The Keck School of Medicine of USC, The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC, and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center have been proud partners in the Cancer Moonshot Initiative and its vision to double the rate … Read More »
By Jon Nalick
Owen Bennett-Jones, freelance British journalist and a host of “Newshour” on the BBC World Service, captivated audiences in Mayer Auditorium as he told tales of how local culture can shape — or sabotage — efforts to improve education and health worldwide.
He described how a leader in northwest Afghanistan shunned offers to build for free a school in his region, saying simply, “I don’t want it.” Later, while hunting with a would-be benefactor, the leader shot ducks that fell into a lake. He whistled and several men jumped into the water to retrieve them. The leader mused, “Do you honestly think they’d do that if they went to school?”
“And that is what you’re up against,” said Bennett-Jones: “Local elites who are quite determined to keep their people uneducated so they can hold on to the power that they’ve got.” … Read More »
By Ryan Ball
Nancy Warner
Photo/Ryan Ball
Picking at her smoked salmon with chopsticks at the faculty center named for Hugh A. Edmondson, MD, who preceded her as chair of the Department of Pathology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, Nancy Warner, MD, Hastings Professor of Pathology, emerita, reflects on her legacy at the school.
At the age of 90, Warner remains a formidable presence, one that has been felt on the Health Sciences Campus since she became the school’s first female department chair in 1972. In fact, she was the first woman in the United States to be named chair of a pathology department at a coeducational school of medicine. … Read More »
By Ryan Ball
When the ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Foundation Inc. was established in 1958 to provide financial awards to U.S. graduate and undergraduate students for innovative pursuits in science, engineering and medical research, the Soviet Union had just launched Sputnik and the United States feared it might fall behind on the technology front.
Although the Cold War space race has long since cooled, the foundation continues to foster emerging talent — including Keck School of Medicine of USC postdoctoral research fellow Rachel Service, PhD, the first recipient of a $10,000 postdoctoral fellowship awarded by ARCS and The John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation.
Service is exploring multiple areas of structural biology, and she believes that understanding the structure of and functional relationship between proteins is key to developing new therapies, studying disease processes and advancing clean energy, among other pursuits. … Read More »
By Alison Trinidad
Patients who suffer from uncontrolled epilepsy now have new treatment options at Keck Medicine of USC, thanks to the recent founding of the USC Center for Neurorestoration.
The center proposes to physically test innovative neural engineering and basic neuroscience to restore neurological circuitry and function within the human brain.
Christianne Heck, MD, MMM, associate professor of neurology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, medical director of the USC Comprehensive Epilepsy Program, and Charles Liu, MD, PhD, professor of neurosurgery and neurology at the Keck School, surgical director of the USC Comprehensive Epilepsy Program, are co-directors of the new center. Heck and Liu worked extensively over the last three years to build USC’s Level 4 epilepsy program. … Read More »