The USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy is ranked the nation’s No. 1 occupational therapy educational program, according to 2026 Best Graduate Schools compiled by U.S. News & World Report. The recognition affirms the division’s innovation and excellence across its educational, research and clinical practice mission areas.

“Across the landscape of occupational therapy higher education, no other place has the scope and scale we have here at USC Chan,” said Associate Dean and Chair Grace Baranek. “It’s gratifying to have the incredible talent and steadfast dedication of our faculty, staff and students recognized by U.S. News.”

U.S. News ranks accredited occupational therapy programs using peer assessments solicited from academic leaders across the country, a reflection of the high regard in which USC Chan is held among the occupational therapy community. Since U.S. News began ranking OT programs in 1998, USC Chan has held the top spot for 19 years, longer than any other program in the country. Also atop this year’s rankings are Boston University, Colorado State University and the University of Pittsburgh.

USC Chan faculty currently hold more than $37 million of federal research grants. More than four dozen clinical faculty members treat patients at 10 sites of service across the Greater Los Angeles area, including the Keck Medicine of USC hospitals and clinics, at the USC Occupational Therapy Faculty Practice locations, at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles-affiliated sites and out in the community.

By Mike McNulty

AI systems have made remarkable progress in recent years. Multimodal large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini can analyze images, videos and text to describe scenes, answer complex questions and generate realistic content.

Yet despite these advances, they still fail at relatively straightforward tasks that most humans find effortless. Perhaps that’s because MLLMs are fundamentally limited by the very thing they don’t actually have: a physical, functional, neurobiological body.

A new paper published today in Neuron by researchers from USC, the University of California, Los Angeles and Google’s DeepMind research lab outlines why today’s “disembodied” AI systems seemingly struggle when prompted with tasks requiring real-world understandings. The authors then explain why tomorrow’s AI systems must incorporate an “embodied” framework modeled on the ways human beings actually engage in and with the world around them.

“A longstanding paradox in AI is that systems excel at tasks that humans find difficult, but are stumped by the most basic tasks that humans find easy,” said lead author Akila Kadambi.

For example, humans can easily recognize a cluster of moving dots that represents a person’s walking gait. But AI systems struggle with this task, erroneously identifying the dots as constellations, for example.

“Despite their tremendous processing speed and pattern-matching capabilities, this paradox illustrates that AI does not truly understand the real world because it does not experience the real world,” Kadambi said.

Kadambi is a postdoctoral researcher in the USC Brain and Creativity Institute’s Center for the Neuroscience of Embodied Cognition under the direction of USC Chan Professor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, and at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine. She is also a research fellow at the UCLA-CDU Dana Center.

At the foundation of the human experience is embodiment — the continuous communication and feedback loops between brain, body and environment that not only maintain physiological homeostasis but enable our brains to regulate, integrate and modulate information to carry out action through three-dimensional space. Therefore, human learning depends upon both external sensory information and internal bodily signals that help us make decisions, understand others and interpret social situations. Even simple interactions, according to Kadambi, depend upon this innate sense of “internal” embodiment.

“When a dinner guest asks you ‘Where is the salt?,’ your brain does far more than just parse language,” Kadambi said. “You subconsciously interpret their motivations, locate your body position within the environment, plan your hand’s physical action sequences and respond in context.”

In contrast, today’s AI architecture treats the salt question as a statistical pattern-matching problem. Answers are generated by optimizing probabilities of the correct external response without any underlying internal sense of empathy, relationship or intention. The authors argue this lack of internal embodiment limits AI’s capacity to reason about space, actions and social situations in ways humans can.

More Human-Like AI Will Be Safer AI

In their paper, the neuroscientists argue that future AI architecture and algorithms must go beyond linguistic descriptions of internal embodiment via engineering that actually accounts for concepts like uncertainty, social connectivity and resource tradeoffs. Rather than behave unpredictably in unfamiliar contexts or confidently generate false responses, a stronger sense of internal embodiment will help AI adapt more effectively to complex and ambiguous situations, and defer answers or seek more information instead of making the best (but wrong) guess.

The authors also emphasize that the future of embodied AI does not require a replication of human neurobiology. Instead, better simulation of the regulatory roles that internal states play in human reasoning and behavior will make AI more grounded, adaptable and aligned with real-world conditions.

Perhaps most importantly, they argue that AI with internal embodiment will ultimately be safer.

