“Exploring the Early Universe and Cosmology with the James Webb Telescope”

James Bullock is dean of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He holds the Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair and a faculty appointment in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Bullock served as chair of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Users Committee from 2017 to 2022 and is currently chair of the Space Telescope Institute Council, which oversees the management of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), home to many of NASA’s flagship missions, including JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope.

In his research, Bullock studies how galaxies and dark matter evolve over billions of years. By analyzing data collected with ground-based and space-based telescopes, he works to understand how galaxies, including the Milky Way and its local group of galaxies, emerged from the primordial universe.

Prior to joining USC Dornsife in 2025, Bullock was dean of the School of Physical Sciences and professor and former chair of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He earned a BS in physics and a BS in mathematics from The Ohio State University, and a PhD in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He held a Hubble Fellowship at Harvard University.

Bullock is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has been named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Space Science seven times from 2019 to 2025.