APS Member History

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21	Name:	Dr. Rebecca Richards-Kortum
	Institution:	Rice University
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	103. Engineering
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1964

	Guided by the belief that all of the world’s people deserve access to health innovation, Professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum’s research and teaching focus on developing low-cost, high-performance technology for low-resource settings. She is known for providing vulnerable populations in the developing world access to life-saving health technology, focusing on diseases and conditions that cause high morbidity and mortality, such as cervical and oral cancer, premature birth, and malaria. Professor Richards-Kortum’s work in appropriate point-of-care screening technologies has earned her induction into the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, National Inventors Hall of Fame, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Rebecca is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and a member of the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University. After receiving a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1985, she continued her graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received an MS in Physics in 1987 and a PhD in Medical Physics in 1990. She joined the faculty in Bioengineering at Rice University in 2005 and served as Chair of Bioengineering from 2005-2008 and 2012-2014. Dr. Richards-Kortum’s research group is developing miniature imaging systems to enable better screening for oral, esophageal, and cervical cancer and their precursors at the point-of-care. She led development of a novel high resolution microendoscope capable of real-time, subcellular imaging of epithelial tissue. Her team developed low-cost (<$2500), robust hardware platforms, including a tablet- and cell-phone based system. Together with colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine and the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, she has carried out clinical trials involving more than 1,000 patients, which show that the device has promise to improve early diagnosis of esophageal, oral, and cervical precancer. In a prospective, multi-center clinical trial carried out in the US and China, high resolution microendoscopy improved specificity for esophageal precancer from 29% to 79%, without reducing sensitivity. Clinical trials of over 15,000 patients in China, Brazil, and El Salvador are now underway. Her group has integrated advances in nanotechnology and microfabrication to develop novel, low-cost sensors to detect infectious diseases at the point-of-care, including HIV, cryptosporidium, malaria, and Tuberculosis. Her group developed a low-cost sensor to detect hemoglobin concentration; the device reduced per test cost by more than 100-fold (less than US$0.01 per test) compared to standard care. She led development of novel nucleic acid tests to enable diagnosis of HIV in infants in low-resource settings, introducing the first integrated paper and plastic device for isothermal amplification of DNA. Together with Maria Oden, Dr. Richards-Kortum led development and dissemination of low-cost, robust technologies to improve neonatal survival in sub-Saharan Africa. Her team developed a $160 bubble CPAP device to treat premature infants with respiratory distress; the device delivers the same flow and pressure as systems used in the US, at 30-fold cost reduction. Clinical evaluation showed that the device improved survival rates from 24% to 65%, mirroring the impact of CPAP when it was introduced in the US. The device has been implemented at all government hospitals in Malawi, and introduced in Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa. In 2014, CPAP was recognized by the UN as one of 10 innovations that can save the lives of women and children now. The team is now developing a comprehensive set of technologies to enable essential newborn care at district hospitals in Africa, with the goal to equip a district hospital serving a catchment area of 250,000 people for less than $10,000. In 2018 Dr. Richards-Kortum was named a U.S. science envoy by the State Department. At Rice University, Dr. Richards-Kortum has established new educational programs in global health technologies. She founded the Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB) program in which undergraduate students from multiple backgrounds learn to think beyond geographic and disciplinary boundaries to solve challenges in global health. In 2012, Science awarded BTB the Prize for Inquiry Based Instruction. In addition, the National Academy of Engineering recognized BTB with the Real-World Education Prize for successfully integrating real world experiences into undergraduate curriculum. BTB has also been recognized by ASEE with the Chester Carlson Award (2007) and with the IEEE Educational Activities Board Vice-President Recognition Award (2008). Rebecca is married and has three sons, Alexander, Maxwell and Zachary and three daughters, Katie, Elizabeth, and Margaret.

