The University of Southern California Appoints Three Women to Prestigious Faculty Posts

Estela Mara Bensimon was named a University Professor at the University of Southern California. She is the Dean’s Professor in Educational Equity in the Rossier School of Education. She is also the director of the Center for Urban Education, which she founded in 1999. Her research has focused on improving the academic outcomes of students of color. Dr. Bensimon is the former president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She earned her doctorate in higher education from Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City.

Susan Forsburg, a professor of biological sciences, has been named a Distinguished Professor. Her lab focuses on chromosome duplication and its contribution to genomic stability, utilizing a combination of techniques and methods from molecular biology to cutting-edge microscopy. Dr. Forsburg joined the faculty at the University of Southern California in 2004 after teaching at the University of California, San Diego. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in English and molecular biology, Professor Forsburg earned a Ph.D. in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mahta Moghaddam, the holder of the Ming Hsieh Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the university was named a Distinguished Professor. Dr. Moghaddam has developed approaches and algorithms for quantitative interpretation of multichannel radar imagery based on analytical inverse scattering techniques. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Moghaddam is a graduate of the University of Kansas. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois.