Five Penn Professors were recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for their dedication to the field.
The association selected five Penn professors from the School of Arts & Sciences, the Perelman School of Medicine, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science to join a class of 471 scientists and engineers as honorary fellows. The professors recognized include Marlyse Baptista, Jinbo Chen, George Cotsarelis, M. Susan Lindee, and Christopher Murray.
The chosen professors will join the newest AAAS class of scientists, engineers, and innovators recognized for their achievements at a ceremonial Fellows Forum in June.
AAAS has annually elected a class of fellows since 1874. The association presents the fellows with a “certificate and blue and gold rosette” each year. According to the AAAS website, nominees are eligible if they “have been a continuous AAAS member for at least four years leading up to the year of nomination” and their “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished.”
Previous fellows have included sociologist W. E. B. DuBois and inventor Thomas Edison.
Baptista, the President’s Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, specializes in “language contact, the morphosyntax of Pidgin and Creole languages, and theories of Creole genesis." The AAAS is recognizing Baptista “for distinguished contributions to the field of linguistics, particularly for theoretical and cognitive modeling of Creole languages, language contact, and language emergence.”
Chen, a professor of biostatistics at Penn Med, focuses “on statistical methods for risk prediction, innovative analysis of electronic health record data, and the development of efficient sampling designs under resource constraints.” The AAAS is specifically honoring Chen’s “distinguished contributions to breast cancer risk prediction models” and “gene-environment interactions.”
Cotsarelis serves as the Milton Bixler Hartzell Professor of Dermatology at Penn Med and centers his research on “epithelial stem cells, which has impacted two distinct areas of medicine: ophthalmology and dermatology.” In 1992, Cotsarelis was “awarded a three year $200,000 research fellowship for his work in classifying skin cells” from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, allowing him to continue researching stem cells in hair follicles and how they become “unregulated in growth.”
Lindee, the Janice and Julian Bers Professor of History and Sociology of Science at SAS, studies genetics and radiation risks. Perry World House previously hosted a discussion on nuclear technology that featured Lindee and Lynn Meskell, a professor of Anthropology and Historic Preservation.
Murray is currently the Richard Perry University Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering in the Engineering School. Focusing on new approaches to sustainability, Murray previously identified a way to store chemical energy in a more cost-effective manner.
Last year, six members of Penn’s faculty were recognized as 2023 AAAS fellows.
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