“Today’s AI systems have no built-in costs or disincentives,” Kadambi said. “But in biological systems, survival depends on maintaining internal stability and estimating risks to the individual and to the population, both of which naturally constrain behavior.”

The authors believe that embedding similar mechanisms into AI will serve as guardrails that prioritize empathic, prosocial responses over risky, antisocial ones.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, the call is growing for more ethical, benevolent and human-centric behaviors. For artificial intelligence to better reflect human intelligence, according to Kadambi, it will need the very type of intelligence that, for now, only seems to be located within the human body.

“Embodiment may be what bridges that gap between raw processing power and more meaningful understanding.”

Article co-authors with Kadambi and Aziz-Zadeh are Antonio Damasio (USC Brain and Creativity Institute), Marco Iacoboni (Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA) and Srini Narayanan (Google DeepMind). Their publication was supported in part by a Google Faculty Research Award titled “AI Tropes and the Human Mind: A Neuroscience Perspective” (PI: L. Aziz-Zadeh).

2026 Commencement keynote speaker Dr. Arameh Anvarizadeh

Arameh Anvarizadeh ’05, MA ’06, OTD ’07, will be the keynote speaker at the USC Chan Division’s 2026 Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2026, at the University Park Campus.

Anvarizadeh became president of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), the national professional association representing the interests of occupational therapy practitioners, in July 2025. She has previously served AOTA in the roles of vice president, chair of the Credential Review and Accountability Committee (CRAC), as a member of the Representative Assembly Leadership Committee (RALC), as a member of the Governance Task Force and as a member of the Special Task Force on Entry-Level Education.

She is a founding member of the Coalition of Occupational Therapy Advocates for Diversity (COTAD), responsible for developing the COTAD toolkit, the Ignite Series and COTAD chapters at educational institutions. She is also an alumna of the Executive Leadership Program for Multicultural Women.

Treasurer to the Board of Directors
Bryant Edwards MA ’05, OTD ’06

Chair, Academic Fieldwork Coordinators—Academic Leadership Council
Kathryn Sorensen MA ’06, OTD ’16

Chair, Developmental Disabilities Special Interest Section
Lisa Test MA ’89, OTD ’09

Chair, Sensory Integration & Processing Special Interest Section
Kelly Auld-Wright MA ’07

California #2 Representative to the Representative Assembly
Carlin Reaume MA ’06, OTD ’07

Chair, OTAs—Academic Leadership Council
Vicky Vu MA ’95

OT Vice Chair, Assembly of Student Delegates
Taylor Kamemoto OTD ’26

Student Representative to the Representative Assembly
Ariyana Griffin OTD ’28

Voting in the annual elections of the American Occupational Therapy Association is now open! This year’s ballot includes 12 USC Trojan Family members — faculty, alums and students — seeking volunteer leadership positions. Consider these Trojans when casting your votes by the Feb. 25 (8:59 a.m. Pacific time) deadline. Fight On!

Director to the Board of Directors
Susan Lingelbach MA ’13

Treasurer to the Board of Directors
Bryant Edwards MA ’05, OTD ’06
Thomas Mernar PhD ’08

Chair, Academic Fieldwork Coordinators—Academic Leadership Council
Kathryn Sorensen MA ’06, OTD ’16

Chair, Developmental Disabilities Special Interest Section
Lisa Test MA ’89, OTD ’09

Chair, Sensory Integration & Processing Special Interest Section
Kelly Auld-Wright MA ’07

California #2 Representative to the Representative Assembly
Jess Holguin ’96, MA ’05, OTD ’11, associate professor of clinical occupational therapy
Carlin Reaume MA ’06, OTD ’07

Chair, OTAs—Academic Leadership Council
Vicky Vu MA ’95

OT Vice Chair, Assembly of Student Delegates
Taylor Kamemoto OTD ’26

Student Representative to the Representative Assembly
Andrea Botello OTD ’27
Ariyana Griffin OTD ’28

The International Congress is held every four years and brings together occupational therapists, assistants and students from across the globe to develop professional fellowship, exchange technical and scientific information and promote high standards of occupational therapy practice, research and education worldwide.

สู้ต่อไปนะ [sûu dtàaw bpai ná]! Fight On!

A new USC-led study will apply artificial intelligence tools to electronic health records (EHRs) in order to better understand how social determinants of health — non-medical factors impacting health, such as education, income, housing and neighborhood resources like grocery stores and transportation access — are related to mental health of autistic children and teens.

