and C. L. Max Nikias Chair in Engineering, uses machine learning and data science to help health professionals diagnose developmental disorders, as well as to guide the treatment of mental health issues. One project collects data on children’s smiles and laughter with the goal of creating tools to identify early signs of autism. Laughter is just one of the many non-verbal ways that humans use vocally to socialize (a category that includes sighs, pauses and affirmations like “mm-hmm.”

People with autism often miss the timing and context of these nuanced non-verbal cues. By analyzing when and why people laugh and smile, Narayanan aims to develop markers for identifying impaired communication.

With more sophisticated mathematical models for emotions, scientists could also develop computers capable of natural, humanlike conversations and interactions. Talking robots that fool you into thinking they’re human are still a long way off, but Narayanan already sees huge leaps in the ability to measure and find patterns in data.

AI can also detect unconscious biases. In a recent project, Narayanan’s group used special language-dissecting tools to study characters in nearly 1,000 film scripts. They confirmed many assumptions about gender differences in the film industry: Female characters are younger, tend to speak less, and use less language about achievement than male characters.

“Using artificial intelligence, we can see the patterns that are unfolding unconsciously, and we can pick up on things you wouldn’t necessarily notice just watching the movie,” Narayanan says.

Artificial intelligence is also opening up avenues to address persistent social problems. That’s the domain of Milind Tambe, co-director of the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society, where predictive analytics is tackling some big challenges.

One project in Africa calculates where big-game poachers will strike, and also suggests places where rangers should conduct strategic, randomized patrols to thwart illegal hunting. It may seem unrelated on the surface, but the same sort of thinking can help people better understand how HIV spreads in a community.

“These are challenges where currently humans are in charge, whether it’s how to spread info about HIV among homeless youth,

ENTERTAINMENT Move over, Netflix. In the future, you could sit on the couch and order up a custom movie featuring virtual actors of your choice. Meanwhile, film studios may have a future without flops: Sophisticated predictive programs will analyze a film script’s storyline and forecast its box office potential.

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Five Ways AI Will Change the World by 2050

William Swartout Research Professor of Computer Science

Craig Knoblock Professor of Computer Science

Shri Narayanan Professor of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Neuroscience and Pediatrics

Milind Tambe Professor of Computer Science

MEDICINE Why have medicine that’s good for the average person, when it could be tailored to your exact genome? AI algorithms will enable doctors and hospitals to better analyze data and customize their health care to the genes, environment and lifestyle of each patient. From diagnosing brain tumors to deciding which cancer treatment will work best for an individual, AI will drive the personalized medicine revolution.

CYBERSECURITY There were about 707 million cybersecurity breaches in 2015, and 554 million in the first half of 2016 alone. Companies are struggling to stay one step ahead of hackers. Experts say the self-learning and automation capabilities enabled by AI can protect data more systematically and affordably, keeping people safer from terrorism or even smaller-scale identity theft. AI-based tools look for patterns associated with malicious computer viruses and programs before they can steal massive amounts of information or cause havoc.

VITAL TASKS AI assistants will help older people stay independent and live in their own homes longer. AI tools will keep nutritious food available, safely reach objects on high shelves and monitor movement in a senior’s home. The tools could mow lawns, keep windows washed and even help with bathing and hygiene.

Many other jobs that are repetitive and physical are perfect for AI-based tools. But the AI-assisted work may be even more critical in dangerous fields like mining, firefighting, clearing mines and handling radioactive materials.

TRANSPORTATION The place where AI may have the biggest impact in the near future is self-driving cars. Unlike humans, AI drivers never look down at the radio, put on mascara or argue with their kids in the backseat.

Thanks to Google, autonomous cars are already here, but watch for them to be ubiquitous by 2030.

Driverless trains already rule the rails in European cities, and Boeing is building an autonomous jetliner (pilots are still required to put info into the system).

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USC Alumni Day of SCervice Daylong and Worldwide

Saturday, March 10, 2018 Each year, thousands of Trojans across the globe gather to make a difference in their communities. The USC Alumni Day of SCervice is an opportunity for all alumni and friends to participate in local service projects organized by USC alumni clubs, chapters and other affiliated groups worldwide.

Where will you serve?

Sign up for a project at alumni.usc.edu/scervice

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

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FA M I LY FULL SERVICE VISIONARY The Los Angeles Conservancy calls it “the best gas station in Southern California.” The Union 76 station at Crescent Drive and Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, a masterwork of mid-century modern design, was conceived by Gin D. Wong ’50. The visionary architect and Trojan, who helped shape the landscape of postwar L.A., died in September. Read about his life and work on p. 59.

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family news

Downtown

by Design A USC Dornsife alumna helps map the future of downtown L.A.

In the early 2000s, downtown Los Angeles’ revitalization—and future—was still in question. L.A. Live, Staples Center and the Expo Line hadn’t arrived yet and the historic core, after a decades-long decline, showed just a few hints of stirring. When Jessica Lall ’06 attended USC in the early 2000s, she remembers a completely different downtown from today—but one that showed great opportunities for growth.

The huge interest in downtown has exploded in the last decade, with the residential population more than doubling and the 5.8-square-mile neighborhood evolving with dozens of futuristic skyscrapers and hundreds of trendy restaurants, shops and entertainment venues opened or in

development. And it’s all coming together as Lall heads Central City Association of Los Angeles (CCA), which represents 400 businesses, nonprofits and trade organizations. On a typical day as CEO, Lall juggles a variety of stakeholders with different motivations—from elected officials to developers and community groups—to increase investment and grow creative and tech industries downtown. Writer Rachel Ng spoke with her about what’s ahead.

You were student body president and studied political science and social science at USC. Was working for the city always part of your plan? In college, I was more interested in politics at a fed-

“There should be a place for families, singles and retirees—no matter what generation or socioeconomic level they’re from—in downtown L.A. To get there, we’re going to need more health care and schooling options, greater access to green space and public art.”

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eral level. But as I entered the workforce, I became more passionate about issues at the local level, because you can see the direct impact relatively quickly. It’s important to keep an open mind in your career because opportunities become available that you may never have even considered or known about.

At the South Park Business Improvement District, you oversaw public art programs. Do you envision adopting similar programs at CCA? Los Angeles is the creative capital of the world, and downtown is the epicenter for arts and culture. Art can help create identity and build community, encouraging people to step outside and walk around. At CCA, we’re working on how to facilitate the best use of the 1 percent public art fee developers pay on their projects. We want to create a menu of options that includes sculptures, programming and murals. We want to encourage dialogue around these kinds of projects as downtown continues to evolve into a global destination.

What’s your take on gentrification and preserving the neighborhood’s historic character? Maintaining the character of downtown L.A. is essential. It’s something we are in a position to advocate. When we look at downtown, there’s a balance of the new with the old, and I think there’s a way to bring innovation to historic areas without sacrificing their character. We’re working on updating the community plan and making sure that we preserve these areas. In addition, one of our top advocacy priorities is offering more housing at all income levels. We want to make sure that there is a diverse workforce that can be supported by the housing options in downtown.

What are some of the unexplored opportunities in the area? With residential growth, there are great opportunities for us to engage with people as they’re moving in and explain the benefits of urban development. There are also many more opportunities for the retail industry in downtown, especially since the traditional approach to retail is changing. We can define what spaces mean for people as we winter 2017

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TRAVELER PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

work on key corridors, roads, bike-sharing programs, streetscaping and more.

How would you describe downtown L.A.’s identity today? It’s unlike anywhere else in the city. It’s a mosaic of neighborhoods and people. We’re going to see a growing senior population as many retired folks decide to downsize their homes in places like Malibu or the Valley. They want to move into a place where they don’t need a car to get around and run their errands and have the cultural experience that downtown uniquely offers.

What’s next for the neighborhood?

There should be a place for families, singles and retirees—no matter what generation or socioeconomic level they’re from—in downtown L.A. To get there, we’re going to need more health care and schooling options, greater access to green space and public art.

Ride On, Traveler!

When the football team scores a touchdown, every Trojan knows what happens next. As “Conquest” fills the stadium, a Trojan warrior astride Traveler gallops down the field to the cheers of thousands of fans. The famous white horse is one of the country’s most recognizable college mascots and has appeared at USC football games since 1961.

For the 2017 football season, USC welcomed the debut of Traveler IX, who kicked off the season at the opening game against Western Michigan. As with all Traveler horses, he was extensively trained for his unique job. Owner Joanne Asman spent more than a year preparing him for anything that might happen on game day, from the deafening roar of 90,000 cheering fans to the wandering mascots of opposing teams who might get too close.

Traveler IX succeeds Traveler VII, who retired after 14 years of loyal service. The 25-year-old pure Spanish Andalusian loved entertaining and even knew when it was show time: While waiting in the tunnel in between touchdowns, he could identify the difference between a goal and a first down by the sound of the crowd and the Trojan Marching Band.

The mascot tradition began when USC’s director of special events spotted Richard Saukko riding his horse, Traveler I, in the 1961 Rose Parade. What was supposed to be a one-time appearance at a football game became history as crowds cheered upon seeing the noble white horse race out of the tunnel onto the field. Saukko’s family would go on to raise, train and ride Traveler horses until 2003, when Asman took over.

With his successful debut season, Traveler IX continues a beloved Trojan Family tradition as a symbol of ancient Troy. usc trojan family

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Origin Story A shared passion for community service and Asian American student advocacy brought together two dedicated Trojans.

As love stories go, the one between Karen Wong ’82, JD ’86 and Scott Lee ’81 had an unusual start. “Scott was going to have me arrested,” Wong says.

The year was 1978, and the setting was a Halloween party at Lee’s home, where Wong, dressed as Little Bo Peep, was pushed into the pool. She went in search of a place to dry off. It wasn’t long before a startled Lee found a stranger in street clothes toting a bulging bag from his parents’ bedroom. (Turned out, the bag contained her wet costume.)

The following year, they crossed paths again at Asian Pacific Student Outreach (APSO), a student support group where Wong would serve as secretary and Lee as director.

They had another unusual run-in when Wong asked Lee if she could go through his garbage for her Anthropology 101 class.

Unfazed, Lee declared his neighbors’ trash far more interesting— and offered to help her scrounge through it. Thus commenced a semester of Monday nights when the two catalogued trash over dinner. It wasn’t long before Lee asked Wong out on a proper date.

They soon found they had a lot in common. They shared a passion for USC, and their student schedules were packed with activities, including the Joint Educational Project, Delta Sigma Pi and Accounting Circle.

As APSO leaders, they threw themselves into Asian American student advocacy. “At the time, USC was a very different experience for ethnic minorities,” Wong says. “We noticed there were support services for black and Latino students, but no office dedicated to Asian Pacific American students.”

Wong, together with another APSO leader and dedicated alumni, founded the Asian Pacific American Support Group, a scholarship-based organization. The group was a strategic way to develop economic capital for students as they lobbied the university for a dedicated office for Asian American students. Discussions with the university led to a peaceful sit-in—and, ultimately, a dedicated Asian Pacific American Student Services office.

The group evolved into the Asian Pacific American Alumni Association (APAA), which has since awarded nearly $2 million in scholarships.

As for Wong and Lee, the couple married after graduation (Lee proposed on the morning of the 1989 Rose Bowl game), had two children and maintain close ties to USC. This year, Wong, a partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, served on the executive committee of the Board of Governors for the USC Alumni Association and co-chaired its diversity and inclusion committee. She was previously APAA president for two terms and helped launched its $2 million fundraising initiative in 2015. She is also a member of the board of USC Associates and the USC Gould School of Law’s Board of Councilors.

Lee, a partner at Famco Investments, is a member of APAA, USC Associates and the Trojan Athletic Fund.

The couple also established three endowed scholarships through APAA and USC Gould.

USC brought the happy couple together, and soon Wong and Lee will be celebrating another special anniversary in their relationship—the APAA’s 35th year.

PHOTO BY WILL CHIANG

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A LU M N I

P R O F I L E

J A C O B

U L L M A N

The Producer

Handling the complicated logistics behind NFL game broadcasts is all in a day’s work for a USC Annenberg alumnus.

Diehard sports fans dream of blowout wins for their team.

But not Jacob Ullman ’95. The senior vice president of production and talent development at FOX Sports loves a high-stakes, edge-of-your-seat, fight-to-thefinish nail-biter.

Uncertain outcomes mean viewers are glued to their screens, giving his on-air announcers time to shine.And that’s always exciting for Ullman, who assigns the sportscasters and crews for up to eight of FOX’s weekly NFL games.

A good announcer has the ability to educate and entertain viewers, says Ullman, who is always on the lookout for new talent. “An announcer should sound like he’s having a conversation with the person sitting at home. They are like someone you’d have a beer with while

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watching the game.”

One of Ullman’s discoveries was Kevin Burkhardt, who at one point was calling local high-school football games, but selling used cars to make a living. Ullman liked Burkhardt’s delivery and helped him develop his skills, and today he’s a FOX play-by-play announcer for NFL games.

Growing up, Ullman played baseball, basketball and soccer, but while other kids imagined cracking the major leagues, his dream was to sit in the announcer’s booth. “From the first time I could articulate thoughts in my head, I always wanted to be a sportscaster,” he says.

He majored in broadcast journalism at USC, to which he had strong ties—from his great-grandmother, Elizabeth

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Brewster Jordan ’28, to his grandfather, Vince DeRosa, a renowned French horn player who taught at the USC Thornton School of Music. As an undergrad, Ullman called football and basketball games on KSCR, the student radio station, and hosted two weekly sports shows and a music show.

By senior year, he was working as the station’s sports director.

He credits USC Senior Associate Athletic Director Steve Lopes for teaching him the importance of hard work and loyalty, and Sports Information Director Tim Tessalone for showing him how to deal with tough situations. “No matter how difficult media requests were, Tim kept his composure and made difficult decisions while maintaining relationships,” he says.

Today, Tessalone often sends graduating students Ullman’s way to get their start.

“It’s a great way for me to give back to the university and students,” Ullman says.

He got his own break in 1994, when someone at USC passed his name to the right people. “I don’t know who recommended me, but FOX called me out of the blue to work part time,” Ullman says.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without USC.” Over his 23 years in the industry, he has mentored dozens of sportscasters, overseen hundreds of NFL games, including eight Super Bowls, covered NASCAR and World Series games and snagged eight Emmy Awards.

He is also never far from his Trojan roots. FOX covers USC football games, and Ullman occasionally crosses paths with his mentors.

“As a student, I remember Tim was constantly getting requests from the media like, ‘Can I have special access?’ and ‘Can I put my camera here?’”

Ullman says. “Now I’m the one asking him for special access and where we can place the camera.”

BENJAMIN GLEISSER

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10th annual

PASSION usc women’s POWER & conference WISDOM Save The Date!

Thursday, March 22 Saturday, March 24, 2018 Join us on this milestone anniversary as USC women of all ages and backgrounds gather to inspire one another to create positive change in their personal lives, their communities and the world.

alumni.usc.edu/womensconference

Hecuba watercolor interpretation © Yasmin Davis ’17, artwork used with permission

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

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family class notes 1 9 4 0 s

Robert P. Thompson ’45 (ENG), joined the V-12 engine contingent at USC in 1943. After a career in the U.S. Navy, he went to work at companies such as North American Aviation and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later formed Solo Products Inc., a power wheelchair company.

Defense Missile Flight Testing in Point Mugu, California, and the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. He was selected as a NAVAIR Fellow in 2012 and received the U.S. Navy 45-year Lengthof-Service Award in August 2017.

Karen Aileen Howze ’72 (SCJ), a retired District of Columbia Superior Court judge, was named judge-in-residence by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

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Marvin Saltzman MA ’59 (ART), a landscape painter and professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presented “Places,” an exhibition of his latest works, at Mahler Fine Art in North Carolina. He was a 1998 recipient of the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest honor for civilians.

Kenell Touryan MS ’59 (ENG) retired from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and is a visiting professor at the American University of Armenia.

Elaine Parker Adams PhD ’73 (GRD) published her second book, Haiku Bouillabaisse, a collection of 72 poems.

William Younglove ’73 (GRD) received the Distinguished Service Award from the California Association of Teachers of English for his contributions to the profession of teaching English and language arts.

George Pla MPA ’74 (SPP) received the Presidential Medallion from California State University, Los Angeles. The award is the university’s highest honor for outstanding leadership and extraordinary service.

Do you have news to share? Send it along with your name, school and class year to classnotes@ usc.edu and it may appear in a future issue.

William Bradley Ball MS ’78 (ENG) retired after 20 years of service working in engineering as a civilian employee for the U.S. Army.

Dorothy Chen-Maynard ’78 (LAS) was named Outstanding Dietitian of the Year by the California Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Kent Estes MS ’79, PhD ’03 (ENG) is a principal structural engineer for Walt Disney Imagineering.

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Dale Joiner MS ’80 (ENG) retired as a senior engineering department manager at Raytheon Missile Systems Co. after a 32-year career working with companies including General Dynamics and Hughes.

Michael E. Schroeder ’80 (SCJ) is the owner and publisher of the Chronicle, a daily newspaper and media group serving Eastern Connecticut. He also oversees the websites for four other papers in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

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Dan Basalone ’62 (EDU) is chairperson of the Meridian Development Corp., the urban renewal agency for the city of Meridian, Idaho.

HUBBARD HAUGH PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

Henry Minami ’63, MS ’67 (ENG) retired from the Rocketdyne Division of Boeing in 2001 after a 38-year career.

Gail Wilson Kenna ’65 (LAS) won five awards in the 25th Soul-Making Keats Literary contest. She was introduced as the new judge for creative nonfiction at the awards ceremony in April.

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Michael Martorano MS ’71 (ENG) is the engineering test lead for Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Ballistic Missile tfm.usc.edu

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Salpi Ghazarian ’75 (LAS), director of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies, was recognized by the California State Assembly for her leadership in working with organizations, institutions and publications whose scope encompasses Armenia and the Armenian diaspora.

David R. Moore ’75 (LAS) is a member of the board of directors of the Conference of California Bar Associations.

Tom Carter ’76 (LAS) received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award from the Federal Trade Commission.

Jeffrey Littell ’76 (BUS) is the first Knight of Justice from Southern California in the 900-year history of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an order of the Catholic Church dedicated to medical, social and humanitarian care for those in need.

T R O J A N

T R I B U T E

Lucy Hubbard Haugh Lucy Hubbard Haugh served as first lady of USC from 1970 to 1980, during her marriage to the late John Hubbard, the university’s eighth president. In the three and a half decades since, Haugh remained a beloved part of the Trojan Family, as well as a tireless supporter and passionate ambassador of USC’s work. She died in September.

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family class notes

Do you have news to share? Send it along with your name, school and class year to classnotes@ usc.edu and it may appear in a future issue.

Kenneth L. Alford MA ’82 (LAS), a retired U.S. Army colonel and Brigham Young University professor, published Utah and the American Civil War: The Written Record.

erator with three schools serving South Los Angeles.

Darleen Pryds ’83, MA ’85 (LAS), a professor at the Franciscan School of Theology, has filmed two courses, “The Spirituality of Dying and Death” (2015) and “The Christian Life: Exploring Lay Spiritual Practices” (2016).

Denise (Rivera) Menchaca ’84 (BUS) was elected to the San Gabriel City Council in California. She previously served eight years as a trustee for the San Gabriel Unified School District.

Andrew Labov ’85 (ARC), principal at CO Architects, has been named to the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows, which recognizes exceptional work and contributions to architecture and society.

Daniel Handjojo MS ’88 (ENG) is a senior systems engineer at Applied Materials in Santa Clara, California.

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David Bertman ’90, MA ’96 (SCA) won a 2017 Eddie Award from American Cinema Editors for editing the pilot of NBC’s This Is Us. He also directed an episode of the ABC comedy American Housewife.

Robert Menke MS ’94 (ENG) is the mission assurance manager for the Psyche Project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His mission will send an orbiter to Psyche, a rare all-metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

Elizabeth “Liz” Murphy JD ’94 (LAW) has joined Jackson Lewis’ Los Angeles office as a principal.

Peter Boyer GCRT ’96 (MUS) had performances of his Grammy-nominated work Ellis Island: The Dream of America with the Pacific Symphony filmed for PBS’ Great Performances in the 2017-18 season, with subsequent broadcasts planned during the next three years.

Jim Lewis ’97 (SPP) represents city managers across California as president of the city managers department of the League of California Cities.

Kevin Khoa Nguyen ’97 (GRN) is a professor at El Camino College and International Pacific University. Under the stage name Kevin Khoa, he is a Vietnamese-American singer who has toured around the world.

He founded concert production company Sky World Entertainment Inc. in 2011.

George E. Schultze PhD ’98 (LAS) was appointed president-rector of St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California, and sits on the board of directors of Catholic Charities of the East Bay.

Caprice Young MPA ’90 (SPP) was inducted into the Charter School Hall of Fame by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Jan T. Aune MHA ’99 (SPP) completed a criminal jury trial as a pro bono prosecutor for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office through the Los Angeles County Bar Association Trial Advocacy Project.

Shandon Harbour ’91 (LAS) is president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors’ San Diego chapter.

William Polaski JD ’99 (LAW) joined the Pittsburgh office of Rawle & Henderson as a partner.

