August 2025
Tricia Avant, academic coordinator and gallery manager of art, along with other members of the LA Art Girls, gathered to celebrate fellow LA Art Girl Nancy Buchanan with a collaborative cake cutting and serving performance titled Peace is not a Piece of Cake at The Brick in Los Angeles on August 23. It was part of a day-long program titled “These Creatures: A Celebration of Nancy Buchanan” honoring Buchanan’s pioneering contributions to performance art in Los Angeles. The event was organized by The Brick and the Performance Art Museum.
Nicholas Ball, associate professor of chemistry, published a paper titled “Sulfur fluoride exchange with carbon pronucleophiles” with Joseph Novicki ’26, Matt Teeter ’25 and colleagues at Pfizer. This work demonstrated for the first time that carbon pronucleophiles can broadly be applied in SuFEx. The chemistry was exemplified making aryl alkyl sulfones—an important class of compounds used in drug discovery. This work was funded by the lab’s new NIH grant.
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, was featured as a viola da gamba soloist in Bear McCreary’s score to all episodes of Season 1 of the STARZ historical drama Outlander: Blood of My Blood, which premiered August 8 on streaming platforms worldwide.
From August 3–9, Bandy served on viola da gamba faculty at the Viols West workshop, organized by the Pacifica Chapter of the Viola da Gamba Society of America (VdGSA) and held at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he taught classes handling articulation in texted polyphony, fauxbourdon in 15th-c. works by Guillaume Dufay, 16th-c. music theory and musica ficta practice.
On August 15, Bandy programmed, contracted, directed Artifex Consort, and played tenor viol in a staged public reading of Like as the Hart, a new play by Oliver Mayer, directed by Alberto Barboza, co-sponsored by the USC Collaborations in History, Art, Religion, and Music (CHARM) working group and presented at the A-Frame Theater at the Wende Museum’s Glorya Kaufman Community Center in Culver City, California. The historical and musical framing of the play, which explores the young J. S. Bach’s legendary 1705 trip—over 250 miles each way on foot—to meet composer-organist Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637–1707), is largely based on Bandy’s written research handling Buxtehude’s life and esoteric compositional practices.
Colin J. Beck, professor of sociology, was an invited panelist for “When Revolutions Turn Authoritarian: Pathways from Democratic Ideals to Autocratic Rule,” hosted by the Democratic Erosion Consortium and the Chicago Center on Democracy on August 22.
Eleanor Birrell, associate professor of computer science, published a paper titled “User Understandings of Technical Terms in App Privacy Labels” in the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security. This work was coauthored with students Ishika Keswani ’26, Kerick Walker ’25, Adrian Clement ’26, Eusila Kitur ’25, Nannapas Wonghirundacha ’25, Ryan Aubrey ’25 and Vivien Song ’25.
Shannon Burns, assistant professor of psychological science and neuroscience, published a paper along with Laura Furtado Fernandes ’25, Ezra Ford ’25 and Jacob Zimmerman ’23 titled “Loneliness is associated with unstable and distorted emotion transition predictions” in the journal Communications Psychology. This work reveals differences in social cognitive processes in people who are chronically lonely.
Dean Gerstein, director of sponsored research, led two sessions at the 67th annual meeting of the National Council of University Research Administrators in Washington, DC (August 11-12): one to present early results and encourage participation in SUNDRI, a national survey of research development activities at colleges and universities, funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant; and a second to discuss strategic planning of research infrastructure at primarily undergraduate institutions, a recurrent theme in activities funded by two other NSF grants that focus on diversifying and broadening the base of participation in academic research.
Melissa Givens, associate professor of music, was a featured soloist in Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepherd with Pasadena Pro Musica under the baton of Scott Lehmkuhl, lecturer in voice. The concert took place at First United Methodist Church Pasadena. She also participated in a pre-show interview with KUSC’s Jennifer Miller about her nine-year history with the work, from its conception to the present.
Givens wrote the program notes for the latest CD release by Conspirare and Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson: advena: liturgies for a broken world, which consists of four works by noted Houston composer Mark Buller on text by renowned writers Leah Lax and Euan Tait. The CD is distributed by Divine Art recordings and is available on all platforms.
Esther Hernández-Medina, assistant professor of Latin American studies and gender and women’s studies, presented the paper “The Anti-Gender and Anti-LGTBQ Right-wing Backlash in the Dominican Republic” on August 8 in Chicago. The paper was part of a panel on right-wing movements at the mini conference “The Many Impacts of Social Movements,” organized by the section on collective behavior and social movements as a pre-conference to the American Sociological Association annual congress.
Gizem Karaali, professor and chair of mathematics and statistics, together with Lew Ludwig of Denison University, organized and facilitated a two-day minicourse, “Navigating the AI Landscape: Practical and Ethical Integration in Mathematics Education,” at MathFest, the annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America, this year held in Sacramento, California, from August 6-9. Karaali also facilitated a session, “Crafting an AI-Savvy Syllabus for Your Fall Courses,” as part of the Teaching Math with Gen AI Biweekly Virtual Discussions on August 19.
Jade Star Lackey, professor of geology, was awarded a grant of $86,902 from the National Science Foundation for a two-year study titled “Depth-dependent decarbonation in a continental arc, Sierra Nevada, California.” The study is a collaboration with Assistant Professor Emily Stewart at Florida State University.
