Caltech Faculty Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected three Caltech faculty members as academy fellows. They are John F. Brady, Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and executive officer for chemical engineering; Kenneth A. Farley, W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Geochemistry and chair of the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences; and Fiona A. Harrison, Benjamin M. Rosen Professor of Physics.

"It is a privilege to honor these men and women for their extraordinary individual accomplishments," said Don Randel, chair of the academy's board of directors, of the 204 newly elected fellows and 16 foreign honorary members. "The knowledge and expertise of our members gives the academy a unique capacity—and responsibility—to provide practical policy solutions to the pressing challenges of the day. We look forward to engaging our new members in this work."

Brady works in the area of complex fluids and active matter that includes microstructural elements such as suspensions, colloidal dispersions, and self-propelling particles. Understanding these materials led Brady to develop a novel computational method called Stokesian dynamics. He won the 2012 Fluid Dynamics Prize from the American Physical Society and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1999.

Most of Farley's research has focused on terrestrial geochemistry, but he is now increasingly interested in planetary science and especially exploration of the geochemistry, geology, and geomorphology of Mars. In his laboratory on the Caltech campus, Farley and his group measure noble gases such as helium and neon in rock and mineral samples. One major objective of this work is determining the ages and surface exposure history of Earth's geological features. Farley was recently involved in the first-ever experiments of this type carried out on the surface of Mars, via an instrument on board the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity rover. He has received the Day Medal of the Geological Society of America and the Macelwane Award of the American Geophysical Union, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.

Harrison specializes in observational and experimental high-energy astrophysics. She is the principal investigator for NASA's NuSTAR Explorer Mission and uses this satellite, along with other satellites and ground-based telescopes, to understand black holes, neutron stars, and supernova remnants. In her labs at Caltech, Harrison's group develops high-energy X-ray detectors and instrumentation for future space missions. She was elected to the American Physical Society in 2012 and won a NASA Outstanding Public Leadership Medal in 2013.

Also named to the academy this year is Katherine T. Faber, the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, who will be joining the Caltech faculty on July 1 as the Simon Ramo Professor of Materials Science. Faber's research focuses on understanding fracture and toughening of brittle materials such as those used for high-temperature coatings for power generation applications. She also works on the fabrication of ceramic materials with controlled porosity. She is cofounder and codirector of the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS), which employs advanced materials science techniques for conservation science. Faber is a Distinguished Life Member of the American Ceramic Society (2013), and became a National Science Foundation American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellow in 2010.

The total number of Caltech faculty named to the academy is now 97.

The academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other scholar-patriots "to cultivate 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 the finest minds and most influential leaders 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 Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

A full list of new members is available on the academy website at https://www.amacad.org/content/members/members.aspx.

The academy will welcome this year's new fellows and foreign honorary members at its annual induction ceremony at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 11, 2014.