Three professors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been elected 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among seven professors selected at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Psychology professor Kara Federmeier, atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain, and chemistry professor Liviu Mirica 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.
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.
Other awardees at UIUC include physics professor James Eckstein, computer science professor Grigore Rosu, mechanical science and engineering professor M. Taher Saif, and materials science and engineering professor Charles Schroeder.
