Seven Illinois faculty members elected to AAAS

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Seven professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Physics professor James Eckstein, psychology professor Kara Federmeier, atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain, chemistry professor Liviu Mirica, computer science professor Grigore Rosu, mechanical science and engineering professor M. Taher Saif, and materials science and engineering professor Charles Schroeder are among the 506 scientists to be awarded the distinction of AAAS Fellow this year. Fellows are chosen by their peers for outstanding contribution to the field.

Eckstein is a pioneer of thin-film fabrication techniques and superconductivity. He developed an atomic layer-by-layer approach to making oxide thin films that has enabled and advanced research on oxide superconductors, magnets and artificial heterostructures. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and received the McGroddy Prize for New Materials from APS in 2021. He also is affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory at Illinois.

Federmeier is an expert in cognitive neuroscience, particularly language comprehension and its association with cognitive change and literacy. Her research group combines electrophysiological techniques with behavioral, eye movement and other brain-imaging methods to examine how information is organized and accessed in the brain. She is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Psychonomic Society and the Society for Psychophysiological Research. She also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois.

Jain, an esteemed climate scientist, strives to improve Earth system models by accurately representing biophysical and biogeochemical processes. He is an expert in how the land and climate interact with human activities, such as deforestation and agriculture intensification. He has served as a lead and contributing author for major assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and is one of the “Most Highly Cited Researchers” listed by Clarivate Analytics.

Mirica works at the intersection of biology and organic and inorganic chemistry, focusing on the activities of metals in processes with applications in energy and medicine. His research exploring the role of transition metals in Alzheimer’s disease has led to the development of diagnostic agents for treating neurodegenerative diseases. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute.

Rosu is an expert in both the theory and development of programming language semantics, automated software engineering and formal methods. He pioneered the field of runtime verification, an analysis framework that can verify a computing system as it executes to increase software quality. He directs the Formal Systems Laboratory and is a member of the Information Trust Institute at Illinois.

Saif studies the effects of forces at small scales, focusing on nanoscale materials and living cells. His work on deformation in nanomaterials could lead to self-healing metal components, and his work on the effects of cellular forces has opened new research avenues in neuron function, cancer progression and biological robotics. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He also is affiliated with the department of bioengineering, the Beckman Institute, the Cancer Center at Illinois, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at Illinois.

Schroeder is a leader in using single-molecule techniques to study polymers, proteins and soft materials, with the aim of discovering how molecular-scale properties and behaviors inform large-scale ones. His work has led to advances in single-molecule electronics, DNA data storage, automated chemical synthesis and the use of lipid vesicles as drug-delivery vehicles. Schroeder also is affiliated with the departments of chemical and biomolecular engineering, chemistry and bioengineering, the Beckman Institute, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Materials Research Lab at Illinois.