Social determinants of health account for up to 50 percent of health outcomes, yet they are mostly unstudied in autism research, which has traditionally focused on racial and ethnic variables for understanding care disparities. That limitation is especially problematic because autistic children and youth, compared to neurotypical populations, have disproportionately higher rates and frequencies of psychiatric care, such as hospital stays and emergency room visits. That suggests their mental health care needs were not adequately managed at lower levels of care, like primary care or psychiatry.

Using an AI method known as natural language processing, the research team will flag and extract keywords and phrases from anonymized clinical notes already stored within the EHR systems at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Florida Health System. Then, using another AI approach called machine learning, the researchers will develop a model for predicting which social determinants pose relatively higher mental health risks, and for whom. That type of individualized risk assessment will empower clinicians and health systems to customize the mental health care and resources they offer to autistic patients.

The study is funded by a $3.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health.

“We know there is valuable data about the social and contextual drivers of mental health hidden in plain sight within patient records,” said Assistant Professor Amber Angell, the study’s principal investigator. Angell holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“By using AI to analyze large datasets of clinical records, we will use an existing resource to gain an evidence-based understanding of what social determinants protect autistic people’s mental health, and what increases vulnerability,” Angell said. “That will help individuals, families, providers and policymakers to enact innovative solutions that enhance mental health in autism by decreasing adverse outcomes.”

At the USC Chan Division, Angell directs the Disparity Reduction and Equity in Autism Services, or “DREAmS” lab, a multidisciplinary group that includes neurodivergent team members working together to identify, measure, understand and reduce disparities in autism diagnosis and services. For this particular project, they are joined by collaborators from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the University of Florida and the University of Indiana.

The team will also work closely with a community advisory board of autistic adults and caregivers of autistic children and youth. The board’s participation ensures the project is relevant, responsive and impactful in light of their own lived experiences, and its members will help spread and share the study’s findings as they become available.

The study team will also gather insight from a range of people who work in systems of care that provide services for autistic people — including physicians, therapists and public school and Regional Center administrators — to collectively determine how the study findings can be practically implemented within health systems to identify the most vulnerable autistic children and proactively provide appropriate supports.

“We know that, for an autistic teen experiencing a mental health crisis, the emergency department is one of the worst, most dysregulating environments to get care, so we want to minimize that by providing robust, lower-level care that meets individual needs,” Angell said. “Every year in the United States, at least half-a-million autistic children turn 18 and become autistic adults. This project will give us a much clearer idea of ways to optimize mental health for today’s autistic youth, who are tomorrow’s autistic adults.”

“Machine learning prediction of persistent adverse mental health outcomes for autistic children: Leveraging social determinants of health from clinical data” (PI: A. Angell; 1R01 MH135867) is funded by the NIH National Institute of Mental Health.

Professor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh offers the iconic Vulcan hand salute 🖖 popularized by Nimoy (Photo courtesy of Lisa Aziz-Zadeh)

Professor Lisa Aziz-Zadeh has been named a 2025 recipient of the Live Long and Prosper Tribute Award from the Nimoy Knight Foundation. The honor celebrates those whose career work exemplifies the values of the iconic “Star Trek” character Spock — rationality, peace, compassion and belonging — originally portrayed on-screen by the late actor Leonard Nimoy.

Nimoy played the half-human, half-Vulcan character Spock for nearly 50 years, beginning with the 1964 television pilot episode of “Star Trek.” Nimoy created the iconic Vulcan hand salute 🖖 and its accompanying blessing, “live long and prosper.”

“I am deeply honored to receive the “Live Long and Prosper” Tribute Award for my research on the brain–gut–microbiome system in autism,” Aziz-Zadeh said. “I grew up watching “Star Trek” and was very inspired by Leonard Nimoy’s portrayal of Mr. Spock as a deeply complex character — balancing reason and emotion/belonging and difference.”

Aziz-Zadeh is the director of the Center for the Neuroscience of Embodied Cognition, where she utilizes behavioral and neuroimaging methods like functional MRI to better understand how the brain’s rudimentary sensorimotor systems shape higher-order cognitive processing such as language, social cognition, empathy and creativity. Her research projects have been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Defense, the American Heart Association, Google, the Dana Foundation and others. She holds a joint appointment in the Brain and Creativity Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Temple Grandin, world-renowned autism advocate and animal sciences professor at Colorado State University, is also a 2025 recipient of the Live Long and Prosper Award. Previous recipients include LeVar Burton, Whoopi Goldberg, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye.

