Five USC faculty members were selected as University Professors and Distinguished Professors, a recognition “among USC’s highest faculty honors,” according to a Feb. 20 USC News article. 

The recipients were nominated by their colleagues for their exceptional scholarly achievements and contributions to their respective fields. 

Professors Adam Leventhal and Arthur Stone were presented with the title of University Professor, which is selectively awarded to professors with multidisciplinary interests and outstanding accomplishments across numerous disciplines. Professors David Armstrong, Helen Berman and Maggie Nelson were honored with the title of Distinguished Professors for bringing “special renown” to USC. The final appointments for both awards are made by the University president.

The Daily Trojan interviewed Leventhal, Armstrong, Berman and Nelson on their intellectual pursuits and the advice they have for those with similar academic aspirations. Stone did not respond to the Daily Trojan’s request to comment in time for publication.

---

Daily headlines, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the latest at and around USC.

---

Adam Leventhal

Leventhal, a professor of population and public health sciences and psychology at the Keck School of Medicine, has pursued addiction research ever since he became interested in exploring why people continue to use drugs despite their adverse health effects. 

He is also fascinated by how taking a substance changes an individual’s brain chemistry and how one thinks, feels and views the world. Leventhal said he was motivated to do this research to save lives and examine socio-economic problems.

“Addiction is the leading cause of preventable death,” Leventhal said. “Especially if you total all the different substances that people can get addicted to, and now with non-substance addictions which are increasing, like digital gambling or social media, and other things that may have negative impacts on health.”

In a 2017 study, Leventhal found that adolescents who use modern digital media frequently and intensely are at higher risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms. Such behaviors are due to divided attention and the inability to delay gratification, as users’ wants are often immediately met by digital devices. 

Leventhal encouraged students to be proactive and actively take risks.

“Try not to play it safe … because big things can happen,” Leventhal said. “At the same time, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. You’re going to see your classmates and other people doing amazing things that sound amazing, but you don’t have to do that. You need to do what you have a passion for and can contribute to society in some way.” 

David Armstrong

Armstrong, a professor of surgery and neurological surgery at Keck, is a podiatric surgeon who hopes to “help people move through the world a little bit better.” 

Armstrong said while some may find a “foot doctor” to be an odd profession, he has found the gifts of humility and perspective through his work.

“In this era of hubris and chest-thumping, I don’t think there’s anything else that puts you in a greater position of humility than looking after someone’s feet,” Armstrong said. “When you’re working out at the end of the body and trying to preserve limbs and heal wounds on the end of this anatomic peninsula, it gives you this great gift.”

Currently, Armstrong has been working with consumer electronics and medical devices like smartwatches and smart textiles to help people live a healthier and more active livesfe. At the time of the interview, Armstrong said he was testing a pair of smart socks on himself. 

Armstrong said while the public may imagine researchers as having sudden breakthroughs, there are usually 10 or 20 years of work behind any given innovation. 

“If you have an idea, technology or just a commitment … do it every day and to stay on message,” Armstrong said. “Sometimes you have to repeat yourself 1,000 times, and then all of a sudden, the person you were repeating it to … might say, ‘Oh, hey, man, that’s a really cool thing that you’re doing.’” 

Armstrong said, in some cases, persistence supersedes ability. He said in academia and medicine, the “secret sauce” is to keep going when faced with rejection. 

Armstrong encouraged students to “be a collector of mentors.” He said it is important to ask for advice from mentors at different points in life and to stay in contact with them.

“When you tell them about your successes … all of a sudden, your success is their success,” Armstrong said. “It just adds to the richness, not only of an academic community, but just to everything. And that is an unlimited fountain of good.”

Helen Berman

Berman is a professor of quantitative and computational biology at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She specializes in crystallography, which is the study of materials using crystals. As an undergraduate, Berman became “really interested” in crystallography by working in a lab doing protein crystallography and decided to get fully trained. 

Berman said she became very interested in creating a data resource for proteins in the 1960s and 70s, which led her to co-found the Protein Data Bank in 1971. Around five years ago, a group working out of Google was able to successfully predict the structure of the protein using the PDB and artificial intelligence to make a training set to successfully predict protein structure. 

“This was one of the things that I had hoped would happen someday when I was thinking about it, when I was much younger,” Berman said. “This was my dream, and it came true … and I was here on this Earth long enough to see that happen, and that, to me, was absolutely thrilling.”

After stepping down from PDB, Berman came to USC to begin working on projects to inform the public about how important biological macromolecules are to one’s health and well-being. Always having been interested in the visual arts, Berman worked with filmmakers from the School of Cinematic Arts and faculty from Keck to create projects like a film about HIV prevention. 

Recently, Berman has been collaborating with Alex McDowell, professor of cinematic practice at SCA, by using virtual reality to show how insulin is secreted in the pancreatic beta cell to help people better understand diabetes. 

“It’s extremely difficult to [storytell], because you can’t give people a whole lesson in chemistry and physics while you’re trying to show them what it is that you’re trying to explain,” said Berman. “The big challenge … is how to translate what we know as scientists in a way that other people can understand.”

Berman said the three components of science, technology and community need to be “synergistic” for innovation. She emphasized that all three factors need to continue evolving and that individuals need to be persistent even when the community says, “Your ideas are crazy.” 

“Hopefully, I will still be around to see a new era in science where people will be able to pursue their work the way that I was able to pursue my work,” Berman said. “I want to make sure that that always is the case for the next generation. And I really care about the next generation.”

Maggie Nelson

Nelson, a professor of English at Dornsife and a world-renowned author, said she was drawn to writing from a young age and her passion came naturally. 

Nelson’s career began by writing three books of poetry, and she later published works of non-fiction. In 2017, Nelson came to USC after teaching at colleges in New York and California.  

Nelson said most authors start with no readers and that it is important to be true to yourself to succeed as a writer.

Her own books have shown a steady trajectory of growing its audience and in 2024, her 2009 poetry collection “Bluets” was adapted into a play at the Royal Court Theatre in London. 

For Nelson, the success wasn’t intentional, as she started from a more “indie” world in writing where mainstream recognition wasn’t the main goal of the community she grew up writing with.

“I like genre as much as anybody else,” Nelson said. “People just call anything that falls a little bit outside of [one genre as genre-defying] when, in fact, I think maybe it’s a little bit weirder to expect things to fall into categories from the start.”

Her 2015 book “The Argonauts,” in which Nelson had expected a smaller audience, had an unexpected effect globally and brought many changes to her life. Similarly, the stage adaptation of “Bluets” was a “this is your life” moment for Nelson. 

“Writers work quietly … they’re not present for the scene of anybody reading their books,” Nelson said. “There’s not like a temporal moment where you see your words having impact on anybody, but theater works very differently. So that was pretty interesting, to be in the room when your words are landing.” 

Nelson said writing takes more work than most assume, and creating a book takes “everything.” While teaching a PhD program in English at USC, Nelson said she has taught many talented individuals who had faced the obstacles of the demands of life. She acknowledges that a career in writing is not for everyone, and that “that’s okay.” 

“Who stays a writer and who doesn’t just really depends on preserving your drive,” Nelson said. “It’s also not a tragedy if you don’t keep doing it … But I think you just have to know that you’re not doing it wrong if [your path in writing] seems harder than you thought.”