22	Name:	President Dame Louise Richardson
	Institution:	Corporation of New York
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	International
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1958

	Dame Louise Richardson DBE is president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, the philanthropic foundation established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911. Previously, she served as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford and of the University of St. Andrews, and as executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. A native of Ireland, she studied history in Trinity College Dublin before gaining her PhD at Harvard University, where she spent 20 years on the faculty of the Department of Government, teaching courses on international security and foreign policy. She currently sits on numerous advisory boards, while serving as a trustee of, among others, the Booker Prize Foundation and the Sutton Trust. Richardson is also a member of the selection committee of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. In 2023, the Irish government asked Richardson to serve as the independent chair of its Consultative Forum on International Security Policy. A political scientist by training, Richardson is recognized internationally as an expert on terrorism and counterterrorism. Today considered a seminal work in the field, her groundbreaking study, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006), was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as an “overdue and essential primer on terrorism and how to tackle it … the book many have been waiting for.” Other publications include Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past (2007), The Roots of Terrorism (2006), and When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations during the Suez and Falklands Crises (1996). She has written numerous articles on international terrorism, British foreign and defense policy, security institutions, and international relations; lectured to public, professional, media, and education groups; and served on editorial boards for several journals and presses. Richardson’s many awards have recognized the excellence of her teaching and scholarship, including the Centennial Medal bestowed on her in 2013 by Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for “having the vision to assess emerging threats, for transformative leadership, and for moving seamlessly between the roles of scholar and teacher.” She has been awarded nine honorary doctorates, including from the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews in Scotland; Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast in Ireland; the University of Notre Dame in the U.S.; the University of the West Indies; Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel; and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in Russia. Richardson is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Academy of Social Sciences in the United Kingdom, as well as an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In June 2022, Richardson was appointed a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in recognition of her services to higher education.

23	Name:	Dr. Sabine Schmidtke
	Institution:	Institute for Advanced Study
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	4. Humanities
	Subdivision:	404b
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1964

	Sabine Schmidtke is a dynamic, wide-ranging, and highly productive scholar of early Islam and its theology. Her command of Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, together with exceptional facility in modern languages (German, French, and English) allows her to open up new perspectives on early Muslim intellectual life and sectarian debates. As the recipient of a generous Advanced Grant from the European Research Council she was able to set up a major program in Berlin on what she called the Islamicate world. Her organizational skills have become ever more apparent since her move to the United States, where she has planned conferences and launched new programs, including one on a digital database for Ottoman texts. She works directly from manuscripts, in search of which she has traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. She is a formidable scholar who wears her learning lightly. In 2019, she was elected to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

24	Name:	Dr. Neil H. Shubin
	Institution:	University of Chicago
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1960

	Neil Shubin is a scientist, administrator, and writer. Throughout his career, he has been interested in understanding the great transitions of evolution. Leading expeditions around the globe in search of critical intermediate fossils, he has discovered fossil evidence for the origins of terrestrial vertebrates, mammals, frogs, salamanders and other major groups of animals. He also has revealed genetic and developmental mechanisms for these changes by using comparative laboratory-based approaches on modern animals. Linking studies of gene sequence, regulation and function with those of embryology and anatomy, Shubin has revealed deep similarities among different organs that tell of their origins. Educated at Columbia, Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, Shubin has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he currently holds the Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professorship in Anatomy. He has held administrative positions at the University of Chicago (Departmental Chair, Associate Dean, and Senior Advisor to the President), The Field Museum (Provost) and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole (Co-Director). He is the author of: Your Inner Fish, The Universe Within, and Some Assembly Required. The former won the Phi Betta Kappa Science Book Prize and the National Academy of Sciences Scientific Communication Award. Shubin has also received the Distinguished Explorer's Award of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society. Your Inner Fish appeared on PBS as a three-part miniseries. Produced by Tangled Bank Studios of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute it won numerous awards, in eluding an Emmy. Shubin is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.

25	Name:	Dr. Beth A. Simmons
	Institution:	University of Pennsylvania
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	3. Social Sciences
	Subdivision:	304. Jurisprudence and Political Science
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1958

	Beth Simmons is a leading scholar of international law and institutions. She has done more than any other scholar to demonstrate the impact of treaties on state behavior and has pioneered studying the international diffusion of policies and institutions, combining historical, case-study, and sophisticated statistical analysis. Her first prize-winning book, Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years 1923-1939, brilliantly integrated political science with economics in a study of an important period of international political economy; her second prize-winning book, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics, powerfully demonstrated how international human rights agreements, which lack strong international enforcement, can become effective through mobilization by domestic groups. She has also done extremely important work on the politics and law of international monetary affairs and capital market regulation. Her overall standing in international relations and political science more generally is reflected in the fact that she is the second person to win the Woodrow Wilson Award twice (She is preceded only by Robert Dahl).

