What Happens When Food-Safety Chemicals React With Food?

USC Viterbi researcher Adam Simpson studies compounds created when industrial disinfectants alter food, and whether those changes could affect human health.

Viterbi School News

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50 Years of Engineering Better Health

BME 50 - The Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC Viterbi and Keck celebrated 50 years of excellence and innovation with a two-day gathering

What If the Device Changing Brain Medicine Was Free for Anyone to Build?

BME50 - A USC Viterbi bioengineer's implantable device that any researcher can use, modify, and build on is nearly ready for its first animal test. Getting here required reinventing not just the hardware, but how science shares its tools.

Four Innovators Gather at USC to Explore the Devices Changing Medicine

BME50 - At the Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering's 50th anniversary symposium, four researchers showed how far a device can travel: from a laser cutter in a campus lab to a clinical trial, from a lollipop to a diagnostic tool, from a blind eye to restored vision.

There is no “Brain X-Ray.” A USC Neurosurgeon-Engineer is Helping Build Better Ones

BME50 - A USC neurosurgeon and engineer argues that the tools to monitor the brain cheaply and without surgery are within reach - and that getting there requires putting engineers where patients actually are.

10 Weeks to Test-Drive a Career in Research

Each year, the USC Institute for Creative Technologies at USC Viterbi and USC Stevens hosts a summer program where visiting undergraduates participate in mentored research, combining advanced computing with expertise in psychology, linguistics and immersive media.

Building a Better Transistor

USC-led SWIFT project aims to reinvent the transistor using waves of magnetism, potentially slashing energy use and cooling costs, while helping GPS resist jamming

Building Virtual Tumors to Crack Cancer’s Resistance to Immunotherapy

BME50 - A USC Viterbi bioengineer is building digital tumors, cell by cell, with a goal that could change how oncologists treat breast cancer: knowing in advance which patients immunotherapy will actually help.

AI for Engineering and Science

When scientists made the historic first detection of gravitational waves in 2016 — confirming a century-old prediction by Einstein — USC was behind the scenes making it possible.

USC ISI's Pegasus Workflow Management System had spent 15 years working with LIGO, automating the analysis of tens of terabytes of data and running millions of computational tasks that helped prove one of physics' greatest theories. The same software also generated the first physics-based probabilistic seismic hazard map of Southern California.

Today that tradition of AI-accelerated discovery continues across every scientific frontier: USC researchers have developed an AI model capable of simulating billions of atoms simultaneously to unlock new materials; AI tools are decoding the Earth's subsurface to advance CO₂ storage and energy resource management; USC scientists have built a system that can draft a full research paper in under an hour; and AI is compressing years of trial-and-error alloy discovery into weeks.

Unlocking the Physics of Turbulence with AI

A USC-led collaboration has received Department of Energy Genesis Mission funding to develop an AI framework for unprecedented high-fidelity turbulence simulation.

Can AI “Understand” a Fundamental Concept of Chemistry?

When USC Viterbi researchers developed a way to look inside a powerful AI model, they found evidence that it had independently learned one of chemistry's most fundamental concepts: the chemical bond.

The Fire Forecast: AI Model Accurately Predicts the Spread of Wildfires in Real Time

By combining high-resolution satellite data, terrain data and realistic fire simulations, USC Viterbi researchers have developed a reconstruction and prediction tool for making informed decisions when tackling catastrophic wildfires.

From Alzheimer’s to PTSD: How a USC Scientist Hopes AI Can Unlock – and One Day Restore – Human Memory

Using AI paired with brain-machine interfaces, Dong Song wants to study how memories form in real life, and eventually help those who have lost the ability to make them.

Upcoming Events

Sep

Career Fair Game Plan: How to Stand Out at the Viterbi Career & Internship Expo

Sep. 24, 2026 | 12:00 pm — 12:30 pm

Sep

USC Viterbi State of the School

Sep. 24, 2026 | 3:00 pm — 4:30 pm

Oct

DREAM Industry Mentorship speaker series

Oct. 5, 2026 | 12:00 pm — 12:50 pm

Oct

3rd Therapeutics Symposium by the Transformative Center for Nanomedicine

Oct. 8, 2026 | 2:23 pm — 2:23 pm

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New Space Economy Forum

Tuesday, November 17, 2026 - 9:00am - 6:30pm

For the people building Southern California’s space economy

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Academic Departments

A New Vision for the USC Department of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering

Professor Assad Oberai, newly appointed chair of USC Viterbi’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME), discusses how advances in computation, autonomy and artificial intelligence are reshaping the field - and where AME should focus its efforts next.

Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering

USC Space Lab Opens Its Doors as A New Era of Space Competition Takes Off

First-ever open house showcases USC SERC where students are building satellites, developing space robots and preparing for the next generation of space exploration

Astronautical Engineering

A new way to help CAR-T cells fight solid tumors could change cancer treatment

USC researchers developed a technique that uses focused ultrasound to temporarily "light up" solid tumors, giving cancer-fighting immune cells a target they can finally recognize.

Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering

A New Way to Monitor Methane from Abandoned Wells

Petroleum researchers at USC Viterbi School of Engineering have developed a low-cost system for large-scale, continuous monitoring of abandoned wells.

The Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science

SoCal CEERS Symposium Strengthens Ties Between Academia and Industry

Spearheaded by USC Viterbi PhD students, the annual SoCal Civil and Environmental Research Symposium (SoCal CEERS) connects academic research and industry practice for the Southern California CEE community.

Sonny Astani Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Can AI Read the Room? USC Study Finds AI Is Better at Reading Than Listening

Researchers identified why audio AI models miss tone, emotion and other audio cues - and developed new solutions that dramatically improve their ability to interpret speech beyond words

Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science

USC Study Used Sweat, Brain Signals, Eye Movements and AI to Detect Depression and Suicide Risk

Researchers analyzed biomarkers that could help psychiatrists identify at-risk individuals earlier and more objectively, supplementing existing self-report surveys and clinical interviews

Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

A New Model to Improve Resource Planning and Allocation

USC Viterbi’s Karmel S. Shehadeh introduces a framework to help organizations better balance procurement cost, shortages, and waste under uncertainty.

Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering

USC Scientists Are Using Quantum Computing to Rethink Cancer Detection

By combining quantum computing with artificial intelligence, USC researchers are laying the groundwork for medical imaging tools that could help doctors diagnose cancer and plan treatments more precisely

Toward Quantum-Augmented Databases: New USC Study Aims to Break the Bottlenecks Slowing Modern Data Systems

USC Viterbi researcher wins NSF Career Award and aims to study how quantum computing can transform database optimization for a data-intensive future

A USC Doctoral Student Solves a Longstanding Problem in Quantum Cryptography

Miryam Huang is the first USC student to win the prestigious Machtey Award, recognized for solving a cryptographic problem first posed in 1976 and later asked as an open question in the quantum setting, with important implications for quantum cryptography.

Scientists Propose New Explanation for Quantum “Spookiness” That Einstein Might Actually Like

USC Viterbi researchers suggest mysterious quantum connections may arise from common-sense physics, not supernatural weirdness.

Quantum Computing

USC Viterbi has been a global pioneer in quantum computing.

In 2011, the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center at the USC Information Sciences Institute became the first academic institution in the world to house and operate a commercial quantum computer — a D-Wave One that prompted Google and NASA to follow with their own systems just two years later.

Today, USC remains the only university in the world with a dedicated on-site quantum computer, and in 2024 added the first IBM Quantum Innovation Center on the West Coast, giving researchers cloud access to IBM's most advanced systems.

Ranked among the top five graduate programs in quantum information science globally, USC Viterbi is training the next generation of quantum scientists while pushing the field forward - from demonstrating unconditional exponential quantum scaling advantage to probing exotic kagome superconductors.

Published on October 11th, 2016

Last updated on September 18th, 2026