University of Southern California

Our faculty inspire, guide and drive the engines that move the university forward in knowledge and research. With a focus on diverse, multidisciplinary skills and engaging ideas, our faculty embody the university’s mission.

USC’s esteemed faculty members ardently participate in tackling contemporary challenges and fostering societal change. They lead the charge in devising inventive solutions to pressing dilemmas in vital domains like healthcare, technology, sustainability, social justice and beyond. Moreover, USC faculty’s expertise extends beyond academia, with many serving as advisers to government bodies, industry leaders and nonprofit organizations, shaping policies and practices worldwide.

USC Chan’s Lifestyle Redesign program expands the role of occupational therapy, helping students improve their mental health and everyday lives through meaningful routines.

In places such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia, USC Dornsife’s Steve Swerdlow takes students beyond textbooks and into communities grappling with repression, activism and democratic change.

USC researchers are creating immersive, high-tech simulations of ocean waves to better understand the benefits of surfing, the devastation of tsunamis and the dynamics of the ocean itself.

Shera is recognized for his pioneering research that enhances understanding of how the human ear separates and detects sound.

USC’s award-winning faculty and researchers look beyond the ordinary to bring new, much-needed insights and developments to a rapidly changing world with complex needs.

Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Known for fiction that blends satire and philosophical inquiry, he won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for James, a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from Jim’s perspective.