4 USC Professors Earn Top Fellowships In Scientific Research

LOS ANGELES, CA — Four USC professors have been named fellows of the American Association for Advancement of Science, a top honor bestowed to leading scientists for research excellence and service to education, USC reported Tuesday.

They are Stephen Bradforth, professor of chemistry at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Luis Chiappe, adjunct professor at the Dornsife College; Ewa Deelman, research associate professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering; and Janet Oldak, professor of dentistry, Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC.

Each year, the Washington D.C.-based AAAS leadership council elects members whose "efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished." The program was started in 1874 by AAAS, the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

The four faculty members represent the diversity of the research enterprise at USC. They are experts in dental repair, molecular chemistry, dinosaur evolution and computer science, according to a USC statement.

They share this honor with 36 other USC faculty members who were previously elected to AAAS.

The statement said Bradforth is the divisional dean for natural sciences and mathematics in the Dornsife College. He's also a fellow of the American Physical Society, among other honors, and has taught at USC for 23 years.

Chiappe is an adjunct professor in the USC Dornsife College and senior vice president of research and collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He curated the award-winning Jane G. Pisano Dinosaur Hall exhibition at the museum and heads the Dinosaur Institute, a vast collection of fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

Deelman, who has been at USC since 2000, is a research professor in computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She is also research director of the science automation technologies at the USC Information Sciences Institute. She specializes in distributed computing, scientific workflows and computational reproducibility.

Janet Oldak is a professor of dentistry in the USC School of Dentistry's Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology and a professor of biomedical sciences and bioengineering in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She's an expert on tooth enamel formation and structural biology, having worked in the field for 25 years.

City News Service