The non-profit Nimoy Knight Foundation, named in memory of Nimoy, is overseen by his daughter, Julie Nimoy, and her husband, David Knight.

“Thank you to the Nimoy Knight Foundation,” Aziz-Zadeh said. “May we all live long and prosper!”

Sook-Lei Liew is the principal investigator of the newly funded Data Science and Analytics for Precision Rehabilitation (DAPR) Center, a five-year project supported by a $6.5 million P50 grant from the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Prestigious P50 grants are meant to support a full range of research and development activities around a specific, yet often multidisciplinary, problem area.

The purpose of the DAPR Center is to generate large, harmonized rehabilitation datasets for personalized, precision rehabilitation, and to improve the rigor of medical rehabilitation research by leveraging data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning. These objectives will be achieved by developing comprehensive, standardized ways in which researchers can store and manage their data, which will make it easier to combine data across rehabilitation studies.

“We are thrilled about the DAPR Center, which at its core, is all about readiness — making sure rehabilitation research is well-poised for the AI revolution that has already begun,” Liew said. “By building large, harmonized, and accessible datasets, we’re laying the foundation for truly personalized, data-driven rehabilitation. This is a transformative step for our field and will enable rehabilitation researchers nationwide to work together, identify critical scientific insights, and ultimately deliver the right rehabilitation treatment, at the right time, for each individual.”

At USC Chan, Liew directs the Neural Plasticity and Neurorehabilitation Laboratory. She also holds joint faculty appointments with the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, the USC Keck School of Medicine Department of Neurology, the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute and the USC Viterbi School Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Liew and her colleagues will encourage community uptake by developing a DAPR data schema that will bring together many different types of data, providing hands-on consulting for data management and analysis, building accessible educational resources and creating user-friendly tools, like those to be developed as part of Liew’s new NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke-funded project to better forecast stroke survivors’ recovery through 12 months after stroke.

One of Liew’s longtime collaborators, James Finley, associate professor at the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, will lead DAPR’s Community Engagement and Outreach Core to build community partnerships, disseminate DAPR developments and resources, host events and foster a community of practice.

The DAPR Center will be part of a dynamic network of six national Medical Rehabilitation Research Centers collectively tackling topics such as precision rehabilitation, data science and analytics, community-engaged research and health promotion.

Data Science and Analytics for Precision Rehabilitation (DAPR) Center (1P50 HD118603; PI: Liew, S.-L.) is funded by the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Jane Goodall, shown in 2015 (Wikimedia Commons/Simon Fraser University - Communications & Marketing)

Dr. Jane Goodall, the renowned primatologist whose pioneering research with chimpanzees and their occupational behavior was so influential that she had been called the “Einstein of behavioral sciences,” has died. She was 91.

Goodall was the keynote speaker at the 1989 USC Occupational Science Symposium, a connection made possible thanks to the late USC Dornsife Professor Emeritus Granville “Zandy” Moore. Moore, an anthropologist, worked with then-Department Chair Dr. Florence Clark to support the Department’s efforts at establishing and legitimizing the young research discipline of occupational science.

Moore and Clark helped bring Goodall to USC, and she held a joint faculty appointment as Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Occupational Therapy from 1990 to 2003. About her USC faculty appointment, Goodall remarked in 1990 that “It’s an unusual kind of association with, hopefully, unusual kinds of benefits.”

Artificial intelligence is seemingly, suddenly, everywhere. Soon, thanks to a new USC-led study funded by the National Institutes of Health, it will be used to generate synthetic stroke MRI images that are just as accurate and detailed as those produced by the world’s most powerful MRI machines.

If you or a loved one just had a stroke, that’s incredibly exciting news.

Stroke is the fifth-leading cause of death and leading cause of long-term disability in the U.S., and costs America’s health care system more than $50 billion each year. Unfortunately, it is challenging to accurately predict patient outcomes, especially for those who have more severe initial impairments, and especially when predicting the longer-term trajectory for the months after stroke.

Thanks to a new $2.9 million grant from the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a research team led by Associate Professor Sook-Lei Liew looks to better forecast stroke survivors’ recovery through 12 months after stroke.

To do so, the team will take low-resolution MRIs — the type of brain images typically captured at a local hospital immediately after a stroke — and feed them to AI algorithms which can generate crisp, accurate, high-resolution versions of the same MRIs — analogous to the type captured by ultra-high field MRIs, which are mostly reserved for academic research at large, urban medical centers.