26	Name:	Dr. David Skorton
	Institution:	Association of American Medical Colleges
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1949

	David J. Skorton was the 13th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, overseeing 19 museums, the National Zoo, 21 libraries, several research centers, and numerous education units and centers. Dr. Skorton is a board-certified cardiologist and the first physician to lead the Smithsonian. Dr. Skorton is currently a Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University and previously served as the president of Cornell University. He was also a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College and in Cornell's Department of Biomedical Engineering. Before that, he was president of the University of Iowa and a professor there for 26 years. In 2019 he left the Smithsonian to become president and CEO of the American Association of Medical Colleges. Dr. Skorton received his bachelor's degree in psychology and his medical degree from Northwestern University. He completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

27	Name:	Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne
	Institution:	Stanford University
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	208. Plant Sciences
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1959

	A pioneering neuroscientist and leader in biotechnology and higher education, Marc Tessier-Lavigne became Stanford University’s 11th president on September 1, 2016. He returned to Stanford after serving for five years as president of The Rockefeller University, a leading graduate biomedical research university. Prior to his time in New York, he spent more than two decades in the Bay area. From 2001 to 2005, he served on the Stanford faculty as a professor of biological sciences and held the Susan B. Ford Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. While at Stanford, he was recruited to Genentech, where he served as Executive Vice President for Research and Chief Scientific Officer, directing 1,400 scientists in disease research and drug discovery for cancer and other illnesses. Prior to Stanford, he served on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he was recognized for distinguished teaching and ground-breaking discoveries on brain development. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including being elected a member of the National Academies of Sciences and of Medicine. President Tessier-Lavigne earned undergraduate degrees from McGill University and from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. from University College London. He performed postdoctoral work there and at Columbia University.

28	Name:	Sir Mark Thompson
	Institution:	Ancestry
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1957

	Mark Thompson is currently the Chair of the Board of Directors of Ancestry. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company from 2012 to 2020. He was responsible for leading the Company's strategy, operations and business units, and working closely with the chairman to direct the vision of the company. Mr. Thompson was instrumental in accelerating the pace of The Times's digital transformation. Under his leadership, The Times became the first news organization in the world to pass the one million digital-only subscription mark. The company has also introduced a new era of international growth, launched an industry leading branded content studio and invested in virtual reality, producing some of the most celebrated work in this emerging medium. Before joining the Times Company, Mr. Thompson served as Director-General of the BBC from 2004, where he reshaped the organization to meet the challenge of the digital age, ensuring that it remained a leading innovator with the launch of services such as the BBC iPlayer. He also oversaw a transformation of the BBC itself, driving productivity and efficiency through the introduction of new technologies and bold organizational redesign. Mr. Thompson joined the BBC in 1979 as a production trainee. He helped launch Watchdog and Breakfast Time, was an output editor on Newsnight, and was appointed editor of the Nine O'Clock News in 1988 and of Panorama in 1990. He became controller (programming and scheduling chief) for the TV network BBC2 and Director of Television for the BBC before leaving the BBC in 2002 to become CEO of Channel 4 Television Corporation in the United Kingdom. His book, "Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?" which is based on lectures he gave as a visiting professor of Rhetoric and the Art of Public Persuasion at the University of Oxford, was published in the UK and US in September 2016. Mark Thompson was educated at Stonyhurst College and Merton College, Oxford.

29	Name:	Ms. Billie Tsien
	Institution:	Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1949

	Billie Tsien and Tod Williams formed their New York-based collaborative practice in 1986. Their studio of about 35 people is known for successfully combining theory and practice, architecture, and the fine arts. The firm’s work emphasizes the importance of place and materials. Williams and Tsien have been the architects for many notable projects including the Barnes Foundation campus in Philadelphia, the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, the Desert House in Phoenix, Arizona, the David Rubenstein Atrium in New York City, and the Center for Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College in Vermont. The magnificent Barnes Foundation building and grounds honor the legacy of Dr. and Mrs. Barnes and the core educational mission of the Foundation through a series of spaces that maintain the intimate character of the gallery while allowing for greater access to the collections and programs. In June, the Obama Foundation selected Tsien and Williams as the architects for the Obama Presidential Center, a combination library and museum to be built in Chicago. The foundation said that the two architects “stood out in their commitment to explore the best ways of creating an innovative center for action that inspires communities and individuals to take on our biggest challenges.” In 2021 Billie Tsien was appointed to President Biden's Commission on Fine Arts.

