CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Three scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – electrical and computer engineering professor emeritus Tamer Başar, materials science and engineering professor David Cahill and physics professor Vidya Madhavan – have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
They are among nearly 270 inductees to the academy this year, one of the oldest honorary societies in the nation. Founded in 1780, the academy recognizes scientists, artists, scholars and leaders who have distinguished themselves in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
The Swanlund Endowed Chair Emeritus and Center for Advanced Study Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Başar is an affiliate of the department of mechanical science and engineering, the Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Information Trust Institute.
Başar’s research interests include intrusion detection in computer and communication networks, remote control over networks under rate constraints, and multi-level, multi-resolution games. The author or co-author of more than 1,000 publications, he served as editor-in-chief of the journal Automatica and as editor of several book series.
Başar’s work has garnered some of the highest honors in his field, including the Bode Lecture Prize from the IEEE Control Systems Society, the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award from the American Automatic Control Council and the Giorgio Quazza Medal from the International Federation of Automatic Control.
At the U. of I., his dedication to academic excellence and exemplary contributions to the understanding of his field were recognized with the Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award from the Grainger College of Engineering.
He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the International Federation of Automatic Control, and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
A past president of the IEEE Control Systems Society and of the American Automatic Control Council, Başar was the founder and a past president of the International Society of Dynamic Games. He received numerous honorary doctorates and professorships from international institutions, including the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
While on campus, Başar served in various leadership positions, including director of the Center for Advanced Study, interim dean of the College of Engineering and interim director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
Since 2021, he has served as the executive director of Illinois at Singapore Pte Ltd., a research center in Singapore affiliated with the university.
Cahill is a professor and the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering, as well as the co-director of the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute.
He served as head of the department of materials science and engineering for eight years and was the Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering.
His research interests include nanoscale thermal transport. thermal conductivity in materials and GHz frequency acoustics.
Cahill was awarded the Innovation in Materials Characterization Award by the Materials Research Society, the Yeram S. Touloukian Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Peter Mark Memorial Award from the American Vacuum Society.
At Illinois, the excellence of his scholarly activities and teaching were recognized with a University Scholar Award from the Office of the Provost and the Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award from the Grainger College of Engineering.
He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society. the American Physical Society and the Section on Engineering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Madhavan’s research focuses on fundamental problems in quantum materials, unconventional and topological superconductors, and using molecular beam epitaxy to unravel the mysteries of complex systems at the atomic scale.
Among her honors are a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Investigator Award.
Madhavan is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She also served as a member-at-large of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics.
Başar, Cahill and Madhavan will be inducted at a ceremony on Sept. 30 in Cambridge. The complete list of members elected to the academy is available on its website.
Editor’s Note: To reach Tamer Başar, email basar1@illinois.edu
To reach David Cahill, call 217-333-6753; email d-cahill@illinois.edu
To reach Vidya Madhavan, call 217-300-1476; email vm1@illinois.edu
