Sangpil Yoon is using high-frequency ultrasound, called acoustic-transfection, to deliver molecules such as proteins, through the human cells to treat deadly diseases. The promising research has led to Yoon being the first USC Viterbi postdoctoral fellow to win a prestigious Pathway to Independence Award, or K99.

"I'm very happy and excited for him," said K. Kirk Shung, the Dean's Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Yoon's senior adviser. "This is a highly competitive award and his winning it means that USC BME [biomedical engineering] research is taking a small step in gaining peer recognition."

A long-term project

The five-year, $932,000 award will fund Yoon in his long-term quest to engineer an ultrasound device that can transfect cells or transport customized drugs and biomolecules across the cell membrane. This approach, Yoon said, avoids the use of foreign materials such as nanoparticles to the cells and promises to be more targeted and effective than existing methods.

The National Institutes of Health administers the K99 awards to support innovative postdoctoral research and increase the likelihood of award winners landing university tenure-track or equivalent research positions.

Yoon said USC Viterbi's "cutting-edge facilities and equipment make it possible to transform preliminary ideas and sketches into reality." He also said that his research center, directed by Shung, has been an ideal place to work and experiment.

Yoon credits Shung for nurturing him to come up with his own ideas, adding that his senior adviser is "always there to help and encourage me and has given me confidence."

Whenever I see a roadblock or hurdles, I just want to overcome them, to jump over the problem.

Sangpil Yoon

"I just love research. Speculating first in my mind and then trying to make that idea into a reality is really fascinating to me," Yoon said. "Whenever I see a roadblock or hurdles, I just want to overcome them, to jump over the problem."

Work ethic

A South Korean native, Yoon studied mechanical engineering at Yonsei University and earned an MS in aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After Georgia Tech, Yoon went to work at Samsung Electronics in Korea for three years.

A newfound interest in ultrasound imaging and acoustics led him back to the academy. In 2012, Yoon earned his doctorate in mechanical and biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Yoon has developed a reputation for his unrivaled work ethic.

"I may come to office at 7 a.m. and he is already here," Shung said. "I don't know when he sleeps. Once he starts working, he doesn't stop."

"Take care of yourself," said Sotelo, a pioneer in urinary robotic surgery, as he answered questions in Spanish about cancer screening and treatment from residents of Boyle Heights and other nearby communities. Sotelo also emphasized the educational and career prospects in medicine and biotech.

"There are many career opportunities for students, involving technology that will assist them to improve the quality of health care. This includes apps, medical devices, pharmaceuticals," Sotelo said. "There's technology that can help us follow the patient home after the surgery to see exactly how they're doing. All this is part of it, and there are no barriers."

Ghecemy Lopez, a cancer information resource and navigation specialist with the Keck School, took the stage along with Sotelo. She focused on engaging and educating youths about in the importance of creativity and critical thinking in STEM, cancer research and patient advocacy.

Lopez said that STEM education -- focusing on science, technology, engineering and math -- is an equalizer of economic and labor opportunities that can address health issues and break barriers, particularly those affecting the immigrant and low income community in Los Angeles. Lopez, who survived cancer at a young age, said she is grateful that STEM technology and research advances helped her beat cancer and gave her a second chance in life.

Future doctors and engineers

"Do you want to be a doctor, or a dentist, an astronaut or an engineer?" The question was asked repeatedly, as families with young children talked with USC students and volunteers about STEM education programs. Engineering students from the USC chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers were on hand to share information.

Alexandra Coronado, a first generation college student studying biology, answered questions from kids as young as 4 at USC's booth.

"I think it's amazing for kids to be exposed at a young age to different sciences, different careers in STEM," she said. "I got interested in medicine a long time ago when my mom got me a Barbie doctor kit. That was it for me.

I want these kids to know about STEM and biotech opportunities. They've got to start with biology, chemistry and math.

Alexandra Coronado

"I want these kids to know about STEM and biotech opportunities. They've got to start with biology, chemistry and math."

Stacks of pamphlets about USC Roski Eye Institute's Ophthalmic Technician Education Program and the USC-West Los Angeles College Dental Assistant Program were distributed. The programs offer health care career pathways to high school students and graduates.

A biotech hub

The Keck School, USC Civic Engagement, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, the university's Physicians Assistant program and the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC all supported the June 17 event, sharing health information and telling the community about the benefits of a proposed biotech park at the university's Health Sciences Campus in Boyle Heights. USC hospitals, research institutions and graduates in fields related to biotech would support the park, which could create thousands of jobs.

"We want students to go and pursue these kinds of careers, because biotech is the future of medicine," said Sotelo. "There's opportunity at the research level and in support jobs, and there's great diversity and inclusion."

A five-year R01 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke totaling more than $1.5 million will support one facet of brain injury research through 2021. The project will examine the effects and prognoses of small bleeds, or microhemorrhages, in the brain following traumatic brain injury in older adults.

"We want to understand whether these microhemorrhages are benign or whether they can cause serious problems for patients down the line," said Andrei Irimia, an assistant professor at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology who uses sophisticated neuroimaging techniques to understand the effects of brain injuries and improve the quality of life of sufferers, especially older adults.

