By Meredith Fore
Three Chicago Quantum Exchange scientists – Nadya Mason at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Laura Gagliardi at the University of Chicago; and Michael Wasielewski at Northwestern University – have recently been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and Mason was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).
Membership in the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest professional honors a scientist can receive. Mason, Gagliardi, and Wasielewski are among 120 new U.S. members and 30 international members elected to the academy this year, a cohort which includes the most women to be elected to the academy in a single year. They will be inducted at the academy’s annual meeting in 2022.
Mason, the Rosalyn Sussman Yalow Professor in Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the country’s most prestigious honorary societies. She is one of 252 new members elected this year, a class that includes artists, philosophers, journalists, scientists, and leaders in public, nonprofit and private sectors.
Mason conducts research on quantum electronics and materials, including topological materials, and is the founding director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, the Edward Bouchet Award, the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research at Illinois and the Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award.
Gagliardi develops novel quantum chemical methods and models molecular species, materials, and interfaces. She is the Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, with a joint appointment at the James Franck Institute. She is also the director of the Chicago Center for Theoretical Chemistry and the Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center.
Wasielewski studies light-driven processes in molecules and materials, artificial photosynthesis, molecular electronics, quantum information science, ultrafast optical spectroscopy and time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. He is the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, executive director of the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN) and director of the Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction, a US-DOE Energy Frontier Research Center.
Read more:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign news release, AAAS
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign news release, NAS
University of Chicago news release
Northwestern University news release
Image caption: Colored, headshot images for Chicago Quantum Exchange researchers who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From left to right: Nadya Mason, Laura Gagliardi, Michael Wasielewski.