Steven Gold DDS ’93 (DEN) is an assistant professor at the Western University of Health Sciences’ College of Dental Medicine. He was a speaker and section chair at the 2017 Congress on Oral Dental Medicine in Singapore.

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Rhonda Deomampo ’00 (LAS/SCJ), MS ’04 (EDU) was named CEO of Synergy Academies, a nonprofit charter school op-

Andrew Grossman JD ’00 (LAW) joined Winston & Strawn LLP as a partner in the firm’s intellectual property practice in Los Angeles.

Andrew Escobar ’01 (LAS) is partner in the Seattle office of law firm DLA Piper, where he is a member of its litigation practice.

Raul Ramirez ’01 (LAS), EdD ’14 (EDU) is assistant superintendent of elementary education for the Santa Barbara Unified School District.

Tiffany Everett ’02 (SCJ) is a digital director at Golin. She is an alumni mentor for Annenberg Advantage and the USC Black Alumni Association’s Legacy Through Leadership Mentor Program.

Andrew Fitzgerald ’02 (LAS) joined Hearst Television as chief digital content officer at its New York City headquarters.

Roberto Garcia MPP ’02 (SPP) was elected to the board of trustees in the Etiwanda School District in Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana, California. He serves as an elementary administrator in the OntarioMontclair School District.

Paul Rigali ’02 (LAS), JD ’08 (LAW), a trial lawyer at Larson O’Brien LLP, was listed in the Daily Journal’s Top 40 Under 40.

Jared Yeager ’02 (SCA) joined 21st Century Fox as a director of production for FoxNext Games in Los Angeles.

Jessica Fini MA ’03 (SCJ) was named head of social media for the Honda and Acura brands at American Honda Motor Co. JP Karliak ’03 (DRA) voices the roles of Wile E. Coyote in The New Looney Tunes and the Tin Man in Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz for the streaming platform Boomerang. He is also the voice of Willy Wonka in the film Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

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A LU M N I

P R O F I L E

G I N A

C L AY T O N

’0 6

Launching Leaders

PHOTO COURTESY OF GINA CLAYTON

Women with relatives in prison find a path toward empowerment.

For women with loved ones behind bars, the challenges of supporting a family and keeping a roof over their heads can feel insurmountable.

Gina Clayton ’06, a Los Angeles native, saw these struggles for the first time while she was working as a housing lawyer in New York City. She represented lowincome women, many of whom were facing eviction and homelessness. Several of the women she worked with strained to make ends meet while a husband, boyfriend, child or other relative was incarcerated.

“They were taking on all of the childcare responsibilities, and paying for commissary bills, expensive phone calls and visits to prison,” Clayton says.

They also faced social stigma. “They were made to

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feel ashamed for having loved ones who are caught up in the criminal justice system,” she says. “And so, there was this huge need that I saw. But I also saw this tremendous power.”

After a year of researching the issue, Clayton had a realization: As an attorney, she met her clients one on one. But her clients never met each other.

What might happen if she could bring together women facing similar hurdles?

“This was a group of women who I thought, if their silence could be broken, could be powerful advocates for themselves and for others,” she says. In 2014, she founded Essie Justice Group, a program that would help women take charge of the overwhelming difficulties they face.

Since its launch, five groups

of women have completed the program’s nine-week curriculum, which focuses on healing from trauma and building each woman’s voice as an advocate.

Women are nominated to join, usually by an incarcerated relative. Started in Oakland, California, the program has grown to Vallejo, San Jose and Los Angeles. Eleven more groups are underway.

Clayton’s interest in issues of equality and justice began at an early age. She remembers a high school teacher assigning the alternative chronicle A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn while class members concurrently read their standard textbook.

The experience opened her eyes.

“It was probably then that I first began to realize that there were different versions of history,” Clayton says.

At the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, she majored in American studies and ethnicity. She served as

chapter president of the NAACP at USC, where she was advised by chairman Julian Bond, and as a research assistant for USC Gould School of Law Professor Jody Armour. Their mentorship inspired Clayton to pursue a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Clayton now empowers others. She recalls one mother who struggled with homelessness and caring for her young children, and almost left the Essie Justice Group.

“She has gone on to speak to national and local press and now runs her own Essie cohort,” Clayton says. “We have had the pleasure of watching her become a leader.”

This is Clayton’s goal. Essie, she says, is not a charity, but a place to help women find their value. “We are building an organization of women leaders.”

MICHELLE BOSTON

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family class notes

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Marc Rose JD ’03 (LAW) joined Sidley Austin LLP in Dallas as a partner specializing in mergers and acquisitions.

Jennifer Brienen ’06 (DRA) was production stage manager of At Home at the Zoo, a co-production with Deaf West Theatre.

Michael Kudirka ’04, DMA ’12 (MUS) was featured in the spring 2017 issue of Classical Guitar Magazine, exploring his collaboration with composer Thomas Adès. The duo worked together on a “guitar aria” for Adès’ opera The Exterminating Angel, which debuted at the Salzburg Festival in 2016.

Chris Cowan JD ’07 (LAW), an attorney specializing in business litigation in the Austin office of Beck Redden LLP, was named a 2017 rising star by Southern California Super Lawyers.

Merritt Morris ’04 (ENG) works at Faraday Future, where she focuses on powertrain testing and validation. Previously she was at General Motors and Honeywell Turbo.

Brienne Rose ’04 (MUS) was nominated by the Guild of Music Supervisors for best use of music by a music house for her work with Spotify.

Michael Stewart ’04 (BUS) is senior group manager of corporate and marketing public relations for Hyundai Motor America.