Only 2 percent of R01 grants go to researchers under the age of 35. Irimia said the grant reflects not only the increase in attention paid to the topic of brain injury itself but also the National Institute of Health's interest in supporting precision medicine research; traumatic brain injury is a challenge that demands a personalized approach, he noted.

"No two TBIs are the same -- they vary from patient to patient," he said. "It's difficult to study at the population level."

Harnessing big data for brain health

Despite the extreme variability of traumatic brain injury, Irimia hopes to discover widely applicable insights for diagnosing and treating these injuries early as part of a collaboration formed during a new data science mentorship program.

The Data Science Rotations for Advancing Discovery program, or RoAD-Trip, facilitates partnerships between a junior biomedical scientist and a senior data scientist and funds two-week scientific rotations, during which the researchers work on a focused joint project involving the application of data science to biomedical research. The program is administered by the National Institutes of Health Big Data to Knowledge Training Coordinating Center.

Irimia has been collaborating with neuroinformatics expert David Kennedy, professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kennedy has been training him to apply data science, cloud computing and machine-learning techniques to his neuroimaging work in hopes of identifying abnormal patterns in brain activity that indicate possible future complications of traumatic brain injury.

Wireless sensors

The two have also collaborated with Nanshu Lu, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies the potential of wearable wireless sensors -- akin to electronic stickers or temporary tattoos -- that could one day provide constant brain activity data to physicians even when a patient is recovering at home.

The team's eventual goal is to give physicians the ability to send mild traumatic brain injury patients home after an emergency room visit while still monitoring them remotely via easy-to-wear sensors, instead of either keeping an otherwise symptomless patient in the hospital for scans or running the risk of not catching a traumatic brain injury complication early enough. The sensors would transmit brain activity data to the computing cloud, which would analyze the patterns and alert the patient and medical team if abnormal brain activity is sensed, Irimia said.

The potential for remote monitoring and early intervention will be especially important for the older adult population, he added. As the percentage of the population over age 65 gets higher, traumatic brain injury cases are increasing, and many of those seniors living alone don't have someone who could report complications early enough for potential treatments to be effective.

Right now, we have no way to monitor someone unless they are in a hospital and wired up.

Andrei Irimia

"About 80 percent of TBIs are mild, and the patient's brain scan in the hospital won't necessarily reflect the injury's true severity. However, patients can develop complications even weeks after their release, and by the time a neurological or psychological problem reveals itself in behavior or personality changes, it may be too late to fully treat it," he explained. "Right now, we have no way to monitor someone unless they are in a hospital and wired up. If we had a way for clinicians to remotely observe patients after their discharge and spot brain activity abnormalities as soon as they first occur, patients could undergo treatment earlier and the risk for serious problems could be reduced."

Brain injury in older adults

Older adults face particularly high risks from traumatic brain injury, Irimia said; it's more common in older adults than any other age group except for infants. A brain injury is also most likely to result in death when it affects a person over the age of 65, with falls being the most common cause for traumatic brain injury in older adults.

Other research shows that insults to the brain can contribute to neurodegeneration but affect individuals differently at different ages, with older people often needing more challenging treatment and not being able to recover as much as younger people, he added.

In addition, current research indicates that even when the brain injury happens in young adulthood, there is an increased risk for neurological and psychological problems decades later when the patient becomes an older adult.

Compounding the issue is the risk of stroke, which primarily affects older people but involves many of the same injury-related phenomena as traumatic brain injury. The older adult population has been relatively neglected in regard to brain injury research, Irimia noted, and individuals over 65 often need different and more challenging treatment.

"Aging with a TBI is very poorly understood," he said.

Named Chinlestegophis jenkinsi, the newfound fossil is the oldest relative of the most mysterious group of amphibians: caecilians. Today, these limbless, colorful serpentine carnivores live underground and range in size from 6 inches to 5 feet.

"Our textbook-changing discovery will require paleontologists to re-evaluate the timing of the origin of modern amphibian groups and how they evolved," said Adam Huttenlocker, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Anatomical Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 19, expands the known history of frogs, toads and salamanders by at least 15 million years and closes a major gap in early caecilian evolution by connecting them to stereospondyls, animals with toilet-seat heads that were the most diverse amphibian group during the Triassic era more than 200 million years ago.

Scientists previously believed the story of the stereospondyl order was a dead-end because, although widespread during the Triassic Period, the animals were believed to be unrelated to anything alive today. The two recently discovered fossils dispel that theory and suggest that the amphibian lineage of today evolved from a common ancestor some 315 million years ago.

"Caecilians are hard to find in the fossil record because most are so small," Huttenlocker said. "Chinlestegophis jenkinsi still preserves a lot of the primitive morphology that is shared with other Triassic amphibians, namely their four legs."

Before C. jenkinsi, scientists had found only two other caecilian fossils from the Age of Dinosaurs and -- unlike the two recently unearthed -- those came later and had reduced limbs, more closely resembling their contemporary living relatives.

