Discovery Project Speakers – 2023
Speaker Biographies
Leana Golbuchik, Ph.D
Sai Kumar, M.D.
Ben Chua
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Ph.D
Kambiz Akhavan
Kenneth Spencer
Vera Gluscevic
E. Moncell Durden
Leana Golbuchik, Ph.D
Stephen and Etta Varra Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Lecture: Cryptography: The Art of Confusion and Diffusion
Biography:
Leana Golubchik is the Stephen and Etta Varra Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at USC. She also serves as the Director of the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program. Prior to that, she was on the faculty at the University of Maryland and Columbia University. Leana received her Ph.D. from UCLA. Her research interests are broadly in the design and evaluation of large-scale distributed systems, including deep learning systems, hybrid clouds and data centers, and their applications in machine learning and data analytics as well as privacy and security. Leana is the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems. She is the recipient of the IBM Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Okawa Foundation Award, the WTS-LA Diversity Leadership Award, the USC Remarkable Women Award, and the USC Mellon Culture of Mentoring Award. She is a Fellow of AAAS.
Sairam Kumar, MD.
Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics(Voluntary)
Lecture: The Developing Brain and the Neuroscience of Attention
Biography:
Dr. Kumar is a Board Certified General and Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrician. He trained in General Pediatrics at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, and Developmental Pediatrics at CHLA-USC. He also completed a fellowship in Leadership in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. He is a current Developmental-Behavioral Pediatric Attending at CHLA’s Behavioral Health Institute/Boone Fetter Clinic. Dr. Kumar’s interests lie in early childhood, Giftedness/2e, supporting children after crises and grief, and the relationship between complex neurodevelopmental disorders and behavioral health.
Benjamin Chua
Assistant Director
USC Trojan Marching Band
Lecture: How Music Enhances Your Life
Biography:
Benjamin joined the Trojan Marching Band in 1987 as a freshman at USC. Through the years, Ben has worked his way up the Trojan Marching Band organization from squad leader to Assistant Director in charge of directing musical ensembles for the Olympic sports at the University of Southern California. He has worked and participated in Superbowls, College Bowl Games, and with famous Musical Artists and Bands throughout his tenure at the University of Southern California. Ben is a graduate of the University of Southern California. Ben also works as a Technical Consultant for the City of Los Angeles. Ben has worked in the film/video post-production industry, working mainly with film restoration and new film and television productions.
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Ph.D
Professor, James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning
USC Sol Price School of Public Policy
Website
Lecture: Economics of Art
Biography:
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the Price School at the University of Southern California where she teaches classes in the arts, urban planning and economic development. A recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, she holds the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress
Currid-Halkett is the author of four books, including most recently The Overlooked Americans which was published with Basic Books in June 2023. Her books have been published in multiple languages.
Currid-Halkett’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles, California
To learn more, please visit: www.elizabethcurridhalkett.com
Kambiz Akhavan
Executive Director
USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future
Lecture: Why America Is So Divided and What Young People Can Do About It
Biography:
Kamy Akhavan, former CEO of ProCon.org, the nation’s leading source of nonpartisan research on controversial issues, now leads the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California. Kamy has more than 20 years of experience in bridging divides at national levels. His work has served more than 200 million people, including students at more than 12,000 schools in all 50 states and 100 countries. He has been published and interviewed in textbooks, magazines, television, radio, newspapers, and websites including Reuters, Associated Press, Fox News, ABC, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, and CBS. He holds a BA and MA in History from UCLA.
Kenneth Spencer, J.D
Trial Attorney and Vice President, Fidelity National Law Group
Adjunct Lecturer in Law
USC Gould Law School
Lecture: I Will See You In Court… Maybe?