Rohith George ’05 (LAS) relocated to the technology transactions team at Mayer Brown in Palo Alto, California.

Kevin Koligian ’05 (LAS) was promoted to shareholder at Littler Mendelson PC in Fresno, California.

Brandy (McKaig) Manzano MS ’05 (GRN), MSW ’05 (SSW), a licensed clinical social worker at Ventura County Behavioral Health, is a member of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.

Paul Rosen JD ’05 (LAW), former security chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is partner at Crowell & Moring in Los Angeles.

Shaun J. Voigt ’05 (SCJ), JD ’09 (LAW) and Raul E. Zermeno JD ’08 (LAW) are partners at Fisher Phillips’ Los Angeles office, which recently hired associates Ashley Attia JD ’16 and Rayan Naouchi JD ’16.

Whitney Hodges ’07 (LAS), JD ’10 (LAW) was named by Sheppard Mullin as the 2016 Bob Gerber Pro Bono Attorney of the Year.

Eric Guinivan MM ’08, DMA ’11 (MUS) was awarded a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University and the Andrew Imbrie Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Avraham “Avi” Schwartz JD ’08 (LAW) is director of IP litigation counsel at Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine, California.

Timothy Derdenger PhD ’09 (LAS) is associate professor of marketing and strategy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He was named coordinator of the MBA Technology Leadership Track.

Rubina Hyder ’09 (BUS) launched Hyder + Taavon, a web and social media resource.

Alex Lubischer ’09 (DRA) saw his play Bobbie Clearly performed at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre.

He was selected for Roundabout Theatre Company’s sixth annual Roundabout Underground Reading Series.

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Stephen Abanise MSW ’10 (SSW) is an attorney with the Internal Revenue Service’s Estate and Gift Tax Division. Before that, he was a senior social worker at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Do you have news to share? Send it along with your name, school and class year to classnotes@ usc.edu and it may appear in a future issue.

Gil Bevenflorez Jr. MA ’10 (SCJ) wrote about aerospace hazards and safety regulations in the March and April issues of Professional Safety, the journal of the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Andrew Dits MFA ’10 (DRA) workshopped God Looked Away at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Dominique Fong ’10 (SCJ) is a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Beijing covering China’s property market.

Kuan-Fen Liu DMA ’10 (MUS) has received a Mayor’s Arts Award in Ventura, California. The accolade honors established artists who show artistic excellence and contribute to Ventura’s culture.

—two for her work for the Sochi Olympics and one for the Rio Olympics.

Inda Craig-Galván MFA ’17 (DRA) co-wrote Celestial Blood, an eight-episode KCRW radio series.

Crystal Turner EdD ’13 (EDU) was named superintendent of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District in California.

Andrew Borba ’14 (ENG) is a software development engineer at Amazon.

Gabriel DiMarco GCRT ’14 (MUS) was featured as a cello soloist on the motion picture soundtrack for Colossal by Bear McCreary ’02 (MUS).

Aaron Hill MSW ’14 (SSW) is a mental health crisis therapist at SummitStone Health Partners in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he works in crisis response.

T R O J A N

Steve Baumann ’11 (LAW) was named a Client Service All-Star by the BTI Consulting Group. He is an associate attorney at Littler.

WONG PHOTO BY ELSON ALEXANDRE

Dale Trumbore MM ’11 (MUS), Julia Adolphe MM ’12 (MUS), Jules Pegram ’13 (MUS), Saad Haddad ’14 (MUS) and Patrick O’Malley MM ’15 (MUS) were recipients of the 2017 Morton Gould Young Composer Awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Foundation.

Scott Parker EdD ’14 (EDU) was named head of school at Kamehameha Schools Maui in Hawaii.

Natalie Strom ’14 (LAS) was appointed assistant press secretary at the White House.

Tracey Weinstein PhD ’14 (EDU) is the senior director of data and research at Deans for Impact in Sacramento.

Didrick Hajost ’12 (BUS) was awarded a Silver Star by the U.S. Army for valor in combat. A medal ceremony was held in June at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Stephanie Abraham MPW ’15 (LAS), the pop culture and film critic for the syndicated radio and TV show Rising Up With Sonali, is the communications coordinator for housing and residence life at California State University, Los Angeles.

Betsy Hamilton EdD ’12 (EDU) was named superintendent of the Lawndale Elementary School District in California.

Alex Gold MA ’15 (SCJ) is a community manager and content creator on the live stories social media team at Nickelodeon.

Ryan Wolfe JD ’12 (LAW) was named “Misdemeanor Attorney of the Year” for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s office. He is the deputy public defender in the Juvenile Division of the Compton Courthouse.

Sal Phillips JD ’15 (LAW) joined the Chicago firm Rusin & Maciorowski as an associate.

Emilie Mateu ’13 (SCJ) is an associate producer with NBC Sports, where she works in the documentaries, features and athlete profiles unit. She won three sports Emmys

Micah Wright DMA ’15 (MUS) took second place in the Backun International Clarinet Competition. He also received honorable mention in the William C. Byrd Young Artist Competition at the Flint Institute of Music in Michigan.

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Sedale Threatt Jr. MFA ’15 (DRA) appeared in the West Coast premiere of Little Children Dream of God.

T R I B U T E

Gin Wong Visionary architect Gin D. Wong ’50 left an indelible mark on the landscape of postwar Los Angeles. As founder and chairman of Gin Wong Associates, Wong designed many Southern California landmarks, including CBS Television City, the Automobile Club of Southern California headquarters campus in Orange County and the two-level roadway system at Los Angeles International Airport, to name a few.