"It's possible that the things that frog and salamander tissue can do when it comes to scarless healing are also present in human DNA but may be turned off," said Jason Pardo, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. "Because humans are also vertebrates, we enhance our understanding of our own evolutionary history and genetic heritage when we gain understanding of the amphibian lineage."

Solving mysteries in vertebrate evolution

There are currently fewer than 200 species of caecilians, which live in the wet, tropical regions of South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. But the two ancient fossil amphibians found in the late 1990s by Bryan Small, study co-author and a research associate at Texas Tech University, were preserved in the fossilized burrows of Eagle County, Colo.

The paleontologists used 3-D X-rays to reassemble the fossil remains of two C. jenkinsi specimens. Parts of a skull, spinal column, ribs, shoulder and legs survived in the fossils of the first specimen. Only the skull was distinguishable in the second specimen.

"Twenty to 30 years ago, we weren't even sure of the origins of birds," Pardo said. "Now we are solving some of the final remaining mysteries when it comes to what sorts of animals the major vertebrate groups evolved from. Caecilians, turtles and some fish are the only major vertebrate groups that paleontologists still have questions about."

Characteristics of the ancient caecilian

The burrows these fossils were preserved in were almost 2 inches wide, meaning they could not have been very big. Their bullet-shaped skulls were just under 1 inch long, so the ancient caecilian was probably about the size of a small salamander, Huttenlocker said.

The length of the animal is unknown because researchers do not have the full fossil remains of the animal, but Pardo estimates that the ancient caecilian was between 6 inches to a foot long. As a small carnivore, it probably ate insects.

Its eyes would have been functional but tiny. Some of today's caecilians do not have eyes or they are hidden under moist skin.

During the summer, this central Colorado area would have been scorching, which is probably why these subterranean animals thrived. Big dinosaurs like early relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops could not have existed in such conditions, Huttenlocker said.

"The ancient caecilians lived in these burrows deep in the soil down to about the level of the water table so that they could keep wet and avoid the extreme aridity from the dry season," Huttenlocker said. "I'm going back to Colorado this summer and hope to find more animals with more complete skeletons. We'll find one. This is just the initial report."

Field work for the study was supported by permits from the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM-CO-49819 & CO-49819d and BLM-CO-76493 & BLM-CO-78401).

What you had for lunch. What you just bought. What you want to see on Netflix.

This is the raw material for marketing and public relations experts who want to identify the Next Big Thing. But with seemingly infinite pieces of data out there in the digital universe, what are the best ways to analyze it -- ways that could provide accurate trends in human behavior and even hint at the future?

Enter netnography, a fusion of ethnography and the internet. It's a research method developed and named by Robert Kozinets, Hufschmid Professor of Strategic Public Relations and Business Communications at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. And at long last, Kozinets recently offered USC students a chance to dive into the process, which could help them in their quest to become the next generation of public relations and marketing gurus.

As Kozinets explained it, netnography -- a subset of digital anthropology -- is a systematic, ethical approach to following the millions of bread crumbs scattered across social media. Marketing researchers and strategic public relations experts have used elements of the approach for more than a decade.

It’s how Nivea identified the next big thing in deodorants -- a product that leaves no chalky trace on your shirt. When L'Or?al wanted to know why Chinese Canadian consumers were "over-indexing" -- buying and spending a lot more than the average Canadian -- they hired Kozinets to investigate. His ethnographic interviews with Toronto- and Vancouver-area women probed the beauty principles and social codes that explain the pattern.

This spring, 11 USC Annenberg master's students and 41 students at the USC Marshall School of Business, where Kozinets holds a joint appointment, took netnography courses at USC directly from the man who named it. Although netnography is widely used in classroom exercises, this is thought to be the first time anyone taught courses exclusively devoted to the powerful social media research method.

Among the projects by the recently graduated students:

o Amy Li studied how Chinese telecom giant Huawei could better leverage social media to break into the U.S. market. Fifteen weeks of online scouting, data collection, coding and analysis and in-depth interviews had revealed two important subcultures. Li calls them die-hards and switchers. The former are passionate about their Huawei phones, but mostly quiet on social media; the latter are loud but fickle. If Huawei could mobilize these two audiences as brand ambassadors, the impact might be big.

At the start of the class, Li landed a job with the company's international marketing department of the company, where she'll put her insights to use.

o Amy Chiu uncovered an intriguing subculture of people using the Hulu streaming service as a "synthetic companion" to provide background noise while they work or sleep, or a familiar voice while they do mindless chores. They "listen to" rather than "watch" Hulu, repeating episodes they've already seen.

"It turned out that Instagram and YouTube were really important for Amy's project," Kozinets noted. "People weren't going on forums and saying: 'I listen to Hulu in the background.'" Rather, they posted pictures or video with Hulu visible on a screen in the background. With netnography, he explained, "very often you're looking for a needle in a haystack. Something unusual that might give you an idea of where the mainstream is headed."

o Ian Hurley MA '17 looked at social media audience engagement opportunities for REI. The outdoor gear retailer gained attention for its #optoutside campaign to encourage people to go into nature instead of going shopping on Black Friday. It has also run a female empowerment campaign. But more seemed possible. Hurley broke down the social media communities around backpacking, hiking and running into eight experience levels -- Alpinists at the top, novices at the bottom and then broke the groups down even more.

