Breakthrough Research

The University of South Carolina’s researchers make discoveries that promote innovation, and their contributions reverberate far and wide. So do their stories.

Breakthrough is a place to celebrate the impact of the university’s brightest scholars, from the graduate student studying cancer-fighting compounds to the world-renowned expert transforming a discipline.

Breakthrough is published two times a year by the Office of the Vice President for Research and is distributed to all tenured, tenure-track and clinical faculty as well as research associates. Highlights from the magazine can be found here.

Ai @ USC

From agribusiness to health care to flood management, artificial intelligence research clicks into place.

Dig Deeper

Cover of the Breakthrough magazine featuring an illustration of a robotic hand giving a Rubiks cube to a human hand.

A photo of a scientist in a landfill wearing protective gear and carrying a clipboard.

Cleaning Up

Engineering team experiments with a new method for processing problematic landfill compound.

Learn More

A smoother Ride

Engineering professor Sarah Gassman works to improve road pavement design.

Explore

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Book Corner: The Hip-hop Mindset

Toby Jenkins, associate professor of higher education, explores how hip-hop values and ethics can help educators and other professionals succeed.

Author Q&A

Book cover entitled 'The Hip-hop Mindset' by Toby S. Jenkins

Making Ends Meet

Imagine smartphones that bend, twist and stretch like rubber. It’s not much of a stretch for Ting Ge, an assistant professor in chemistry and biochemistry who has just begun a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to delve deeper into the field of ring polymers.

Ting Ge’s Research

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Whose Beach is it Anyway?

Helping courts and regulatory bodies determine who has a right to the coastline is the focus of University of South Carolina law professor Josh Eagle’s scholarly work. His goal is to get courts to recognize greater public rights and to expand access to beaches.

Learn more

An illlustration of a brain with targeted red spot on it.

Targeting Tumors

School of Medicine researchers pursue new treatment options for glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer.

Discover more

Damage and Recovery

Each year, more than 180,000 Americans acquire aphasia, a language disorder that occurs after damage to certain areas of the brain. Most cases are caused by stroke. By comparing T1-weighted MRI images of healthy brains to images of those with aphasia, researchers at USC’s Center for the Study of Aphasia Recovery hope to improve treatment options.

The brain systems that control speech are located primarily in the left hemisphere. Based on where the stroke damage is, the C-STAR team can use artificial intelligence and machine learning-based approaches to predict what type of aphasia is present and which treatments will work best.

C-STAR was founded in 2016 through an $11.2 million center grant from the National Institutes of Health. USC’s vice president for research Julius Fridriksson, then a communication sciences and disorders professor, launched a series of research projects to better understand aphasia and improve quality of life for stroke survivors.

Office of Vice President for Research

At our research-intensive university, a team is dedicated to supporting the entire spectrum of research and scholarly activities at USC, and assisting faculty and student researchers with every step in the research process.

Vice President for Research: Julius Fridriksson
Phone: 803-777-5458
Email: vpr@mailbox.sc.edu

Office of Vice President for Research

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