Class
| • | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | [X] |
| | | Name: | Dr. Frances H. Arnold | | | Institution: | California Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1956 | | | | | | |
Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at Caltech, Frances Arnold pioneered protein engineering by directed evolution, with applications in alternative energy, chemicals, and medicine. She uses evolution augmented with machine learning to circumvent our profound ignorance of how DNA encodes function and create new biological molecules. She has been recognized by induction into the US National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Her awards include the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering (2011), the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011), the Millennium Technology Prize (2016), the National Academy of Sciences’ Sackler Prize in Convergence Research (2017), and the Franklin Institute's Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science (2019). Frances Arnold won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on directed evolution of enzymes. Arnold pioneered the 'directed evolution' technique, which is now used by hundreds of laboratories and companies to produce more useful enzymes.
Dr. Arnold chairs the Advisory Panel of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships in Science and Engineering and is a Trustee of the Gordon Research Conferences. She co-founded Gevo, Inc. in 2005 to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources and Provivi, Inc. in 2014 to develop non-toxic modes of agricultural pest control. | |
| | Name: | Dr. Eric J. Horvitz | | | Institution: | Microsoft | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 107 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1958 | | | | | | |
Eric Horvitz has made extensive influential contributions to artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction research and has had major industry impact through deployed AI systems, ( he holds nearly 300 patents). He pioneered the decision-theoretic paradigm (Bayesian inference methods), leading to the probabilistic inference paradigm widely used in AI. He has pioneered predictive models related to healthcare, ecommerce, aerospace and traffic patterns.
While advancing the capabilities of AI, he has also advanced the study of ethical concerns surrounding AI, including by founding Stanford’s 100 Year Study on AI. As co-founder of The Partnership on AI, he has brought together industry leaders and other notable experts to foster dialogue and education on best practices related to transparency, privacy, safety, and fairness of AI systems.
In 2020 Eric Horvitz was appointed Microsoft's first ever Chief Scientific Officer, as part of a plan to bring together parts of Microsoft research under one person. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. | |
| | Name: | Dr. Vijay Kumar | | | Institution: | University of Pennsylvania | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1962 | | | | | | |
Vijay Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Computer and Information Science and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies control systems and collective behaviors in biological and robotic systems. His GRASP lab has developed multi-robot systems and microscale aerial robots that are capable of impressive coordination, such as swarming and teamwork. From 2012-14 he was assistant director of Robotics and Cyber Physical Systems in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President. As Dean and as a researcher he has contributed greatly to the standing of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and to the surrounding community. He has been a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics and the Springer Tract in Advanced Robotics (STAR). He served as Editor of the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics from 2014-17. Vijay Kumar was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. | |
| | Name: | Dr. Sara Seager | | | Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1971 | | | | | | |
Sara Seager is an astrophysicist, planetary scientist and Class of 1941 Professor at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Her research aims to find exoplanets similar to Earth that meet the conditions for life. Her invetigations include work on transmission spectroscopy that led to the first ever detection of an exoplanet atmosphere. She did ground-breaking work on atmospheric retrieval and the brightness variability of terrestrial exoplanetsShe was co-investigator on TESS, a NASA Explorer Mission launched in April 2018, was chair of the NASA Science and Technology Definition Team for a Probe-class Starshade, and co-chairs the concept team for the NASA Habitable Planet Imaging Mission. Sara Seager was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2018. | |
| | Name: | Dr. Richard L. Taylor | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 2018 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 104. Mathematics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1962 | | | | | | |
Richard Taylor is an algebraic number theorist, working primarily on the relationship between automorphic forms and Galois representations, sometimes called the `Langlands program'. He helped Andrew Wiles complete his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem; with Michael Harris he proved the local Langlands conjecture for GL(n); with various collaborators he proved the Sato-Tate conjecture and the potential automorphy of all regular, self-dual motives; and he helped construct Galois representations for all regular algebraic cuspidal automorphic representations on GL(n) over a CM field. Born in England he graduated from Cambridge University before earning a PhD from Princeton University under the guidance of Andrew Wiles. He has held posts at Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard Universities. He is a member of the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences. He has won various prizes including the Breakthrough Prize, the Shaw Prize, a Clay Research Award, the Dannie Heinemann Prize, the Cole Prize, the Fermat Prize and the Ostrowski Prize. | |
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