These AI-generated MRIs can provide additional data about global brain health (GBH), a composite measure of the brain’s cellular, vascular and waste disposal systems. In previous research, Liew and her team showed that GBH buffers the severity of damage to the brain after stroke, and is associated with more successful post-stroke outcomes. The better the overall brain health, the more likely that their long-term outcomes will be positive.

“We know that global brain health is a clinically meaningful biomarker, but measuring it requires research-grade MRIs that aren’t available to most stroke survivors,” said Liew, the study’s principal investigator.

Liew holds joint appointments at the Keck School of Medicine’s Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She is also a licensed occupational therapist.

“We can sidestep this bottleneck by using routine clinical MRIs that most stroke patients get when they come into the hospital, and augment them with AI to generate better brain images that provide clearer data for predicting patient outcomes and empowering rehab providers, like occupational therapists,” Liew said.

A tool for precision rehabilitation

The four-year study, titled “Global Brain Health Predictors of Post-Stroke Sensorimotor Recovery using AI Enhanced Clinical MRIs,” has three main objectives.

First, the team will train AI algorithms to take actual low-resolution stroke MRIs and generate the equivalent of high-resolution MRI images. The algorithm will also “read” those high-res MRIs and automatically generate accurate metrics about GBH and stroke lesion size and location. Then, the team will validate the algorithm’s accuracy by comparing it against a database of actual low- and high-res MRIs gathered from more than 430 participants from the ENIGMA Stroke Recovery Consortium, which Liew also leads. The expectation is that the AI-enhanced MRIs closely correspond to that of the real-world, high-resolution MRIs.

Secondly, the team will recruit more than 200 stroke survivors and collect low-res MRIs, clinical assessments and comorbidity data at four time points: at baseline, 3-, 6- and 12-months after stroke. The researchers will then model those data with the AI-generated images and metrics to reveal whether declining GBH after stroke is also a predictor of declining sensorimotor and cognitive outcomes. If so, that may mean the time window for effective post-stroke rehab therapies is actually open wider than what is currently thought by the clinical community.

Thirdly, the team will use the AI-generated MRIs to create clinical decision trees to accurately predict survivors’ 3-, 6- and 12-month outcomes. They will validate the robustness of the decision trees against data gathered in a previous multi-site study of nearly 500 stroke survivors.

Finally, they will build an open-source, downloadable software toolkit with the low- to high-resolution upscaling AI algorithms and predictive models. That will allow any clinician or researcher, no matter where they are in the world, to input a standard clinical MRI image and get AI-generated imaging and metrics that can predict 12-month post-stroke outcomes with a goal of more than 80 percent accuracy.

“Ultimately, this project is about moving from one-size-fits-all therapy to precision rehabilitation,” Liew said. “AI can effectively enhance low-resolution MRIs to help better predict how people are expected to recover, so that clinicians can deliver customized care that gives every stroke survivor the best possible chance at recovery.”

“Global Brain Health Predictors of Post-Stroke Sensorimotor Recovery using AI-Enhanced Clinical MRIs” (RF1 NS115845-06A1; PI: S.-L. Liew) is funded by the NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Results of a new study published in OTJR: Occupational Therapy Journal of Research show that telehealth occupational therapy (OT) can be a family-centered, timely way of delivering a comprehensive OT program to high-risk infants back home after being discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

The program, known as Baby Bridge, was originally designed to minimize the waiting period between discharge from the NICU and the start of community-based early intervention therapy, a wait that may last for months during what is a critical window of infant neurodevelopment. Traditionally, Baby Bridge OTs work with families in the NICU to support their child’s motor and sensory development. Then, after leaving the hospital, therapists continue providing weekly in-home services. Previous research has shown that Baby Bridge can reduce what would otherwise be a four-month waiting period down to just one week.

This study examined if an adapted version of Baby Bridge could be effectively delivered via telehealth, which has the potential to increase access to care, especially for families facing logistical or geographic challenges to in-person appointments.

“We wanted to understand how an adapted version of Baby Bridge could be delivered through the screen to reach families in their homes, leveraging the power of telehealth to ensure occupational therapy can support vulnerable infants during such a crucial period of early development,” said Associate Professor Bobbi Pineda, the creator of Baby Bridge and the article’s lead author.

Baby Bridge occupational therapist and USC staff member Polly Kellner and occupational science student Sahar Ghahramani PhD ’28, were also article co-authors.

Satisfaction, safety and technology findings

In this study, eight families met in-person with a Baby Bridge OT in the NICU, then after discharge home, completed the telehealth Baby Bridge program. On average, their first telehealth session occurred six days after discharge. Families received an average of eight weekly telehealth visits over nine weeks, with no additional in-person visits.

Parents unanimously reported being “very satisfied” with the telehealth program, praising both the convenience and the support it offered during those early months back at home.

“There were so many instances that we felt unsure about a skill or observation made about our son and being able to meet on a weekly basis with a highly skilled therapist was invaluable,” reported one parent on a post-program survey. “We feel that the telehealth delivery method was extremely efficient and effective and served our family very well.”

No safety concerns or adverse events were reported throughout the study, and none of the families expressed any challenges using the technology, a positive finding that likely reflects increasing utilization and familiarity with digital health care communication platforms.

When participants had to cancel therapy sessions due to illness or schedule changes — a common occurrence for parents juggling many responsibilities that come with caring for a high-risk population — make-up sessions could be rescheduled more easily. The increased flexibility offered by telehealth, compared to in-person appointments, actually reduced no-show rates and increased the total number of therapy sessions.

The researchers note that future large-scale studies will be needed to compare outcomes and costs between the in-person and telehealth models. Yet this feasibility study marks an important step forward in integrating telehealth into post-NICU care plans and programs.

“Effective OT requires communication and partnership with parents, and not only did the infants receive timely and consistent care, the parents also expressed high levels of satisfaction with the program, an important dimension of health care quality in and of itself,” Pineda said. “We’ve shown that telehealth can help support families during the earliest stages of development when they need it most.”

Implementation of the Baby Bridge program via telehealth to enhance access to early intervention services in Los Angeles (PI: Pineda, B.) was funded by a grant from the American Occupational Therapy Foundation.

Although the Memorandum of Understanding officially ended in 2024, the China Initiative Community, composed of the USC team, accompanied by former faculty member Dr. Adley Chan, dual-degree program graduates, inaugural instructors and past China Initiative residents, continues to foster a sense of community in a shared virtual environment.

Now in its third iteration and like previous reunions, participants had the opportunity to learn and network with each other in a fun and supportive atmosphere. They engaged in sharing representative photos related to 1) a personal accomplishment; 2) a professional accomplishment; 3) a professional frustration; and 4) a professional goal. We encouraged participants to bring their “happy hour” drink and snacks while joining a 90-minute reunion at 6 p.m. Friday evening in Los Angeles, and at 9 a.m. Saturday morning in Beijing.

The dual-degree graduates opened up easily, and each shared at length about both exciting and frustrating updates in their personal and professional lives. Many had publications in their current role as post-docs or clinicians, and others highlighted various self-care activities such as watching sunrises across the country.

The China Initiative team hopes to see many of our PKUHSC colleagues again in-person at an occupational therapy conference next year. We also hope to celebrate everyone’s achievements at a future event!
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The virtual event aims to build connections between clinicians and researchers that advance evidence-based practice, and to facilitate networking for students interested in research.

Professor Mary Lawlor kicks off the event with a keynote talk and Q&A. Additional faculty members featured in panel sessions include Erna Blanche, Alison Cogan, Janet Gunter, John Margetis, Pamela Roberts, Shawn Roll and Jamie Wilcox.

“This is an incredible opportunity to learn from and celebrate our colleagues, deepen the connection to research that informs and elevates practice, and support OTAC and the California Foundation of Occupational Therapy (CFOT) in advancing occupational therapy across California!,” said OTAC President and faculty member Samia Rafeedie. “Please join us for this inaugural event! We are excited to have you!”

Professor Mary Lawlor

Associate Chair of Research and Professor Mary Lawlor has been named the 2025 recipient of the Ruth Zemke Lectureship in Occupational Science awarded by the Society for the Study of Occupation:USA. She will deliver the honorary lecture at the society’s annual research conference in November in Galveston, Texas.

The lectureship, which serves as a forum for visionary, theoretical and critical analyses of occupational science, is named in honor of Professor Emeritus Ruth Zemke.

Lawlor’s scholarship is distinguished by its commitment to examining the meanings of illness and disability in family and community life; the social and narrative nature of therapeutic encounters; and the sociocultural factors shaping health care, particularly among chronically underserved populations.

She will be the eighth USC-affiliated scholar recognized with the Zemke Lectureship since its inception in 2002.