Evening By The Bay April 30, 6pm at the Ferry Building

Excited to head to the San Francisco waterfront on April 30 for a special evening with @dornsife.usc.edu alumni and parents! Join me at the Ferry Building to hear firsthand about all the amazing things happening at the college. See you in the Bay Area!

RSVP by April 26: bit.ly/USCBayArea26

Test of gravity using galaxy clusters supports dark matter Scientists test a fundamental rule of gravity across hundreds of millions of light years — and it holds up

Impressive work by Patricio Gallardo of @upenn.edu and @dornsife.usc.edu Prof. Kris Pardo et al.
=> pairwise velocities measure gravitational force law on cosmic scales, 1/r^n w/ n= 2.1 ±0.3, MOND is a poor fit (PTE=3.65×10−3), while ΛCDM fits well (PTE=0.17).

dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...

Join us on on April 24 to discuss the new book "Dad Brain" with the author, @dornsife.usc.edu Prof. of Psychology Darby Saxbe to learn what her research reveals about the ways fatherhood changes men and how being a dad can shape workplaces and society.

Register here: usc.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Congrats @dornsife.usc.edu Chem Prof. Richard Brutchey for his 2026 ACS Langmuir Lectureship recognizing his work on molecular programming related to controlled surface chemistry dornsife.usc.edu/chemistry/20...

USC Dornsife Public Exchange welcomes climate leader with deep LA policy experience dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...

USC Institute on Ethics and Trust in Computing hosts AI summit The inaugural event features leading AI researchers and experts.

AI is moving fast. The work of making it trustworthy has to keep pace.

USC’s new Institute on Ethics and Trust in Computing is focused on exactly that, with our School of Philosophy helping put human questions at the center of technological ones.

today.usc.edu/new-usc-inst...

USC Institute on Ethics and Trust in Computing hosts AI summit The inaugural event features leading AI researchers and experts.

Today we @dornsife.usc.edu and @usc.edu Viterbi School of Engineering are launching a new effort that brings together the liberal arts and computer science to enable #AI for the public good.

today.usc.edu/new-usc-inst...

New report on L.A. post-fire beach contamination finds something unexpected: good news Sampling on L.A. area beaches found no lead or other metals at concentrations that could hurt humans or animals.

Good news - no evidence for ecosystem or harm for human health - Noelle Held, marine biogeochemist and principal investigator for the CLEAN Waters project, which is measuring post-fire water quality after Palisades and Eaton fires.

www.latimes.com/environment/...

A real treat to return to my old stomping grounds at the @uciphyssci.bsky.social for the advancement exam of my exceptional PhD student Patricia Fofie, who passed with flying colors on her research using numerical simulations to understand how super massive black hole feedback affects galaxy shapes

Discovering Life in Unexpected Places Podcast Episode · Dornsife Dialogues · March 9 · 59m

Fun podcast with Prof. @karenlloyd.bsky.social & alumna Laurie Barge exploring how Earth’s most extreme environments are shaping where and how scientists search for life beyond Earth.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/d...

Ghost Writing: On AI Before AI When is an author not an author? The question feels like the lead up to a nerdy joke. But these days, with the looming presence of artificial intelligence, I feel as if I am asking that question ev…

Extremely thought provoking essay by @dornsife.usc.edu English Prof Emily Hodgson Anderson, including the idea that the earliest examples of ‘ghostly’ writing made us as a society more comfortable with not knowing, or not asking, how some forms of writing were produced.

lithub.com/ghost-writin...

Discovering Life in Unexpected Places YouTube video by USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Great conversation with @dornsife.usc.edu Prof. @karenlloyd.bsky.so + alumna Laurie Barge, senior research scientist at @nasajpl.bsky.social

Highlights include life that thrives with pH levels 1000 times more basic than bleach!

youtu.be/kwvxYkv92A0

This week we welcome Barnard College Professor Amy Zhou to our department colloquium!

