Three from Caltech Elected as AAAS Fellows

Three Caltech scientists have been elected as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for their "scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications," according to an AAAS press release.

Albert Lazzarini is the deputy director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory at Caltech. The AAAS recognized Lazzarini for over 20 years of LIGO leadership. LIGO made the first-ever detection of gravitational waves arriving at Earth in September 2015.

Jay Marx is the senior program advisor for LIGO Caltech and former executive director of LIGO (2006–2011). The AAAS noted Marx's leadership of LIGO as well as his involvement with the SLAC PEP-4 detector, which studies electron-positron collisions; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron facility that studies beams of X-rays; and Brookhaven National Laboratory's STAR detector, which tracks particles produced by ion collisions.

Michael Elowitz is a professor of biology and bioengineering, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and executive officer for biological engineering. The AAAS recognized his contributions to the field of synthetic biology, particularly his work on the design of genetic circuits in bacteria and eukaryotes and on the role of stochastic "noise" in living cells.

Six Caltech alumni were also named as Fellows: John Arrington (MS '92, PhD '98), Patrick Dussault (PhD '87), David Eaton (PhD '72), Sidney Leibovich (BS '61), Ardem Patapoutian (PhD '96), and Gary Stormo (BS '72).

The AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society. This year, the AAAS awarded the distinction of Fellow to 391 of its members. New Fellows will be honored during the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting in February.