Six members of the Northwestern College college have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of many nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
Megan Bang, Bruce Carruthers, Wei Chen, Mark C. Hersam, Suzan van der Lee and Uri J. Wilensky are among the many 250 members elected in 2024. They’re acknowledged for his or her excellence and dedication to uphold the Academy’s mission of participating with professions throughout totally different views.
“We honor these artists, students, scientists and leaders within the public, non-profit and personal sectors for his or her accomplishments and for the curiosity, creativity and braveness required to succeed in new heights,” stated David Oxtoby, president of the Academy. “We invite these distinctive people to hitch within the Academy’s work to deal with severe challenges and advance the frequent good.”
Based in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others, the Academy was based on beliefs that commemorate the lifetime of the thoughts, the significance of information and the idea that the humanities and sciences are “essential to the curiosity, honor, dignity and happiness of a free, unbiased and virtuous folks.”
Northwestern’s latest members are:
Megan Bang
Megan Bang is a professor of the educational sciences and director of the Heart for Native American and Indigenous Analysis at Northwestern’s College of Training and Social Coverage.
Bang has spent a lot of her profession finding out what instructing and studying might and may seem like in a world with a altering local weather and human cognition because it pertains to sustainability.
She focuses on reasoning and decision-making about advanced socio-ecological techniques in ways in which intersect with tradition, energy and historicity. Central to this work are dimensions of identification, fairness and group engagement. She works intently with Indigenous communities to create new techniques of training. She has taught in and performed analysis in instructor training in addition to management preparation applications. Bang at present serves on the Board of Science Training on the Nationwide Academy of Sciences and is a member of the Nationwide Academy of Training the place she is at present serving as a board member as nicely.
Bruce Carruthers
Bruce Carruthers is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology at Weinberg Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Carruthers is concerned within the graduate Comparative Historic Social Science (CHSS) workshop and the Kellogg-Sociology joint Ph.D. program. His present analysis tasks embrace a comparative examine of the institutional foundations of long-term decision-making, the adoption of “for-profit” options by U.S. museums, the connection between company taxation and company social accountability, and the way “massive information” impacts credit score markets.
He has had visiting fellowships on the Russell Sage Basis, the Radcliffe Institute for Superior Examine, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Library of Congress and the Swedish Collegium for Superior Examine. He has additionally obtained a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. At present, he’s a non-resident long-term fellow on the Swedish Collegium.
Wei Chen
Wei Chen is the Wilson-Prepare dinner Professor of Engineering Design, professor of mechanical engineering and chair of the division of mechanical engineering on the McCormick College of Engineering.
A member of the Nationwide Academy of Engineering, Chen has made vital contributions to simulation-based design beneath uncertainty and decision-based design. Chen’s analysis goals to develop rational and computationally environment friendly design strategies primarily based on information science, optimization, statistical inference and determination evaluation to be used in engineering design and manufacturing issues. Her present analysis focuses on the usage of synthetic intelligence and uncertainty quantification methods for design of rising supplies techniques together with microstructural supplies, metamaterials and programmable supplies.
Chen’s many awards embrace the Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Engineering Science Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (SES), ASME Design Automation Award, Northwestern’s 2018 Ver Steeg College Award and Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal Achievement Award. She served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Mechanical Design, president of the Worldwide Society for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (ISSMO) and chair of the ASME Design Engineering Division. She is a fellow of ASME.
Mark Hersam
Mark Hersam is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Supplies Science and Engineering at McCormick, chair of the division of supplies science and engineering and director of the Northwestern College Supplies Analysis Science and Engineering Heart.
A member of the Nationwide Academy of Engineering, Hersam research nanomaterials, nanomanufacturing, scanning probe microscopy, nanoelectronics gadgets, biosensors, renewable vitality and quantum info science. This work has led to simpler and sustainable nanomaterials for electronics, vitality storage and medication.
Hersam has obtained quite a few honors, together with the Presidential Early Profession Award for Scientists and Engineers, TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award, American Vacuum Society Peter Mark Award and Medard W. Welch Award, Supplies Analysis Society Excellent Younger Investigator Award and Mid-Profession Researcher Award, U.S. Science Envoy, the MacArthur Fellowship and eight Instructor of the 12 months Awards. An elected member of the Nationwide Academy of Inventors, he has based two corporations, NanoIntegris and Volexion, that are business suppliers of nanoelectronic and battery supplies, respectively.
Suzan van der Lee
Suzan van der Lee is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Earth and planetary sciences on the Weinberg Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
An observational seismologist, Van der Lee applies information science to tens of millions of data of seismic alerts extract insights about earthquakes and the continuing dynamics throughout the Earth’s inside. By finding out the Earth’s inside construction, Van der Lee goals to disclose the consequences of the geodynamic forces that result in planetary cooling, plate tectonics, continental rifting, subduction zones, volcanism, mountain constructing, all sorts of earthquakes and extra. She is especially excited about how plate tectonics began, is sustained and the way it will finish.
Van der Lee has led quite a few big-data analyses and seismological information acquisition area experiments in Africa, the Americas and Europe. She beforehand served on the board of administrators of the EarthScope Consortium, is former president of the seismology part of the American Geophysical Union and is principal director of the Metropolitan Chicago Information Science Corps and NU-Geopaths. She additionally co-developed Earthtunes, an iOS app that transforms seismic frequencies into audible pitches. The app quickly will likely be obtainable for Android telephones.
Uri J. Wilensky
Uri J. Wilensky is the Lorraine H. Morton Professor of Studying Sciences and Pc Science on the College of Training and Social Coverage and the McCormick College of Engineering.
He’s the founding director of the Heart for Linked Studying and Pc-Based mostly Modeling, founding co-director of the Pc Science/ Studying Sciences joint Ph.D. program and co-founder of the Northwestern Institute on Complicated Programs. He was an early advocate of integrating computation into all college topics and has authored quite a few computational science curricula.
Wilensky seeks to make use of laptop know-how to assist folks in managing and understanding the more and more advanced world (each pure and social) we reside in. Wilensky’s award-winning NetLogo is designed to assist scientists, policymakers, residents and learners navigate that complexity. NetLogo is probably the most broadly used agent-based modeling setting, with a whole lot of hundreds of customers and plenty of hundreds of scientific publications. Wilensky’s idea of restructurations describes how data and studying change within the context of computation and its implications for making sense of complexity.