30	Name:	Dr. Michael S. Turner
	Institution:	University of Chicago
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
	Subdivision:	106. Physics
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1949

	Michael S. Turner is a theoretical astrophysicist and the Bruce V. & Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and Senior Strategic Advisor to the Kavli Foundation. He was Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at Chicago, which he helped to establish, from 2010 to 2019 is a past-President of the American Physical Society, the 50,000 member organization of physicists. Previous positions include Scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (from 1983 to 1997), assistant Director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the National Science Foundation (2003 to 2006), Chief Scientist of Argonne National Laboratory (2006 to 2008), Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics (1997 to 2003), and President (1989 to 1994) and Chairman of the Board (2009 to 2012) of the Aspen Center for Physics. Turner was born in Los Angeles, CA, and attended public schools there; he received his B.S. from Caltech (1971), his M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1978) from Stanford (all in physics). He holds an honorary D.Sc. (2005) from Michigan State University and was awarded a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Caltech in 2006. Turner helped to pioneer the interdisciplinary field of particle astrophysics and cosmology, and with Edward Kolb initiated the Fermilab astrophysics program which today accounts for about 10% of the lab’s activities today. He led the National Academy study Quarks to the Cosmos that laid out the strategic vision for the field. Turner’s scholarly contributions include predicting cosmic acceleration and coining the term dark energy, showing how quantum fluctuations evolved into the seed perturbations for galaxies during cosmic inflation, and several key ideas that led to the cold dark matter theory of structure formation. His honors include Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society (APS), the Klopsted Award of the American Association of Physics Teachers, the Heineman Prize (with Kolb) of the AAS and American Institute of Physics, the 2011 Darwin Lecture of the Royal Astronomical Society and 2013 Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago. Turner’s twenty-plus former Ph.D. students hold faculty positions at leading universities around the country (e.g., Chicago, Caltech and University of Michigan), at national laboratories (Fermilab, JPL, and Argonne) and on Wall Street. Turner’s national service includes membership on more than 10 NRC Boards and Committees including the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (COSEPUP), the Senior Editorial Board of Science Magazine, Chairmanship of the OECD Global Science Forum’s Astroparticle Physics International Forum, a member of the Board of Directors of the Fermi Research Alliance, member of the NASA Advisory Council, Secretary and Chair of Class I of the National Academy of Sciences, and the founding Chair of ScienceCounts, a 501©3 organization that promotes the awareness and support of science.

31	Name:	Mr. Tod Williams
	Institution:	Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1943

	Billie Tsien and Tod Williams formed their New York-based collaborative practice in 1986. Their studio of about 35 people is known for successfully combining theory and practice, architecture, and the fine arts. The firm’s work emphasizes the importance of place and materials. Williams and Tsien have been the architects for many notable projects including the Barnes Foundation campus in Philadelphia, the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, the Desert House in Phoenix, Arizona, the David Rubenstein Atrium in New York City, and the Center for Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College in Vermont. The magnificent Barnes Foundation building and grounds honor the legacy of Dr. and Mrs. Barnes and the core educational mission of the Foundation through a series of spaces that maintain the intimate character of the gallery while allowing for greater access to the collections and programs. In June, the Obama Foundation selected Tsien and Williams as the architects for the Obama Presidential Center, a combination library and museum to be built in Chicago. The foundation said that the two architects stood out in their commitment to explore the best ways of creating an innovative center for action that inspires communities and individuals to take on our biggest challenges.

32	Name:	Dr. Jan Ziolkowski
	Institution:	Harvard University
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	4. Humanities
	Subdivision:	402b
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1956

	Jan Ziolkowski (A.B. Princeton University, Ph.D. University of Cambridge) has focused his research and teaching on the literature of the Latin Middle Ages. Within medieval literature his special interests have included such areas as the classical tradition, the grammatical and rhetorical tradition, the appropriation of folktales into Latin, and Germanic epic in Latin language. More comparatively, he has developed broad interests in medieval revivalism down to the present day. At Harvard he has chaired the Department of Comparative Literature and the Committee on Medieval Studies, in addition to (fleetingly) the Department of the Classics. He founded the Medieval Studies Seminar, which continues to hold regular meetings in the Barker Center that are open to the public. In his teaching he offers courses mainly in Classics (Medieval Latin) and in Medieval Studies. Currently he also directs Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, a Harvard center in Washington, D.C., with programs in Byzantine studies, Pre-Columbian studies, and Garden and Landscape studies. Author: The Juggler of Notre Dame and the Medievalizing of Modernity (2018) published in six volumes. Jan Ziolkowski was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2017.

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