More valuable than the specifics of his REI netnography, however, is the appreciation Hurley gained for real-world qualitative research.

"That's what the class left all of us with: that this is difficult to do. It takes time," he said. "And it's important."

Kozinets will teach netnography again in the spring. Learn more about the class projects, Robert Kozinets and netnography's origin story on USC Annenberg's website.

USC's Alicia Di Rado contributed to this report.

"My grandpa, uncle and cousin were in the military, and I've always been interested in it," Detrick said. "With physical therapy, I can serve those who serve."

Detrick was so committed to working with the military, he started a clerkship at the David Grant USAF Medical Center, the Air Force's largest medical facility on the West Coast.

"I have a passion for driving prevention and increasing quality of care," said Detrick, who was at the base in Fairfield, Calif., for nearly three months. "If we can do that for active-duty officers, we can prevent so many of the issues we see in our veterans."

Detrick, along with two other Trojans, just completed his extended 16-week clerkship to provide treatment to soldiers at military bases across the country.

A new skill set

"I didn't have any background in military or know much about it before going," says Claudia Haeussler DPT '17, whose clerkship took her to Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. "I'd heard from other clinicians -- and I found this to be true -- that in the military, you have a lot more autonomy."

In the civilian world, physical therapists can't prescribe medications or request imaging for injuries without a doctor's consent. "I was able to order X-rays or MRIs," Haeussler said. "You're the first line of defense if anyone has a sprain or muscular/skeletal issue."

Within the military model, physical therapists have a broader scope of practice than in the civilian world. "We're more like primary care providers in the sense that I did most patient evaluations and re-evaluations," Detrick said. "We could also prescribe some drugs, like muscle relaxants and higher-strength Tylenol and Ibuprofen."

Chelsea Weedman DPT '17 sought to expand her skill set by working with amputees. "I was seeking something that would help me grow," Weedman said. "I knew this would be a challenge, and I felt this kind of opportunity as a student was really going to be beneficial."

The hybrid internship program at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, where Weedman spent her clerkship, was designed so students have access to the extensive physical therapy and prosthetics services.

The program is a "unique opportunity for physical therapy students to gain experience with various aspects of rehabilitation for our military service members and veterans with extremity trauma and amputation," said Shawn Farrokhi DPT '03, PhD '09, Weedman's supervisor and senior scientist at the Extremity Trauma and Amputation Center of Excellence. In addition, students participate in focused and clinically relevant research projects that will pave the way for innovation and improvements in future rehabilitation, he added.

Quality of care

The students agree having access to unlimited resources and the military's state-of-the-art technology vastly improves the kind of care they provided.

"We had a movement retraining clinic where we could attach motion-capture markers and have patients run on the treadmill to determine if they have a movement impairment," Weedman said. "They can see on a screen if they're doing well with a particular [physical therapy] strategy. We were treating them using real-time visual feedback and tailoring treatments as much as we could."

Without insurance limitations, physical therapists can provide as many sessions as they see fit.

I could give really top care and throw everything I can at an injury to get patients back to work quickly. That doesn't always happen on the outside.

Claudia Haeussler

"I could give really top care and throw everything I can at an injury to get patients back to work quickly," Haeussler said. "That doesn't always happen on the outside."

Additionally, having different types of providers -- occupational therapists, surgeons and mental health professionals -- all under one roof creates more integrated care.

"Being able to collaborate with other providers offers a huge advantage," Weedman said. "All of the services that patients need are so close together; you're able to talk to their doctors, which is a new skill."

Haeussler was encouraged to experience different forms of treatment outside of physical therapy. "With the hospital being right here, I was able to take excursions to see different procedures," Haeussler said. "I saw an ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] reconstruction, and I was able to follow up with that patient. I saw that whole continuum of care."

A unique patient population

The majority of the patients students see are fit, active-duty men in their mid-20s, a unique population compared to the civilian world.

"Essentially, I treated high-level athletes -- no one was overweight," said Haeussler, who often saw shoulder injuries, along with ankle fractures or sprains that come with jumping out of planes. "Guys will come in and say they have pain on mile 10. They're working out four-plus hours a day to prepare for deployment and they're all very motivated."

When Haeussler recommended alternative forms of exercise, she's assured patients follow her protocol.

"[Officers] are required to do training every morning, and I can put restrictions on their profiles," she said. "I can say no pushups or no more than 40 pounds on their backs, and their commanders see that. I can dictate activities based on patients' injuries versus just hoping they follow a program."

Many of Weedman's patients had experienced traumatizing injuries from motorcycle accidents or intense falls while on Navy ships.

"These patients had been through a lot more mentally and medically -- concussions, traumatic brain injuries or possibly other trauma to their organs," she said. "Learning to relate to people who've really gone through hardship, and discussing their care and what's best for them has been a valuable lesson."

Still, providing continuity of care can be a challenge in the military.

"One of the hardest things about a rotation like this is all of the moving pieces," Detrick said. "All of a sudden, you or your PT could get deployed. With the number of providers and technicians patients have seen, you can imagine having to detail your story each time, or providers being consistent with the way they cue exercises and deliver treatments. That makes it difficult, but that's the nature of the military."

