The University of Southern California (USC), founded in 1880, is the largest private employer in the City of Los Angeles. As an employee of USC, you will be a part of a world-class research university and a member of the "Trojan Family," which is comprised of the faculty, students and staff that make the university what it is.

The Department of Population and Public Health Sciences (DPPHS) in the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine is undertaking searches faculty members aligned with a variety of disciplines and areas of interest as part of an ambitious program of development and growth.  With a base of over 110 core faculty members and over 800 students, and recognized as one of the nation’s premier institutions of population health and public health sciences with over $50M in external funding for research in 2024, the DPM is building on current strengths to promote the transdisciplinary research and training needed to address today’s many pressing population health issues  – current and future pandemics, tobacco and substance abuse, pollution and climate change, health disparities with attention to race, sex, age, socio-economic status and other relevant factors, unsustainable healthcare systems, and understanding the risk factors that continue to drive obesity, cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, dementia and cognitive impairments, and other chronic diseases.  The DPM’s scholars recognize that these challenges are over-lapping and inter-connected in ways that demand coordinated and integrated evidence-based solutions that utilize ‘big data’ and state of the art analysis methods to identify novel risk factors and associated “precision public health and medicine” and policy approaches to improve human health.  To do so, the DPPHS conducts research that leverages its location in one of the largest and most diverse populations in the urban U.S.-- Los Angeles County-- as well as its collaborations with partners in other communities in the US and in locations around the world.  We look forward to receiving expressions of interest and applications for our faculty positions from outstanding scholars aligned with this vision.  

The Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California invites applications for a tenure-track position at the level of Assistant Professor in the area of Data Analytics as applied to large complex data sets that address development and prevention of multiple health risk behaviors.  We seek an accomplished scientist  with a PhD or equivalent degree in any relevant discipline including Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences, or Computer/Information Sciences with experience and research interest in one or more of the following areas: computational social science, social media analysis, and/or online technologies for delivering preventive interventions.  In addition, the successful candidate should be familiar with one or more of the following types of large data:  ecological momentary assessment, social media, longitudinal survey, geospatial data, archival health data, and/or systems science.  Applicants should document their use of specific computational tools such as R, Python, C++, Stata, SAS, etc.   The successful applicant will be expected to have an active NIH or equivalent funded research program, evidence of peer-reviewed publication productivity, and evidence of leadership or leadership potential in national organizations or conferences. 

The faculty appointment will be in the Division of Health Behavior Research (HBR), which includes diverse faculty from different disciplines, including Psychology, Public Health, Sociology, Statistics, Communication, and Ecology.  HBR faculty investigate a wide range of health risk behavior research, including tobacco and substance use, health communications, obesity and physical activity and diet related to obesity risk, cancer survivorship and HIV/STD risk. The Division is well-known for its work across translational spectrum from efficacy to dissemination trials.  The candidate will complement existing methodological faculty who have expertise in social network analysis, systems science, longitudinal latent class and growth mixture modeling, and mixed methods analysis. The interdisciplinary nature of the Division faculty encourages collaborative research, particularly research that is part of program projects, U, or other types of large center-type grants. The candidate will be encouraged to form research collaborations that involve “big data analytics” with other faculty within the division as well as with faculty in other divisions, particularly with faculty in the Divisions of Biostatistics, Cancer Epidemiology, and/or Bioinformatics. 

The Department, and the Division of Health Behavior Research, has active teaching and training programs at the undergraduate, master’s (e.g., MPH, MS in Health Data Science), doctoral (Ph.D. programs in Health Behavior, Biostatistics, and Epidemiology), and postdoctoral levels. All of these provide the candidate with the opportunity to participate in teaching and form research labs of students who register for research credit, or who are funded as trainees under NIH T32 training programs. The recruitment package is highly competitive, and includes housing assistance, protected time to develop research and coursework, and access to doctoral and postdoctoral trainees for assistance in research.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, a personal research statement, a brief summary of research accomplishments and future goals, and contact information for three references to: Ricky Bluthenthal at ricky.bluthenthal@med.usc.edu.