Biography:
Kenneth Spencer is a graduate of Rutgers Law School in Newark, New Jersey and has been practicing law in Los Angeles for over 30 years. He has experience in a myriad of areas including real property, personal injury, labor and employment, criminal defense, business and entertainment law. He is also a part-time Adjunct Lecturer in Law at the USC Gould Law School, and is a mentor to USC student-athletes to help them choose a profession after their playing days are over. Eventually, the ball stops bouncing for everyone. Professor Spencer is also the designer and patent holder of “The Jury Case” which is a jury selection product that has been used in civil and criminal courtrooms throughout the country since 2013. Chances are that if you are involved in a jury trial in America, either the judge, the court clerk, an attorney or jury consultant will be using The Jury Case during the jury selection phase of the trial. Professor Spencer is the proud parent of two sons and one stepdaughter, and is a fitness zealot and sports enthusiast. His favorite athletes are LeBron James, Charles Barkley and Jack Nicklaus, and he is a die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan.
Vera Gluscevic, Ph.D
Website
Lecture: Can You Touch a Galaxy?
Everything we see in the night sky, all the planets, stars, and galaxies, account for less than a few percent of everything there is in the universe. An unknown substance—which we call dark matter—is six times more abundant than the stars and gas that light up the universe. It forms gigantic formations called “halos,” each with a galaxy at its heart. Yet, dark matter is not made of any known particles, and it doesn’t respond to normal forces: if you were to stick your hand into the halo of the Milky Way, your fingers would go right through it. Still, its immense gravity holds our Galaxy together. So what is this dark matter, where did it come from, what is it made of, and why can’t we see it? I will tell you a story of how we aim to resolve this mystery of modern physics, using the largest surveys of the night sky ever constructed, tools of mathematics, and the help of supercomputers.
Biography:
Professor Gluscevic studies dark matter in the universe, using cosmology—the branch of physics and astronomy that deals with the universe as a whole. Her approach is to combine particle theory, observations, and simulations, in order to explore microscopic properties of dark matter, and with it, fill in a major missing piece in our understanding of the physical reality.
Professor Gluscevic got her undergraduate degree in astrophysics in Belgrade (Serbia) and her PhD at Caltech (Pasadena, California), studying the cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow of the Big Bang. She was a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, before joining USC Physics and Astronomy faculty as a Gabilan Assistant Professor in 2019. Her research group includes postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students, and highschool summer students, all working collaboratively on aspects of the dark matter problem. Professor Gluscevic has previously co-led dark matter science teams for the Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 collaborations, and she currently serves on NASA Physics of the Cosmos executive committee. Her work was recognized through Cottrell Scholars Award, NSF CAREER award, and USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Junior Faculty Award. In addition to research, she works with the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching to create active and inclusive learning experiences in physics classrooms at USC.
E. Moncell Durden
Associate Professor of Practice, Hip Hop, Jazz, Improvisation
USC Gloria Kaufman School of Dance
Website
Personal Website
Lecture: The Journey to Finding Your Path
Biography:
E. Moncell Durden is a dance educator, choreographer, ethnographer, embodied historian, author, and associate professor of practice at the University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman International School of Dance. He specializes in pedagogical practices that prove cultural and historical context in what he calls the morphology of Afro-kinetic memory. A highly sought-after instructor, Durden teaches practical and theoretical classes in the U.S. and abroad and is an expert in locking, house, hip-hop, authentic jazz, and party dances from 1900 to the present. He is a member of Mop Top Crew, the pioneering NYC Hip Hop dance group, and alumnus of Rennie Harris Puremovement, the Philadelphia-based hip-hop theater company. Before joining the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance faculty, Durden taught for seven years at Drexel University. He held appointments at the Yale School of Drama, Wesleyan University, and Bennington College. He has published articles in Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches, Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century, and the The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America. He is currently writing an article for the Oxford Handbook of Hip-Hop Dance. His groundbreaking documentary, Everything Remains Raw: A Historical Perspective on Hip Hop Dance, was invited by the U.S. Embassy in Vladivostok, Russia as a work in progress to screen at their 2013 film festival. In 2010, Durden founded INTANGIBLE ROOTS , an organization dedicated to the education and preservation of Afro-Diasporic social dance formations.