April 2026 QCB Newsletter

May 2
6 min read

e-Newsletter Volume 6 Issue 3 | April 2026

Personal Remarks by Dr. Remo Rohs

We are in the last week of classes. In just a few weeks, I am looking forward to seeing another fantastic QBIO class graduate and our CBB students receive their doctoral hoods.

Although we won't have a formal departmental graduation event, we will be available to take photos with your family, friends, and faculty on May 15th from 1-3 pm in the USC Village at the corner of Jefferson and Hoover. I am hoping to see many of you and meet your parents and families. Congratulations to the class of 2026!

I am excited that we have a faculty search for a full-time, teaching-track faculty member. The QCB department grew enrollment in its QBIO classes 10-fold since the department was established in 2021. Details about the search are at the end of this newsletter.

Remo Rohs, Ph.D.

Department Chair

QCB Faculty

University Professor Emeritus Dr. Andy McMahon received the university's Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award at the Academic Honors Convocation from Provost Dr. Andrew Guzman. Dr. McMahon is a Professor Emeritus of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (the department he founded at the Keck School of Medicine) and Quantitative and Computational Biology. Congratulations, Andy! And thanks for your continued contributions to QCB.

QCB joint faculty member Dr. Paul Thompson was installed as the inaugural Popovich Chair in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Keck School of Medicine of USC by its Dean Dr. Carolyn Meltzer. Dr. Thompson is one of the most widely cited neuroscientists in the world and known for developing advanced imaging techniques to map the brain’s structure, function, and genetic influences. The installation highlighted the breadth and impact of his work across disciplines from ophthalmology to quantitative and computational biology. Congrats, Paul!

A feature article on Alzheimer’s Disease Research at USC Today prominently highlighted research performed by QCB faculty. Pioneered in the lab of QCB faculty member Dr. Seva Katritch, computational drug discovery technologies have been applied to discover new drug candidates targeting Alzheimer’s inflammatory pathways in collaboration with Dr. Yassine at Keck, and Dr. Louie at Mann. The research by QCB joint faculty member Dr. Andrei Irimia applied deep neural networks to assess biological brain aging from MRI scans, while Drs. Paul Thompson and Arthur Toga led USC research on brain imaging and omics analysis, enabling better diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease. Please read the full article here.

QCB faculty Dr. Adam MacLean co-organized the 15th annual SoCal SysBio meeting at UCLA and chaired the afternoon session. MacLean lab members presented posters, and Jonathan Martinez gave a lightning talk on catastrophe theory as related to stem cell dynamics. Please read more here.

Dr. Remo Rohs presented a talk "AI for Molecular Biology" at the USC Age Tech Symposium hosted by the Leonhard Davis School of Gerontology and the Viterbi School of Engineering and participated in a panel discussion "Interface between AI and Biotechnology". Symposium speakers (pictured from left to right): Drs. Andrei Irimia, Berenice Benayoun, Remo Rohs, and Sheng Li. See more here.

QCB joint faculty member and structural biologist Dr. Cornelis Gati was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in the Department of Biological Sciences. Dr. Gati works on structural aspects of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) function and pharmacology using cryo-electron microscopy at the Michelson Center for Convergent Biosciences. Congrats, Cornelius!

QCB Publications

QCB postdoc Dr. Maxime Tortora from Dr. Geoff Fudenberg's lab co-led the study published in Molecular Cell, titled "Cohesin cofactor dosage sets the rate of loop extrusion, rendering genome folding tunable yet vulnerable to genetic disruption". This joint work with the group of Dr. Elphege Nora at UCSF uncovers how the kinetic properties of cohesins, the molecular motors organizing our genomes in interphase, are regulated. By comparing simulations with data, the authors found that the rate of loop extrusion is modulated by cofactor dosage, thus characterizing a new 'dial' for cells to tune motor properties and the overall folding of the genome. Please read the paper here.

CBB graduate Dr. Yibei Jiang from the Rohs lab with contributions by Alexandra "Lexi" Shewchuk, Dr. Tsu-Pei Chiu, and Dr. Jinsen Li, and collaborators Drs. Judith Kribelbauer-Swietek and Nicolas Gompel (not pictured) published in Biophysical Journal a study of the cooperative binding of Hox transcription factors and their cofactors to DNA targets, proposing a new computational pipeline AlphaFold 3-Molecular Dynamics-DeepPBS protein binding specificity predictions that combines AI with physics-based methods. Please read the paper here.

QCB joint faculty Dr. Andrei Irimia published a paper in Geroscience titled “Interpretable deep learning reveals spatiotemporal MRI features of brain aging that align with neurodegeneration.” Please read the paper here.

QCB joint faculty Dr. Naomi Levine published a paper in Science Advances titled “Defining metabolic niches for marine microbial heterotrophs.” Please read the paper here.

