The National Academy of Sciences recognized five UC San Diego faculty members this week for “their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”
The work of Dmitri Basov, Lawrence Goldstein, Terence Hwa, Clifford Kubiak and Kimberly Prather spans fields ranging from medicine and biological sciences to atmospheric chemistry and physics.
They were among 120 American scientists and 26 international members named this year.
“For a young institution such as ours, having five professors inducted into the National Academy of Sciences speaks volumes of the innovative and visionary nature of this university and our well-respected and accomplished faculty,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla.
The new honors bring the total number of academy members from UC San Diego to 86.
Dmitri Basov, an affiliated professor in the Department of Physics, served as chair between 2010 and 2015. He is also a Higgins professor in the Department of Physics at Columbia University, where he is the principal investigator of the Basov Infrared Laboratory, the director of the DOE Energy Frontiers Research Center on Programmable Quantum Materials and co-director of the Max Planck Society – New York Center for Nonequilibrium Quantum Phenomena. His research interests include the physics of quantum materials, superconductivity, two-dimensional materials and infrared nano-optics.
Lawrence Goldstein, PhD, is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Department of Neurosciences in the School of Medicine. He founded and directed the Stem Cell Program and the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at UC San Diego Health. He is also founding scientific director of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. He was instrumental in the development and passage of Proposition 71 in 2004, which created a $3 billion fund for stem cell research in California. Goldstein’s focus is on unraveling how molecular motors interact with and control the behavior of axonal vesicles in neurons, and how defects in these processes contribute to ailments such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Terence Hwa is the Presidential Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics with a joint appointment in the Division of Biological Sciences. Trained in theoretical physics, Hwa launched a biology wet-lab 15 years ago and developed a unique quantitative approach to studying bacterial physiology. Hwa also champions interdisciplinary research. In 2001, he launched an extended program at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, which has been regarded as a watershed event in bringing physicists to post-genome biology. He is also the founder and co-director of the Quantitative Biology specialization program at UC San Diego.
Clifford Kubiak is a Distinguished Professor and former chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who holds the Harold C. Urey Chair in Chemistry. His Kubiak Research Group at UC San Diego is known for its work on developing catalysts for the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. Kubiak is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Chemical Society.
Kimberly Prather is a Distinguished Professor who holds a joint appointment between UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Prather’s research focuses on understanding the influence of atmospheric aerosols on clouds, human health and climate. Early in her career, she developed a technique known as aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometry that is widely used in atmospheric field studies around the world to determine the origin and chemistry of aerosols. She is the founding director of the National Science Foundation Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment (CAICE), the largest federally funded center in the history of UC San Diego.
– Staff reports