Trojan developers were highlighted for their work on "documentary games," with one focusing on the cat owned by the former Iranian prime minister, to role-playing games, such as one based on news ripped from intelligence-leaking headlines. And some games are already making waves in the marketplace -- Raw Data, the first virtual reality game to make $1 million in a month and created by a USC School of Cinematic Arts professor, alumni and students -- was showcased at E3. A USC Thornton School of Music alumnus even composed the game's music.

It seems only natural that the world's pre-eminent trade show for computer and video gaming took place in the backyard of USC Games, which has led the Princeton Review's game design program rankings for North America five out of the last six years.

"USC students are given an invaluable opportunity to interact with the most innovative game creators in the world -- and they do not even have to go very far from campus," said Sam Roberts, USC Interactive Media & Games Division program manager and director of USC Games Publishing. "They see how to go from the inception of an idea to making it a 3-D reality."

While E3 is traditionally held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, satellite events also often occur at venues close to the USC campus, with Microsoft's press conference occurring at the Galen Center and Sony's press conference held at the Shrine Auditorium. Many developers were hosted through IndieCade, an international showcase of independent games, with its annual festival calling the USC School of Cinematic Arts campus home since last year.

More than 50 USC students, alumni or faculty were part of E3 this year, and many are associated with USC Games, a collaboration of the USC School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media & Games division and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Computer Science.

Just some of the highlights of USC-led game projects exhibiting at E3 include:

The Cat and the Coup: history gamified (through the eyes of a cat)

The Cat and the Coup was certainly one of the strangest games at E3.

Billing itself as a "documentary video game," the player takes on the role of the cat of Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected prime minister of Iran. As a player, you assist Mossadegh in a journey back through significant events of his life and world history by knocking objects off shelves, scattering papers, jumping on his lap and scratching him.

The game was co-designed by USC School of Cinematic Arts assistant professor of the practice of cinematic arts Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad, a former USC Game Innovation Lab director now studying in the USC School of Cinematic Arts' John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts.

The Cat and the Coup, like USC Games Director Tracy Fullerton's Walden, the game based on the life and writings of Henry David Thoreau that will be released later this summer, is a game that eschews traditional gameplay mechanics for a deeper dive into experiential history.

With new visuals re-thought for the 4K gaming experience, the game is sure to be even more of a visual mind-bender without sacrificing its down-the-rabbit-hole (or cat-hole) view of historical relations between the U.S. and Iran.

"Ever since we released the PC version in 2011, my collaborator Kurosh wanted to make a version that made people want to study the world with a magnifying glass," Brinson said. "4K satisfies this want. Every moment is like a deep study of the images and therefore the world, and by extension, the history."

Virtual Virtual Reality: a meta VR experience

If you'd like more virtual reality in your virtual reality, then this "Portal" meets Inception and the films of Charlie Kaufman meets the tropes of virtual reality experience is for you.

A winner of the 2017 Google Play Award for Best VR Experience, Virtual Virtual Reality bills itself as "a game about VR, A.I. and our shared sci-fi fever dreams."

The story takes place in two acts, and throughout 50-plus layers of "virtual virtual reality" before the end of your hero's journey and a final act of grand purpose: upload yourself into one last level of VR or hit reset.

Lead designer Samantha Gorman, pursuing her PhD in media arts and practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, used her work in a VR art and writing research lab to inform the game's universe and VR startup in-jokes. Students Neilson KS, Brendan LoBuglio, Will Anderson, Colin Horgan and Zach Suite also worked on the game.

Tracking Ida: piecing together a civil rights and muckraking puzzle

In the "history as experiential game" vein of Walden and the The Cat and the Coup, Tracking Ida is an educational alternate reality game inspired by the pioneering investigative journalism of Ida B. Wells in the 1890s. Players uncover Wells' crusade against lynching and use her strategies to investigate police and vigilante killings today. Along the way, they solve puzzles, decode messages through a phonograph, role-play as investigative journalists, interview members of their community and harness social media to spread awareness.

Recent USC Games alumna Lishan AZ, a Forbes "30 Under 30" winner, is the game's lead designer.

Hackers of Resistance: a mirror held up to reality

Hackers of Resistance is an interactive performance where the player is called upon to uncover government operations and communications as a member of a transnational feminist organization that is equal parts WikiLeaks and nod to feminist art collective Sisters of Survival. Aiming to break the stereotype of the usually male "400-pound hacker," players are free to roam a makeshift hacker den, where environmental storytelling provides a cyberfeminist take on cybersecurity resources, hacking experiments and other Easter eggs.

The game was developed by USC Games students Andrea Cao, Tonia Beglari and Emilia Yang.

Ninety-seven names, 97 colleges.

The school's second graduating class embraced the challenge laid out by last year's inaugural group by matching its remarkable 100 percent graduation rate with a 100 percent college-acceptance rate.

"[Last year's class] may have been the first, but you all represent the continuation of a tradition," said Karen Symms Gallagher, USC Rossier School of Education dean and chair of the Ednovate board of directors.

