Steve Bradforth USC
Stephen E. Bradforth
Principal Investigator and Divisional Dean of Dornsife College

Stephen Bradforth grew up in England, receiving his B.A. from Cambridge University in 1987 and his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1992.  After three years as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Chicago with Graham Fleming, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at USC in 1996.  He is now Professor of Chemistry in the Dornsife College.

After heading up the Physical and Theoretical chemistry section of the department for six years, Steve was department Chairman until January 2017.  Bradforth’s honors include a Dreyfus New Faculty award, a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, the USC Raubenheimer award and the USC Mellon Mentoring Award. He is a Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He has organized several conferences and topical sessions at national meetings.  He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Annual Reviews of Physical Chemistry.

Professor Bradforth’s research involves the application of ultrafast laser techniques to problems in damage to DNA both from UV light and high energy radiation, nanoparticle therapies for melanoma, and characterizing light harvesting in molecular and nanoparticle based materials for solar energy. His lab utilizes femtosecond laser based spectroscopies to elucidate mechanisms in liquid solution photochemistry as well as novel nanoscale materials and has particular expertise in photoelectron, ionization and excitonic transport processes.  His group collaborates broadly with researchers in medicine, electrical and biomedical engineering, physics, physical chemistry and theory at USC and around the world. Bradforth has recently taught two small seminar classes to college freshmen about the Global Energy Crisis and an Introduction to Research in Chemistry.  Steve’s taught classes have included undergraduate General Chemistry, Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences, and a graduate Molecular Spectroscopy course.

As of January 2017, Steve took on the mantle of Divisional Dean for Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the USC Dornsife college of Letters, Arts and Sciences.