The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected five Caltech community members as academy fellows. They are faculty members Michael B. Elowitz, professor of biology and bioengineering and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Mory Gharib (PhD '83), Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioinspired Engineering, director of the Ronald and Maxine Linde Institute of Economic and Management Sciences, and vice provost; and Linda C. Hsieh-Wilson, professor of chemistry; and Caltech trustees James Rothenberg and Maria Hummer-Tuttle. The American Academy is one of the nation's oldest honorary societies. Members are accomplished scholars and leaders representing diverse fields including academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts.
Michael B. Elowitz was noted for his work that "helped to initiate synthetic biology." Elowitz studies genetic circuits—interacting genes and proteins that enable cells to sense environmental conditions and to communicate. He and his group build simplified synthetic genetic circuits and study their effects in bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cells. He has received numerous honors in recognition of his work, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2007.
Mory Gharib and his group use nature's own design principles—apparent in fins, wings, blood vessels, and more—as inspiration for a myriad of inventions. They have studied fluid flows inside the zebrafish heart to develop efficient micropumps and more efficient artificial heart valves, and cactus spine to develop arrays of nanoneedles, based on carbon nanotubes, for painless drug delivery. Gharib holds nearly 100 patents, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2015.
Linda C. Hsieh-Wilson was noted for her pioneering work in the new fields of chemical glycobiology and chemical neurobiology. Her work combines organic chemistry and neurobiology in order to understand how carbohydrates contribute to fundamental brain processes such as cell growth and neuronal communication, neural development, and memory at the molecular level. She and her group discovered a means for suppressing tumor-cell growth by blocking the attachment of certain sugars to proteins, restricting delivery of certain carbohydrates to proteins within the tumor.
Maria Hummer-Tuttle, a lawyer, was a partner and chair of the management committee and co–managing partner of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips in Los Angeles. She currently serves on the boards of Caltech, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the W. M. Keck Foundation, the Suu Foundation, and the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies. Hummer-Tuttle is president of the Hummer Tuttle Foundation, serves on the advisory board of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School as well as on the program advisory committee of the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, and is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Getty Conservation Institute Council.
Jim Rothenberg is chairman of the Capital Group Companies, Inc. In addition to his service on the Caltech board, he serves on the boards of Capital Research and Management Company, the Capital Group Companies, Inc., and American Funds Distributors, Inc. In addition, he is a portfolio counselor for the Growth Fund of America, as well as vice chairman of the Growth Fund of America and Fundamental Investors. A chartered financial analyst, he was named to the Harvard Corporation as the treasurer of Harvard University in 2004. He also serves as a director of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.
Elowitz, Gharib, and Hsieh-Wilson join 83 current Caltech faculty as members of the American Academy. Also included in this year's list are five alumni: Robert Cohen (MS '70, PhD '72), St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and codirector of the DuPont-MIT Alliance; Alexei Filippenko (PhD '84), professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley; Katherine Hayles (MS '69), professor of literature at Duke University; Michael Snyder (PhD'83), professor and chair of genetics at Stanford University; and Donald Truhlar (PhD '70), professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots, the academy aims to serve the nation by cultivating "every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The academy has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members "leading thinkers and doers" from each generation, including George Washington and Ben Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Woodrow Wilson in the 20th.
A full list of new members is available on the academy website at https://www.amacad.org/content/members/members.aspx.
The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 10, 2015, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Written by Lorinda Dajose