The USC Rossier School launched USC Hybrid High in 2012, creating a model focused on meeting the personalized needs of each child through technology and teacher involvement, and established Ednovate as a charter management organization to handle daily operations.

The graduates from the downtown Los Angeles school's 2017 class received 547 combined acceptances to four-year colleges with more than $5 million in combined grants and scholarships. Seven graduates will attend USC this fall: Mayra Blas, Axel Garcia, salutatorian Leslie Hernandez, Astrid Kayembe, Reo Kobayashi, Danielle Mares and Ariana Torres.

Overcoming hardships

Despite multiple pleas to save their cheers until the end of the ceremony, enthusiastic family and friends in the audience couldn't help but voice their support when each graduate's name was announced. After all, there was a lot to celebrate.

Class speaker Kavembe reminded her fellow graduates that they -- like their new school -- had started out timidly, adjusting to a new model of learning.

"Hybrid High taught us how to be deliberate in all of our actions and become the best versions of ourselves," she said. "Hybrid High is an extraordinary school, and [it] wanted us to be extraordinary students. The struggle to becoming our best selves was not always an easy one, but it was most definitely a rewarding one."

Senior Ailen Salazar spoke about the challenges she faced as an undocumented immigrant who ultimately became valedictorian. Salazar will be attending Cornell University.

"It really wasn't my intelligence but rather my work ethic and my grit that got me where I am today," she said. "I was dedicated and passionate, and unwilling to let my status get in the way of my education."

And Oliver Sicat '01, CEO of Ednovate, noted that every graduate has a story of overcoming adversity through support from family, teachers, advisers, donors and a board that all work to see them succeed.

"After you graduate from college, you will have some privilege, and it's our hope that you will use your privilege to do the same for others who are in need, that you will pay it forward and take your talent in math, science, creativity, humor, art -- whatever you're passionate about -- and use it to make this world a better place," Sicat said.

A new study led by Keck Medicine of USC neuropsychologist Duke Han, associate professor of family medicine (clinical scholar) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, suggests that cognitive tests can detect early Alzheimer's in people without symptoms.

"In the last decade or so, there has been a lot of work on biomarkers for early Alzheimer's disease," Han said. "There are new imaging methods that can identify neuropathological brain changes that happen early on in the course of the disease. The problem is that they are not widely available, can be invasive and are incredibly expensive. I wanted to see whether the cognitive tests I regularly use as a neuropsychologist relate to these biomarkers."

Putting neuropsychological measures to the test

Han and his colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 61 studies to explore whether neuropsychological tests can identify early Alzheimer's disease in adults over 50 with normal cognition.

The study, published in Neuropsychology Review, found that people who had amyloid plaques -- clusters of protein fragments that form in the brain and grow in number, eventually getting in the way of the brain's ability to function -- performed worse on neuropsychological tests of global cognitive function, memory, language, visuospatial ability, processing speed and attention/working memory/executive function than people who did not have amyloid plaques.

The study also found that people with neurodegeneration performed worse on memory tests than people with amyloid plaques.

"The presumption has been that there would be no perceivable difference in how people with preclinical Alzheimer's disease perform on cognitive tests," Han said. "This study contradicts that presumption."

Routine cognitive screenings: A new normal?

Han believes that the study results provide a solid argument for incorporating cognitive testing into routine, annual checkups for older people.

Having a baseline measure of cognition before noticing any kind of cognitive change or decline could be incredibly helpful because it's hard to diagnose early Alzheimer's disease if you don't have a frame of reference to compare to.

Duke Han

"Having a baseline measure of cognition before noticing any kind of cognitive change or decline could be incredibly helpful because it's hard to diagnose early Alzheimer's disease if you don't have a frame of reference to compare to," Han said. "If people would consider getting a baseline evaluation by a qualified neuropsychologist at age 50 or 60, then it could be used as a way to track whether someone is experiencing a true decline in cognition in the future."

An estimated 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's and that number could reach 16 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

Early detection could be a powerful tool to manage it, Han said, giving people precious time to try different medications or interventions that may slow the progression of the disease early on.

"While there's no cure for Alzheimer's disease, the earlier you know that you're at risk for developing it, the more you can potentially do to help stave off that diagnosis in the future," Han said. "For example, exercise, cognitive activity and social activity have been shown to improve brain health."

Researchers from USC and France identified that Bdf1, a gene-regulating protein, is critical for the survival of the pathogenic fungus Candida albicans.

"We have shown that Bdf1 is an important new target for drug design," said Charles McKenna, a senior author of the study who is a professor of chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "Our findings show that compounds that bind to this target will disrupt the growth of the fungus, opening the way to novel drug treatments for fungal disease."

The French scientists who led the study with McKenna were J?r?me Govin and Carlo Petosa from the University of Grenoble Alpes.

The fungus C. albicans is an aggressive pathogen that in healthy people is normally held in check by the immune system. However, people with a weakened immune system, including patients who have cancer, HIV or autoimmune diseases, are susceptible to the infection, which can be life-threatening, McKenna said.

The team's findings, published on May 18 in the journal Nature Communications, may prove timely. Fungal infections such as candidiasis are increasingly resistant to drug treatments. Each year, an estimated 46,000 patients in the United States become infected with invasive candidiasis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"When susceptible people develop candida infections, the fungus may enter the bloodstream. If treatment is unsuccessful, it has a very high mortality rate -- in the 40 percent range," McKenna said. "We have a very limited number of drugs that are effective in treating such systemic infections. Unfortunately, like many other pathogens, C. albicans is increasingly resistant to the few available drugs, raising the stakes for patients, and fresh approaches are urgently needed."

Convergent bioscience research

McKenna noted that his team's discovery was made possible through convergent bioscience, an emerging fusion of multidisciplinary research to accelerate health-related discoveries from the bench to the bedside. By drawing from a diverse network of scientists, engineers and students, the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience program fosters biomedical discovery, innovation and real-world solutions to fast-track detection and cures for diseases ranging from microbial infections to Alzheimer's and cancer.

This fall, USC will open the hub for this new initiative, Michelson Hall -- a 190,000 square-foot, high-tech research facility supported by a $50 million gift from retired spinal surgeon Gary K. Michelson and his wife, Alya Michelson. The facility will house the new USC Center for Drug Discovery with McKenna as its director.

Many scientists are studying alternative approaches for possible treatments to diseases such as cancer by manipulating gene expression. The USC-Grenoble team is the first to prove that this approach is feasible to target fungal infections.

The idea is that if you shut down this specific protein, Bdf1, you totally disrupt the whole process of gene expression and it becomes impossible for the fungus to grow.

J?r?me Govin

"The idea is that if you shut down this specific protein, Bdf1, you totally disrupt the whole process of gene expression and it becomes impossible for the fungus to grow," Govin said. "Moreover, the fungus is no longer virulent when injected into mice."

The challenge for the scientists was finding a compound that shut down the Bdf1 protein without mistakenly affecting any similar proteins in humans.

"Using a technique called X-ray crystallography, we showed that the fungal Bdf1 protein and corresponding human proteins are very different at the atomic level," Petosa said. "This showed that compounds could specifically inhibit the fungal protein without affecting the human bromodomain proteins."

By screening a large library of chemical compounds at the California Institute for Biomedical Research, the researchers have already identified one compound in particular that selectively inhibits Bdf1. The finding holds great promise for future drug development.

"It shows that a whole new class of antifungal drugs is possible," McKenna said.

Other participants in the work were Boris Kashemirov, Elena Ferri and Yingsheng Zhou at USC; University of Grenoble Alpes researchers Flore Mietton, Morgane Champleboux, Ninon Zala, Marie Cour?on and Didier Spittler; Dani?le Maubon, C?cile Garnaud and Muriel Cornet from Grenoble University Hospital and the University of Grenoble Alpes; Murielle Chauvel and Christophe d'Enfert of Institut Pasteur (Paris); and Mitchell Hull and Mike Harbut of the California Institute for Biomedical Research.

The work was supported by French grants, including the Agence National de Recherche and the French FACE foundation, and an estimated $454,000 from a National Institutes of Health grant to McKenna (IR21AI113704).

USC's Kinder 2 College program helps children ages 5 and up from surrounding neighborhoods to become proficient in reading and writing by the end of third grade. The new gift will double the number of participating children to 200. The funds, provided by philanthropist Pamela Buffett, also will kick off new after-school sessions in neighborhood elementary schools.

The support is critical to the children's future because kids who can't read proficiently by third grade are more likely to drop out of high school, said Thomas S. Sayles, USC senior vice president for university relations. "The more children we can reach now, the more students we can ultimately prepare for USC or other top universities."

Los Angeles resident Araceli Rodriguez first heard about Kinder 2 College when her son Carlos was in kindergarten. She was eager to boost Carlos' reading and writing skills, but she wasn't proficient in English, so she enrolled him in the literacy program.

Carlos loves it. The program is fun and keeps him interested, Rodriguez said, because "it is play and work."

Now a fourth grader, Carlos gets good grades in school and enjoys reading, writing and math, his mom said. The program has built his confidence, and he proudly shares what happens at school and Kinder 2 College with his parents and siblings each night.

Carlos is always excited to go to USC for the program, Rodriguez said. So are her younger son and daughter, who followed Carlos into the program. Their enthusiasm for reading and improved performance in class has prompted Rodriguez to recommend the program to several other parents at 32nd Street Elementary School.

It's for boys and girls

The program previously focused on boys because boys showed the greatest need for a literacy boost. Now, with the new gift, boys and girls will participate in the program on Saturdays or after school. The children are paired with high school student mentors from USC's signature college prep program, the USC Neighborhood Academic Initiative, or NAI.

"NAI high school students not only help the younger ones improve their reading, but they also become role models for developing study habits that can lead to college," said Kim Thomas-Barrios, executive director of educational partnerships at USC. "I wouldn't be surprised if the program inspires a few NAI students to become teachers."

I want my kids to go to college.

Araceli Rodriguez

University officials envision Kinder 2 College as a pipeline that feeds into NAI, a seven-year program that prepares students in two USC neighborhoods for the academic rigors of college.

NAI graduates are eligible for a full scholarship to USC, provided they meet admission requirements.

Rodriguez said that she likes how the Kinder 2 College program pushes her children to learn and achieve. "I want my kids to go to college," she said, especially if they can go to USC.

"This generous gift from Pamela Buffett will allow us to help thousands of students who share our neighborhood," Sayles said. "Together, Kinder 2 College and NAI expand the pool of students eligible to come to USC, and that's a win for USC and the community."

"Money can't buy happiness," according to the popular proverb states, but the way people feel about their financial situation and how they behave regarding their money can have profound effects on health and well-being, says new USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology Assistant Professor Reginald Tucker-Seeley.

His current research focuses on financial well-being across the cancer continuum, from prevention to end-of-life care. In this work, he goes beyond capturing socioeconomic circumstances using traditional measures of socioeconomic status, such as income and education, and attempts to discern how an individual's financial situation affects their physical and mental health and behaviors.

"Financial well-being describes how socioeconomic status is actually lived," said Tucker-Seeley, who most recently was an assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard University before arriving at USC in May. "For instance, you and I could report the same income on a survey, but we may live that income very differently. Measures of financial well-being attempt to drill down into that lived experience."

Financial well-being

Tucker-Seeley described the three main domains in his model for measuring financial well-being: material, or the resources one has; psychosocial, or how one feels about those resources; and behavioral, or how an individual uses those resources. The multifaceted concept has already shown its potential to provide deeper insights for intervention and policy development, he added.

Measures of financial well-being help us better clarify socioeconomic intervention targets.

Reginald Tucker-Seeley

"Even after we control for traditional measures of socioeconomic status like income and education in our statistical models, we still see a significant association over and above the traditional measures of socioeconomic status. That's telling us that indicators of financial well-being are robust correlates of health," he said. "Measures of financial well-being help us better clarify socioeconomic intervention targets. We can be more precise about the area we're defining, measuring and intervening."

Another possible advantage: Study participants may be more likely to answer financial well-being questions than traditional income questions, Tucker-Seeley added.

"People may not tell you how much they make, but surprisingly we have found that they will tell you if they're having problems paying their bills, if they are worried about their financial situation or if they are satisfied with their current financial resources," he said.

Finding his academic calling

After receiving his bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, Tucker-Seeley's career began in the finance department of a managed health care company in St. Louis and then as an internal auditor at Saint Louis University. However, an undergraduate study-abroad experience at London's Richmond College sparked an interest in the social sciences that stuck with him, and he began pursuing a master's degree in counseling and family therapy part-time while working at Saint Louis University.

Eventually, he returned to being a full-time student, but during his clinical internship at the Washington University Student Health and Counseling Service, he realized that being a practicing therapist also wasn't his calling. Luckily, around that time he happened to read an article on the bio-psycho-social approach to health written by a professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The article helped Tucker-Seeley realize that he wanted to conduct research on the social factors that influence health outcomes.

"I was conducting research for my thesis and really loved the research process; I actually minored in research methodology while at Saint Louis University," he said. "Additional reading on the bio-psycho-social approach to health provided the language for what I was interested in and introduced me to the phrase 'social determinants of health.' I remember reading those papers thinking, 'I have to study the social determinants of health.'"

He did just that. Pursuing what has turned out to be his true calling, Tucker-Seeley completed both a master's degree and doctorate at the Harvard School of Public Health. After that, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cancer prevention and control at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health. He later received a joint appointment at both institutions as assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences.

"If you look back at my journey, it may look a bit planned -- the fact that I'm interested in financial issues and well-being and psychosocial issues, and I have a background in accounting and mental health -- but at the time, it was not a planned journey," Tucker-Seeley said.

Real-world impacts via policy work and teaching

In addition to continuing his work on financial well-being at USC, Tucker-Seeley will also have the opportunity to apply his knowledge in the federal policymaking environment as one of the 2017-18 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows. Beginning in September, he will spend four months taking part in a health policy "boot camp" to learn about the federal health policymaking process and then spend another eight months working with a congressional or executive office and providing expertise on health policy issues. He will then return to USC for the second year of the fellowship to complete a related research project.

"Learning how federal health policy gets made was an incredibly attractive part of this fellowship," Tucker-Seeley said. "Since I'm interested in how health policy affects different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups, I'm especially looking forward to seeing how policies addressing health disparities are created."

Tucker-Seeley is also looking forward to teaching at USC Davis. Inspired by his service on the Commission for Health Advocacy and Equity in Rhode Island, he created a course called "Measuring and Reporting Health Disparities" at the Harvard School of Public Health. The now 3-year-old case-based learning course takes students through the process of developing health disparities reports for a state or large city.

While working with the commission, he learned about state health policy and the necessary intersectoral collaborations necessary to address health disparities, he said.

"Learning to translate research on the social determinants of health for policy efforts to reduce disparities are critical skills for our students, so I developed the course to give students an opportunity to learn and practice those skills. I love teaching it and I'm excited to bring the course to USC and engage with students on health disparities across the life course."