AUSTIN, Texas—Two natural sciences faculty were elected members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States.
Richard Aldrich and David Hillis were among 72 others for their excellence in original scientific research.
“They are leaders in their fields, and their work has earned national and international recognition. They bring great credit to our university,” said William Powers Jr., president of The University of Texas at Austin.
Richard Aldrich, the Karl Folkers Chair of the Section of Neurobiology, joined the university in 2006 from Stanford, where he served as chair of their Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology from 2001-2004. Aldrich’s research is directed towards understanding the mechanisms of ion channel function in neurons and the role of ion channels in electrical signaling and physiology. He is a member of the university’s Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology and Center for Learning and Memory and a fellow of the Biophysical Society. He was a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1990-2006.
David Hillis, the Alfred W. Roark Centennial Professor in the Section of Integrative Biology, studies the evolution of biotic diversity, largely using molecular genetic techniques to tease out relationships among organisms. He directs the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and is a principle investigator in the Assembling the Tree of Life project, where researchers from around the country seek to fully develop an evolutionary tree for all life on Earth. He is a member of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, a MacArthur Fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Wilson "Bill" Geisler, the David Wechsler Regents Chair in Psychology from the College of Liberal Arts, was also elected a member of NAS. Aldrich, Geisler and Hillis bring the number of University of Texas at Austin faculty elected to NAS to 13.
New NAS members will be inducted into the academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Among the NAS's 2000 renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright and Alexander Graham Bell.
Comments