Newsmakers
January 30, 2009 11:27 AM
Order in the Court
David Warburton, director of the Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine Program and vice chair of the Department of Surgery at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, will be named an officer in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in the spring.
Warburton also is professor of pediatrics and surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and professor of craniofacial biology at the USC School of Dentistry.
Warburton was cited for service to scientific collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom.
“This is indeed a great honor,” he said. “This means I owe a great debt of gratitude to everyone in the collective Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and USC Family, and the honor is really for them.”
Warburton leads a team of 60 researchers in developmental biology, regenerative medicine and surgery at The Saban Research Institute of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.
The team studies organ development and regeneration, as well as different tissue engineering solutions for lung, kidney, bladder, liver and diabetes.
Hot Stuff
Fokion Egolfopoulos of the USC Viterbi School’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering has become editor-in-chief of Combustion and Flame, the preeminent journal on research in combustion phenomena, published by the Combustion Institute.
He will be responsible for submissions originating from the Americas and Japan.
Egolfopoulos has served six years as a deputy editor and as an associate editor for the journal. His research interests are in aerodynamic and kinetic processes in flames, high-speed air-breathing propulsion, microgravity combustion, mechanisms of combustion-generated pollutants and heterogeneous reacting flows.
He also studies conventional and alternative fuels, including biofuels, detailed modeling of reacting flows and laser-based experimental techniques.
One for the Books
USC Gould School of Law professor Elyn Saks’ acclaimed memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, won first place in its category in the USABookNews.com’s “National Best Books 2008 Awards.”
The online magazine and review Web site for mainstream and independent publishing houses cited the memoir as the “Best Book of 2008” in the health: psychology/mental health category.
In the book, Saks writes about her life journey with schizophrenia and acute psychosis, hoping to put a human face on mental illnesses and help people to better understand them.
A complete list of the winners of the USABookNews.com National “Best Books” 2008 Awards is available at http://www.USABookNews.com
A Cut Above
Surgeon Namir Katkhouda has been named president of the California chapter of the American Society of Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery.
Katkhouda, professor of surgery and director of the Keck School of Medicine of USC's minimally invasive surgery program, is a leader in the development of bariatric, or weight loss, procedures.
In 2002, he performed the first laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery at USC. Now, surgeons at the Keck School perform more than 300 obesity surgeries each year.
Katkhouda said he hopes to include more private practitioners in the chapter, to push surgical innovation in California and to act as a patient advocate to the insurance companies.
Splendid Software
USC Viterbi School of Engineering professor Barry Boehm received a dual mention in The IEEE Software Engineering Journal’s list of best publications in the field over the last quarter century.
Boehm’s 1991 paper “Software Risk Management: Principles and Practices” and his 1996 paper on “Anchoring the Software Process” were among those selected by a blue-ribbon panel of judges as among the best peer-reviewed publications of the past 25 years.
Boehm, co-director of the USC Center for Systems and Software Engineering, has appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Most recently, he was named director of research of the new Systems Engineering Research Center, an 18-member consortium led by USC and the Stevens Institute of Technology, the nation’s first university affiliated research center focused on systems engineering.
Innovative Practice
The USC School of Pharmacy had one of six teams honored for work in improving patient care at the American Society of Health System Pharmacists midyear meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Winners were recognized for successfully creating and implementing innovative approaches to improve the delivery of patient care within their practice settings. Sponsored in cooperation with Amgen, the award recognizes leadership in the enhancement of patient care and other areas of pharmacy practice.
The USC team included Kathleen Johnson, holder of the William A. and Josephine A. Heeres Chair in Community Pharmacy; associate professors Steven Chen and Mel Baron; Cecilia Wu and Elizabeth Cervantes, clinical pharmacists practicing full-time in the clinics; and Sally Lu, director of pharmaceutical services at the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County, previously a clinical pharmacist with USC.
The group also previously won the American Pharmacists Association Foundation Pinnacle Award for its work in the safety net environment.
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USC in the News
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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