$4M gift puts Institute on California and the West past halfway mark Pledge from institute’s longtime friend supports public outreach and partnerships with professionals outside academia

This generous gift to Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West will enable new understandings of the past to inform public dialogue in the West + support partnerships with nonacademic professionals and practitioners

dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...

This is going to be fun! 👽🧬🌋

Looking forward to meeting alumni in San Diego this weekend!

What an honor

This is what the most distant confirmed galaxy looks like. The light we're receiving was emitted when the Universe was ~15x smaller in linear size than today, and right now it's ~30 billion light-years away from us. The light was emitted when the Universe was <300 million years old. Pretty amazing!

USC names Beong-Soo Kim as its 'next generation' president USC on Wednesday said Beong-Soo Kim, the interim campus president since June, would become president.

USC names Beong-Soo Kim as its 'next generation' president

Alice Shapley Wins 2026 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics - AIP.ORG University of California professor honored for pioneering research into early galaxy formation.

The Heineman Foundation, the American Institute of Physics, and the AAS are pleased to announce Alice Shapley as the winner of the 2026 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics. www.aip.org/aip/alice-sh... 🔭

@aip.bsky.social

How hidden factors beneath Istanbul shape earthquake risk Underground heat and sediment patterns control how earthquakes behave along one of the most dangerous faults in the eastern Mediterranean.

New findings from @dornsife.usc.edu Earth sciences Professor Sylvain Barbot could reshape risk assessments for Istanbul, one of the world’s most vulnerable megacities. today.usc.edu/how-hidden-f...

This week we welcome UC Merced Professor Tanya Golash-Boza to our department colloquium!

First paper since moving to @dornsife.usc.edu led by PhD student Jorge Sarrato-Alós along with Valenciano, Di Cintio, Brook, and Maccio'

-> In both FIRE & NIHAO sims: early-forming galaxies have bigger DM cores, while late-forming galaxies are more cuspy
arxiv.org/abs/2601.17113

I can't wait to talk about how cool life is deep beneath our feet! Join us for this fun discussion with Laurie Barge (NASA/JPL) and me!

Discovering Life in Unexpected Places

Join me live on Feb 26 for a conversation with @dornsife.usc.edu researchers & alumni on how Earth’s most extreme environments are shaping where & how scientists search for life beyond our planet.

Register Now:
usc.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Joel Primack, Physicist Who Helped Explain the Cosmos, Dies at 80

We’ll miss Joel and his enthusiasm for the field he greatly impacted. Being his graduate student in the 90s was an amazing experience.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/s...

Great recognition Prof Doug Capone --> 2025 Highly Ranked Scholar status:

#26 globally in the Marine Sciences

This award has places him in the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide.

scholargps.com/highly-ranke...

USC Dornsife celebrates Tyler Prize winner Toby Kiers Expert on mycorrhizal fungi honored for efforts to map and protect the underground networks that sustain life on Earth

Congratulations to evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers on winning the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. This prize, administered by @dornsife.usc.edu celebrates Kiers’ research is on mycorrhizal fungi connecting plant roots across forest floors.

dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...

Po'pay fought for independence before the American Revolution 17th-century Tewa religious leader led the Pueblo Revolt, the most successful Indigenous rebellion in what’s now the United States

Po’pay, a Tewa religious leader, led the Pueblo Revolt, the most successful Indigenous rebellion in what’s now the USA
- By Prof. Peter Mancall, Director of the Early Modern Studies Institute and Professor of History, Anthropology, and Economics @dornsife.usc.edu

dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...

Can we prevent AI from acting like a sociopath? Researchers are investigating how to keep artificial intelligence aligned with human values.

If powerful #AI systems can sometimes start behaving like sociopaths, how do we keep them aligned with human values?

We explore what it might take to keep them in check — including a built-in sense of “vulnerability,” so it has something to lose by causing harm. dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories...