The director of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute approached Jeffrey Epstein in 2013 and asked the convicted child sex offender to fund robotics neuroscience research at the university, new emails released by the Department of Justice show.
Antonio Damasio, the Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, wrote to Epstein in 2013 about work he and another USC researcher had begun into the scientific origin of emotions and feelings. Damasio shared a research proposal with Epstein, and said he hoped to begin experimentation, but didn’t want typical grant funding in order to retain control over the research.
Two days later, on Feb. 28, 2013, Damasio met with Epstein at the disgraced financier’s New York home. Damasio told Annenberg Media in an email statement that he didn’t know Epstein was a convicted sex offender at the time.
In his email statement, Damasio called the meeting a “routine private contact,” and said scientists frequently approach philanthropists for funding in addition to other grants. Damasio said if he had known of Epstein’s crimes, he would not have solicited the financier for research funding.
“I was looking for a prestigious philanthropist, not a criminal,” Damasio said.
Epstein did not end up funding Damasio’s research. At their 2013 meeting, Epstein told Damasio that he should seek private funding from California philanthropists.
Damasio said he and his wife, Hanna Damasio — also a director of the Brain and Creativity Institute and a chaired neuroscience professor at USC — first met Epstein at a 2009 dinner party hosted in the financier’s Manhattan home, where scientists from various other universities were present.
He did not say what month the dinner was held, but Epstein was in jail from June 2008 through July 2009 on crimes of soliciting prostitution, including from a minor.
The professor said he and his wife were invited “on at least one occasion” to fly on Epstein’s plane and visit his island.
“We never accepted, we never went,” Damasio wrote.
Damasio said he could not recall exactly when he learned of Epstein’s crimes, but that it was likely when Epstein was arrested again in 2019.
In emails as far back as 2009, Damasio is mentioned several times by Marc Hauser, a former Harvard professor of psychology, who corresponded frequently with Epstein.
Hauser wrote to Epstein on Oct. 22, 2009, about a “team” of researchers that he appeared to be assembling on Epstein’s behalf. The Harvard professor wrote of Damasio to Epstein: “he is key, and i know that you know each other,” the emails show.
In that same 2009 email, Hauser said Damasio was “keen to talk” about their work. (Hauser later resigned from his professorship at Harvard, and in 2012, was found guilty of research misconduct for falsifying some lab results. One year later, Hauser published a book titled “Evilicious,” in which he wrote about “why seemingly normal people torture, mutilate, and kill others for the fun of it.”)
The documents from Epstein’s estate made public by the Department of Justice mention thousands of people. Though some have become implicated in the financier’s crimes, simply appearing in the emails detailing Epstein’s vast network does not suggest any illegal activity.
Damasio was not the only USC professor to have correspondence with Epstein. In September 2012, Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff wrote to David Agus, a professor of medicine and bioengineering at Keck and Viterbi, asking if Agus would be able to meet with Epstein in New York.
Agus had just published a book titled “The End of Illness,” and had recently given a TED talk. When Epstein first emailed Agus, the professor wasn’t aware of who the convicted offender was, he told Annenberg Media. After Agus’s assistant wrote back that Agus might be available to meet in October 2012, Agus looked up who Epstein was, discovered his prior convictions and instructed his assistant to tell Epstein he was busy every time he visited New York.
Epstein’s assistant continued emailing Agus up until 2016, asking to meet. Agus said he was busy every time, the emails released by the Justice Department show.
The university said it did not have any further comment on the exchanges with Epstein besides what is already public.