QCB joint faculty Dr. Nicholas Mancuso as the corresponding author and Dr. Steven Gazal published a paper in Nature Genetics titled “Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of severe pregnancy nausea and vomiting”. Please read the paper here.

CBB Graduate Students

Two of our first-year Ph.D. students, Tessa Ferrari and Dylan Kemmerer, earned Honorable Mention for their NSF GRFP proposals. Honorable Mention is a prestigious designation for highly rated proposals that recognizes exceptional research potential. Kudos for submitting highly competitive proposals!

Physical Biology Ph.D. student Jesse Weller from the Rohs lab defended his dissertation. Jesse developed a hierarchical variational autoencoder AI method, DrugHIVE, for the design of drug candidates that are not described in existing drug libraries and without the need for computationally expensive docking experiments. Jesse has joined Dyno Therapeutics in Boston, MA. Congrats, Jesse!

QBIO Undergraduate Students

Zainab Neemuchwala co-authored a research letter published in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology titled “Glucocorticoid treatment, lower growth and differentiation factor 15 (GDF15) concentrations, and improved hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) symptoms.” The study investigates a potential biological mechanism underlying glucocorticoid effectiveness in HG, showing that treatment was associated with reduced circulating GDF15 concentrations alongside symptom improvement. Please read the paper here.

Erika Li presented her poster, “Neural Network Accurately Predicts Negative Surgical Margins in a Pan-Cancer Model”, using TCGA RNA-sequencing data, at the 21st Annual Undergraduate Student Caucus and Poster Competition at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in San Diego.

Undergraduate students Alex Zhang, Kailin Liu, Viren Mehta, and Kalie Uberti presented their impressive research projects for the class QBIO 465 "Artificial Intelligence in Biology and Medicine" taught by QCB faculty member Dr. Tsu-Pei Chiu in the Rohs lab meeting.

Final student presentations for QBIO 490: Multi-Omic Data Analysis, led by Erika Li and Jeanne Revilla, will be hosted in RRI 101 on Friday, May 1st from 5-7 pm.

QCB Alumni

Two QCB alumni, professors Haixu Tang and Sophie Schbath, were named ISCB fellows this year. Dr. Schbath, who was a postdoc with QCB founder Dr. Michael Waterman in 1996, is globally recognized as a distinguished statistical bioinformatician, heading MalAGE laboratory in INRAE and Migale bioinformatics facility in France. Dr. Tang, Indiana University, who was a postdoc with Dr. Waterman in 1999-2001, made pioneering contributions to genomics, metagenomics, proteomics, glycomics, and genomic privacy, including Bruijn framework for genome assembly. Please read more details on the ISCB's 2026 fellow announcement here.

QCB alumna Dr. Tandy Warnow was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Warnow was a postdoc in Dr. Michael Waterman's group in 1991-1992 and is now a professor in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's School of Computing and Data Science and a Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering. She currently also leads the International Society for Computational Biology's fellow selection committee.

One of our first QBIO students, Dr. Emily Yang, M.D., graduated from Harvard Medical School and matched for the OB/GYN residency program at Stanford University. Emily was the first QBIO student to win the prestigious national Barry Goldwater Scholarship and was a QCB commencement speaker in 2021. We are so proud of you, Emily!

QCB Advisory Board

QCB advisory board member Dr. Bin Yu from UC Berkeley was interviewed about teaching veridical data science. The interview can be found here. Dr. Yu previously published a book "Veridical Data Science: The Practice of Responsible Data Analysis and Decision Making" which can be accessed here.

Upcoming Events

May 5th (RRI 101 @ 11 am): Dissertation Defense Paulina Smaruj (Fudenberg lab)

May 13th (McCarthy Quad, UPC @ 8:30 am) Dornsife Ph.D. Hooding Ceremony

May 15th (Corner of Jefferson Blvd. and Hoover St. @ 1-3 pm): QCB Meet & Greet, USC Village

May 15th (Alumni Park, UPC @ 4:30 pm): Dornsife Academic School Ceremony

The QCB seminar series has concluded for the academic year. We had another year of fantastic seminars and speakers who are leaders in the field. Dr. Andrej Sali (UCSF) who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (top) and Dr. Jussi Taipale (Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and University of Helsinki, Finland) who is a member of the Nobel Assembly that awards the Nobel Prize (bottom) gave seminars this month.

QCB Faculty Search

We are looking for a new full-time, teaching faculty member in the Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology. This position includes an opportunity for growth and promotions on the teaching faculty track. We are looking for someone who will teach undergraduate statistics and computational biology courses. Review of applications will start on May 15th. More details can be found here.

Our mailing address is:

1050 Childs Way, RRI 201, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2019

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