Lackey saw publication of the study “Plutonic Piercing Points as Recorders of Continental Transform Fault Evolution: Chronologic Insights From the Transpressive Southern San Andreas Fault” in the journal Tectonics with collaborators from Brown University and University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Lackey gave a talk titled “Oxygen Isotope Tracing of Rapid Burial & Remelting of Upper Arc Rocks in Continental Batholiths: The Many Implications” at the meeting of the Geological Society of Australia and the University of Adelaide (South Australia).
Tom Le, associate professor of politics, gave a talk on Japanese demographics and security at Kyoto University on August 2.
Le’s translated book, 日本老いと成熟の平和, was positively reviewed by Chūō Kōron, the oldest continuously published magazine in Japan, on August 22. The book was also positively reviewed by Japanese newspapers Komei Shinbun on August 18 and Asahi Shinbun on August 30.
Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, was a guest artist at the Garth Newel Music Center 2025 Summer Festival where the two concerts were livestreamed and made available on YouTube. She played two-piano works of Darius Milhaud, Gabriella Smith, Maurice Ravel and Florent Schmitt and eight-hand arrangements of works by Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt. The August 17 concert was reviewed in EarRelevant, Atlanta’s online source for classical and post-classical music journalism. After the concert, she and Brian Hsu were interviewed for an article on the website that celebrates the music of Florent Schmitt.
Jonathan Lethem, Roy E. Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing, is publishing his 20th book of fiction, A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories.
Susan McWilliams Barndt, professor of politics, taught at Civic Spirit’s New York City Summer Institute for Educators, which explored the theme of “America at 250: Reaffirming Our Compact and Civic Mission.”
Also in August, Perspectives on Politics published an article by McWilliams titled “A Tale of Two Liberalisms: Desegregating American Political Thought.”
Sara Olson, associate professor of biology, gave a talk on “Probing the structural motifs of proteins that polymerize the vitelline layer of the C. elegans egg coat” at the Gordon Research Conference on Fertilization and Activation of Development, held at the Holderness School in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Student co-authors included Thanos Syntrivanis ’25, Ysabella Alcaraz ’22, Katiannah Moise ’18, Angie Wang ’23, Essi Logan ’24, Eli Taub ’25, Elelta Sisay ’23, Dolores Fritzsche ’22, Norani Abilo ’20, Vicki Cao ’27, Juliette Des Rosiers SCR ’26 and Mohamad Alkhatib ’24.
Olson presented a poster titled “Characterization of a new uterine eggshell layer in the nematode C. elegans” at the 25th International Worm Meeting, held at UC Davis. Student co-authors included Mohamad Alkhatib ’24 and Melissa Seecharan ’24, with helpful data contributions by seven additional students funded by this summer’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program.
John Pennington, associate professor and chair of dance, gave a lecture and demonstration on American Modern Dance at Oxford’s St. Hilda’s College. As a guest artist, he also set a work for the Yorke Dance Project in London at the Royal Opera House and taught technique and repertory at the Rambert School of Ballet.
Lori Quick, academic coordinator of music, made her Folk Music Center debut on the guitar, performing music by Brandi Carlile. She has been studying guitar for the past year in the studio of Mike Kreivis, furthering her artistic work as a vocalist and songwriter.
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, visiting assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, published their second full-length poetry collection titled Wayward Creatures (published by Host Publications). They read at Basket Books in Houston, celebrated the book launch hosted by the press at Alienated Majesty in Austin, Texas, and participated in a public conversation titled “Generative Joy, Kin-Making, and Collective Thinking,” hosted by Letras Latinas.
rhodes participated in the Society for the Study of Affect Summer School held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from August 6-8.
Adolfo J. Rumbos, Joseph N. Fiske Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, published an article co-authored with Emer Lopera (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) and Leandro Recôva (Cal Poly Pomona) in Results in Applied Mathematics. The title of the article is “Multiplicity results for non-local operators of elliptic type.”
Jennifer Schulz, lecturer in dance, presented a workshop titled “Building Connection and Ensemble in the Actor’s Studio” at the 13th International Alexander Technique Congress: The Embodied Mind In Action in Dublin.
Prageeta Sharma, Henry G. Lee ’37 Professor of English, had her poem “Irresistible Contentment” appear in The Atlantic online August 24.
Jessica Stern, assistant professor of psychological science, published a paper, “Environmental Moral Cognition in Children and Adults,” in the Journal of Cognition and Development’s special issue on climate change and child development.
Stern’s book, Beyond Difficult, was reviewed in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Friederike von Schwerin-High, professor of German, contributed a review essay of the collected volume Herder on Empathy and Sympathy / Einfühlung und Sympathie im Denken Herders (edited by Eva Pirimäe, Liina Lukas and Johannes Schmidt and published by Brill) to a special European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms issue dedicated to the works of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803).
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, conducted an online workshop for students at the University of Virginia on AI-supported language learning August 29.
Megan Zirnstein, assistant professor of linguistics and cognitive science, co-authored a poster with collaborator Natsuki Atagi (Cal State Fullerton) titled “Heritage language vs. dominant language: When bilinguals excel in unexpected ways,” presented at the 47th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in San Francisco on August 31.