USC names 5 new University and Distinguished Professors

Five faculty members, recognized as leaders in their respective fields, have been appointed University Professors and Distinguished Professors, among USC’s highest faculty honors. Appointed annually, this select group of academics at USC shows outstanding scholarly success, as nominated by their faculty colleagues.

“These distinctions are awarded annually to select outstanding faculty who have brought great distinction and honor to our university through their work,” Andrew T. Guzman, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, wrote in an email to the university community. “Their research enlightens and enriches collective understandings outside of USC and contributes to the advancement of society.

The distinctions of University and Distinguished professors carry equal weight. Their defining differences come down to discipline: University Professors are considered exceptional in the interdisciplinary nature of their work, while Distinguished Professors are considered exceptional in their specific discipline.

University Professors

DARIUS LAKDAWALLA
University Professor of Pharmaceutical Economics and Public Policy
Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation
USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
USC Price School of Public Policy

Darius Lakdawalla is a widely published, award-winning researcher and a leading authority in both health economics and health policy, who sits on the faculties of the USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences as well as the USC Price School of Public Policy. He is also the chief scientific officer at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, one of the nation’s premier health policy research centers.

Lakdawalla’s research is focused primarily on the economics of risks to health, the value and determinants of medical innovation, the economics of health insurance markets and the industrial organization of health care markets. His work has been published in leading journals of economics, medicine and health policy. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and associate editor for the Review of Economics and Statistics, The American Journal of Health Economics and The Journal of Health Economics. He is also an editorial board member at the American Journal of Managed Care: Evidence-Based Diabetes Management and the American Journal of Managed Care: Evidence-Based Oncology.

HEINZ-JOSEF LENZ
University Professor of Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Cancer Biology
Terrence Lanni Chair in Gastrointestinal Cancer Research
Co-Director, USC Brown Center for Cancer Drug Development

A global leader in gastrointestinal oncology, Heinz-Josef Lenz’s international translational research and clinical trials have been practice-changing for the delivery of precision oncology care. Through his extensive international collaborations and his role as principal investigator/multiple principal investigator on the National Cancer Institute’s National Clinical Trials Network and Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network, and a National Cancer Institute Moonshot grant focused on genomic characterization among Hispanics, he will advance global precision medicine to ensure equity in benefit of these advances for all patients. Lenz has changed the way colon cancer patients are treated across the globe. His clinical and translation research has led to approval of multiple novel therapies for patients with colon cancer and changed national and international guidelines.

Lenz is a pioneer in the field of precision medicine. He was the first to identify germline single nucleotide polymorphisms to be predictive and prognostic in GI cancer which are now included in many testing panels. He was the first to measure intratumoral RNA levels associated with efficacy of 5-FU and oxaliplatin. He was the first to show that primary tumor location of colon cancer is an independent predictive and prognostic marker now included in all international guidelines.

Distinguished Professors

MARÍA P. ARANDA
Distinguished Professor of Social Work
Margaret W. Driscoll/Louise M. Clevenger Professor in Social Policy and Administration; Executive Director, USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging; Director of Outreach, Recruitment and Engagement Core, USC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center

María P. Aranda is an internationally recognized social worker and sociobehavioral scholar in the fields of social work, geriatrics and gerontology. As a scientist highly steeped in principles of equity and inclusion, Aranda decided early on that her scholarship had to have high impact and applicability for the populations with lived experience who were represented in her work. Toward this end, Aranda elucidates disparities in health and health outcomes and develops culturally attuned, evidenced-based interventions for diverse adults and families living with dementia, depression, multiple comorbidities and other life-altering conditions that exert significant public health burden, as well as social- and place-based determinants of brain health and mortality.

Aranda has been awarded research grants from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, California Department of Public Health, Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute, John A. Hartford Foundation/ Gerontological Society of America, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Health Resources and Services Administration, Alzheimer’s Los Angeles, the L.A. County Department of Mental Health and the California Community Foundation, among others.

DAVID HIRSHLEIFER
Distinguished Professor of Finance and Business Economics
Robert G. Kirby Chair in Behavioral Finance
USC Marshall School of Business

David Hirshleifer has fundamentally shaped modern finance. His pioneering work on information cascades and investor overconfidence and his creation of the emerging field of “social finance” have had transformative effects across economics, finance and the behavioral sciences.

He is a fellow and former president of the American Finance Association, as well as a fellow of the Financial Management Association, the Finance Theory Group and the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research. He has served as executive editor of the Review of Financial Studies, director of the American and Western Finance associations, and as an editor at other leading finance, economics and business journals. He has written over 80 peer-reviewed articles that have garnered nearing 69,000 Google Scholar Citations. His pathbreaking research has also won distinguished awards, including the Hillcrest Behavioral Finance Award and Smith Breeden Prize for outstanding paper in the Journal of Finance.

CHANITA HUGHES-HALBERT
Distinguished Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Dr. Arthur and Priscilla Ulene Chair in Women’s Cancer
Keck School of Medicine of USC

Chanita Hughes-Halbert is a nationally recognized leader in cancer prevention and minority health research and the associate director for Cancer Health Disparities. She has dedicated her career to reducing the disparities in cancer outcomes that affect patients. Among her many achievements, she has identified sociocultural, psychological, genetic and environmental determinants of cancer health disparities and translates this information into interventions to improve the health of multicultural populations.

For her many contributions, Hughes-Halbert was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017 and received the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Control Award in 2010. President Barack Obama appointed her to the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Advisors in 2012, and in 2014 she joined the National Advisory Council of the National Human Genome Research Institute. The American Association for Cancer Research named her chair of its Minorities in Cancer Research Council the same year, and she received the association’s Distinguished Lecture Award on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities, funded by the Susan G. Komen Foundation, in 2018.