Born in Guangzhou, China, Wong moved to Southern California and graduated from Los Angeles’ John H. Francis Polytechnic High School. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and participated in major air battles over Japan in 1945 as lead crew navigator/radar bombardier with the 20th Air Force.

After the war, Wong earned his degree from the USC School of Architecture, where one of his professors was prolific architect William L. Pereira. After graduation, Wong joined Pereira’s firm, Pereira & Luckman.

When that partnership disbanded in 1958, he helped found William L. Pereira & Associates, the firm that designed the 1961 master plan for the USC University Park Campus, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and USC Tower at South Park Center (formerly known as the AT&T Center).

Wong was a member of the USC Board of Trustees since 1983 and received the USC Alumni Association’s Merit Award in 1986.

His name is commemorated at the University Park Campus with the Gin D. Wong, FAIA Conference Center, a 175-seat auditorium that is part of the Harris Hall complex.

Wong is survived by his wife, Louise; three children, Terrina, Janna ’74, MPW ’00, and Kimberlee; and four grandchildren, Randall, Ginger ’07, Brennan ’09 and Jack ’10.

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Scholarships change lives.

“My plan is to work on behalf of children and adolescents with disabilities, especially autism. I hope to pursue occupational therapy before moving to public policy— acting as an advocate for this underserved group. It would be difficult to choose this career path if I accumulated a large debt that I immediately had to start paying off.”

Rose Aristakassian USC Stuart Scholar Psychology Major, Class of 2018

Every gift counts. giveto.usc.edu

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summer 2017

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A LU M N I

P R O F I L E

B R A D

C R A C C H I O L A ’9 3, M S ’ 9 8

Speed Zone A USC Viterbi engineer revolutionizes a Paralympic sport.

WHEELCHAIR PHOTO COURTESY OF BRAD CRACCHIOLA; CRACCHIOLA PHOTO BY DANIEL DRUHORA

In 2016, Tatyana McFadden was in Rio making her fourth appearance in the Paralympic Games. Dubbed the “fastest woman on three wheels,” McFadden is a legend in her sport, but much of the attention was on her wheelchair. Designed by a USC Viterbi School of Engineering mechanical engineering alumnus, the chair was unlike anything the crowd had seen before.

Long, sleek and low, with three narrow wheels, the wheelchair was whittled down to only the most essential parts. A carbon fiber frame provided greater stiffness— and therefore more efficiency—than traditional aluminum frames. And everything about it was

designed specifically for her body.

In this wheelchair, McFadden flew past the finish line in Rio again and again, grabbing four gold medals and shattering Paralympic marks.

“We designed it with the understanding that a wheelchair isn’t just a piece of equipment. It’s an aerodynamic extension of the athlete’s body,

an intimate part of themselves,” says Brad Cracchiola ’93, MS ’98, associate director at BMW Group Designworks, BMW’s global creative consultancy.

Cracchiola led the BMW team that redesigned Team USA’s wheelchairs, from prototyping and production all the way down to the graphics displayed on the racer. His team worked closely with the

athletes and coaches, observing them on and off the track and gathering all the racing science available. Because every athlete’s disability is unique in some way, customization was key. Cracchiola’s team used computer simulations to design the most aerodynamic shape possible and made 3-D printed custom parts for each athlete.

The attention to detail paid off. Athletes in his wheelchairs won seven medals, including McFadden’s four golds, and set four Paralympic records.

Says Cracchiola: “I hope we created something that will change the sport and push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

DANIEL DRUHORA

“On a wheelchair, the athlete is the engine. So getting the ergonomics just right is like fine-tuning performance.”

— B R A D C RAC C H I O LA

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Raise your hand if you’re a member.

That’s right, if you are a degreed alum, you are automatically a lifetime member of the USC Alumni Association.

That means you can: • Connect with fellow alumni worldwide • Find USC events near you • Access lifelong career services • Take advantage of exclusive benefits • Update your contact information

And you can do it all at alumni.usc.edu

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

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Obituaries of members of the Trojan Family appear online at tfm.usc.edu/tributes.

family class notes

M A R R I A G E S

John R. Anderson IV ’48 (ENG) of La Jolla, California; July 3, 2017, at the age of 95.

Bonnie C. Brady ’63 (LAS) and Paul Donaldson.

Robert W. Goodnow ’48, MD ’52 (MED) of Tacoma, Washington; July 24, 2017, at the age of 91.

Matthew Hanson ’80, MS ’82, PhD ’98 (ENG), and Grace Wing Yan Pang.

Kristina Monet Gallegos ’03 (LAS) and Shaun Michael Dixon ’07 (SCA).

José Galván ’04 (LAS) and Candice Cabral.

Huy Luong ’04 (ARC) and Bin Xiao.

Patricia Ann Messinger MS ’81 (GRN), MSW ’81 (SSW) of Santa Ana, California; Jan. 29, 2017, at the age of 82.

Coletta Lynette Preacely MPA ’83 (SPP) of Los Angeles; December 2016.

Joseph Paul Ransom ’49 (EDU), MS ’64 (EDU) of Ventura, California; April 3, 2017, at the age of 93.

Rumy Lopez ’92 (LAS), MBA ’00 (BUS) of Los Angeles; May 30, 2017, at the age of 46.

Charles Lyons, Jr. ’50, LLB ’53 (LAW) of Lakewood, California; April 19, 2017.

FA C U LT Y A N D F R I E N D S

Richard King Ives ’52 (BUS) of Tiburon, California; May 19, 2017, at the age of 87.

Gerald “Jerry” Bender of Los Angeles; May 22, 2017, at the age of 75.

Tracy Becerra ’05 (OST) and Eric Culqui.

Lydia Froemelt ’12 (ENG) and Peter Madden ’11 (ENG).

B I R T H S

Shauna Carter ’06 (LAS) and John Washington, a son, Jaxon Pierce Carter.

Naomi (Ishibashi) Tam DDS ’08 (DEN) and Keith Tam DDS ’08 (DEN), a son, Ethan Akira.

Robert Gomez MPH ’14 (MED) and Danielle Gomez MMFT ’16 (EDU), a son, Oliver Jean.

Justine Safar Leach MA ’15 (EDU) and Kyle Leach, a daughter, Cecilia Mashal Ming Hui. Grandparents are Gary Leach ’75 (LAS), PharmD ’80 (PHM) and Stacie Hayase Leach PharmD ’80 (PHM).

I N

M E M O R I A M

A LU M N I Beverly Griffiths Rowen ’46 (LAS) of Palo Alto, California; Apr. 3, 2017, at the age of 92.

Adela Wolf Steinman ’47 (ENG) of Los Angeles; Jan. 18, 2017, at the age of 90.

Harold Arthur Pudewa ’53, MS ’55 (ENG) of Long Beach; April 29, 2017.

L E G E N D

Paul J. Geragos ’56 (LAW) of La Cañada Flintridge, California; Oct. 21, 2016 at the age of 89.

LAS

Frank Hall ’56 (BUS) of Henderson, Nevada; June 17, 2017.

Leonard Landy ’56 (BUS); July 25, 2017, at the age of 84.

Beauford Phelps BS ’56 (SPP) of Dana Point, California; June 16, 2017, at the age of 91.

Duane Muir MA ’57 (SCA) of Franklin, Tennessee; March 11, 2017, at the age of 86.

Erlyne Cooper MSW ’59 (SSW), of Silver Spring, Maryland; March 31, 2017, at the age of 86.

Darwin Fredrickson PhD ’71 (MUS) of Fullerton, California; April 22, 2017, at the age of 92.

M’lou Dietzer DMA ’73 (MUS), of La Crescenta, California; April 10, 2017, at the age of 87.

Frances Wu DSW ’74 (SSW), of Monterey Park, California; Aug. 11, 2017, at the age of 96.

ACC ARC BUS SCA SCJ

USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences USC Leventhal School of Accounting USC School of Architecture USC Marshall School of Business USC School of Cinematic Arts USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

DNC DEN DRA EDU ENG ART GRN GRD LAW MED MUS OST

USC Kaufman School of Dance Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC USC School of Dramatic Arts USC Rossier School of Education USC Viterbi School of Engineering USC Roski School of Art and Design USC Davis School of Gerontology USC Graduate School USC Gould School of Law Keck School of Medicine of USC USC Thornton School of Music USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy

PHM BPT

USC School of Pharmacy Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy

SPP SSW

USC Price School of Public Policy USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

Matt DeGrushe, Michelle Dumas, Harmony Frederick, Wendy Gragg, Katherine Griffiths, Julie Labich, Leticia Lozoya, Jane Ong, Stacey Wang Rizzo, Nicole Stark and Deann Webb contributed to this section.

Moses Chadwick MSW ’78 (SSW), of Los Angeles; June 24, 2017, at the age of 75. tfm.usc.edu

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Grand Entrance

USC students are always on the move. And now with USC Village open, they’ve never had more room to roam. The complex added more than 2,500 beds to campus housing and extended the University Park Campus north of Jefferson Boulevard. It also brought increased traffic across Jefferson—by foot, skateboard, scooter and bike, to be specific—as thousands of students make the daily trek between home and classes.

Luckily, planners thought ahead.

One of the most prominent entrances to the University Park Campus along Jefferson has been reimagined with native plants and new paving, creating a seamless link from Trousdale Parkway to USC Village. The entrance—between the Joint

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Have a photo to share? Send it to 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-2818 or magazines@usc.edu.

Educational Project House and the Amy King Dundon-Berchtold University Club at King Stoops Hall—stands where an asphalt parking lot (inset) once capped the northern end of Trousdale. The cars are long gone, but the Alumni Memorial Pylon, standing since 1932, still remains.

Elsewhere along Jefferson, jacaranda trees, benches and light fixtures have made the busy thoroughfare more welcoming and friendly to pedestrians. Another smaller entrance to the campus threads between the USC Kaufman School of Dance and the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC and leads north across Jefferson, offering an inviting crosswalk to USC Village from Watt Way. E L I S A H U A N G

PHOTO BY DUSTIN SNIPES

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family portrait by

THE KECK EFFECT What sets Keck Medicine of USC apart? Our relentless approach. Our unwavering passion to heal.

And, something else ... we’re warriors. Each day, we fight for our patients — battling the most serious and complex conditions imaginable and doing everything possible to ensure a positive outcome.

To read patient stories and share yours, visit: KeckMedicine.org/KeckEffect

For appointments, call: (800) USC-CARE

© 2017 Keck Medicine of USC

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USC Trojan Family Magazine University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818

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USC_TFM_Wi17_Cover_R1.indd 4

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12/12/17 1:43 PM