Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been chosen as AAAS president-elect. Her three-year term as an officer and member of the Executive Committee of the AAAS Board of Directors will begin 17 February 2015 at the conclusion of the 181st AAAS Annual Meeting in San Jose, California.
Before becoming AAAS president-elect, Schaal served as chair of the AAAS section on biological sciences. "I am very much looking forward to my term as AAAS president," Schaal said. "I'm particularly interested in communicating the value of the basic research enterprise for our nation's economic future and the well-being of citizens. I'm also interested in supporting the STEM activities of AAAS."
Barbara Schaal | Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photos
Schaal earned both her master's and doctoral degrees in population biology from Yale University. Before joining the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis as an associate professor in 1980, she taught at the University of Houston and Ohio State University. In 1986, Schaal became a full professor, and in January 2013 she started serving as dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences.
She was among the first plant scientists to use molecular biology-based approaches to understand evolutionary processes in plants, and she has worked to advance understanding of plant molecular systematics and population genetics. Her recent work includes collaborating with students and peers to research the evolutionary genetics of plants in hopes of enriching crops such as rice.
In 2005, Schaal became the first woman elected vice president of the National Academy of Sciences. She was elected for another four-year term in 2009, the same year that she was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Schaal also serves as chair of the Division on Earth and Life Studies at the National Research Council (NRC).
Following the AAAS Annual Meeting, Geraldine Richmond, the Presidential Chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon, will begin her term as AAAS president. Gerald Fink, professor of genetics, founding member of the Whitehead Institute at MIT, and current AAAS president, will become chair of the AAAS Board of Directors.
In addition to Schaal, all of the newly elected AAAS officers will begin their terms on 17 February 2015:
General Election
President-Elect: Barbara A. Schaal, Washington Univ. in St. Louis
Board of Directors: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Mercedes Pascual, Univ. of Michigan
Committee on Nominations: Peter C. Agre, Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute; Frances H. Arnold, California Institute of Technology; Michael A. Marletta, Scripps Research Institute; Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Rockefeller Univ.
Section Elections
Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources
Chair Elect: Steven C. Huber, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Member-at-Large: Johanna Schmitt, Univ. of California, Davis
Electorate Nominating Committee: Amanda D. Rodewald, Cornell Univ.; Roger Philip Wise, USDA-ARS/Iowa State Univ.
Council Delegate : Jim Giovannoni, USDA-ARS/Cornell Univ.
Anthropology
Chair Elect: Dennis H. O'Rourke, Univ. of Utah
Member-at-Large: Joanna E. Lambert, Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
Electorate Nominating Committee: Yolanda T. Moses, Univ. of California, Riverside; Anne C. Stone, Arizona State Univ.
Astronomy
Chair Elect: Debra Meloy Elmegreen, Vassar College
Member-at-Large: Henry C. Ferguson, Space Telescope Science Institute
Electorate Nominating Committee: Harriet L. Dinerstein, Univ. of Texas at Austin; Nancy A. Levenson, Gemini Observatory
Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences
Chair Elect: Jack A. Kaye, NASA
Member-at-Large: Carol Arnosti, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Electorate Nominating Committee: Chris E. Forest, Pennsylvania State Univ.; James M. Russell, Brown Univ.
Biological Sciences
Chair Elect: Pamela C. Ronald, Univ. of California, Davis
Member-at-Large: Sarah M. (Sally) Assmann, Pennsylvania State Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: David A. Baum, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; N. Louise Glass, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Chemistry
Chair Elect: Carol J. Burns, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Member-at-Large: Michael P. Doyle, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Electorate Nominating Committee: Joanna Aizenberg, Harvard Univ.; Stephanie L. Brock, Wayne State Univ.
Dentistry and Oral Health Sciences
Chair Elect: Susan Reisine, Univ. of Connecticut
Member-at-Large: Matthew P. Hoffman, NIDCR/NIH
Electorate Nominating Committee: Laurie K. McCauley, Univ. of Michigan; James E. Melvin, NIDCR/NIH
Education
Chair Elect: Cathy Middlecamp, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
Member-at-Large: Tammy M. Long, Michigan State Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Claire A. Hemingway, National Science Foundation; M. Patricia Morse, Northeastern Univ.
Engineering
Chair Elect: Larry V. McIntire, Georgia Tech
Member-at-Large: Lance Collins, Cornell Univ
Electorate Nominating Committee: Carol K. Hall, North Carolina State Univ.; Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Rice Univ.
Council Delegate: Molly Sandra Shoichet, Univ. of Toronto (Canada); Stuart L. Cooper, Ohio State Univ.
General Interest in Science and Engineering
Chair Elect: Cristine Russell, Harvard Univ.
Member-at-Large: David F. Salisbury, Vanderbilt Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Sharon Dunwoody, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; Ginger Pinholster, AAAS
Geology and Geography
Chair Elect: Philip D. Gingerich, Univ. of Michigan
Member-at-Large: Paul H. Glaser, Univ. of Minnesota
Electorate Nominating Committee: Mary L. Droser, Univ. of California, Riverside; Sarah L. Shafer, U.S. Geological Survey
History and Philosophy of Science
Chair Elect: Janet Browne, Harvard Univ.
Member-at-Large: Hanne Andersen, Aarhus Univ. (Denmark)
Electorate Nominating Committee: Michael A. Osborne, Oregon State Univ.; James Woodward, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Council Delegate: Frederick Grinnell, Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Industrial Science and Technology
Chair Elect: Katharine Blodgett Gebbie, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Member-at-Large: William D. Provine, DuPont
Electorate Nominating Committee: Laura Privalle, Bayer CropScience; Proctor Reid, National Academy of Engineering
Council Delegate: Frances M. Ross, IBM Research
Information, Computing, and Communication
Chair Elect: Jeannette Wing, Microsoft/Carnegie Mellon Univ.
Member-at-Large: Nancy Amato, Texas A&M Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Jeffrey Dean, Google, Inc.; Manuela M. Veloso, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
Linguistics and Language Science
Chair Elect: Jennifer Cole, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Member-at-Large: Maria Polinsky, Harvard Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Dan Jurafsky, Stanford Univ.; Angelika Kratzer, Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst
Mathematics
Chair Elect: Eric M. Friedlanader, Univ. of Southern California
Member-at-Large: Jack Xin, Univ. of California, Irvine
Electorate Nominating Committee: L. Pamela (Pam) Cook, Univ. of Delaware; Joceline Lega, Univ. of Arizona
Medical Sciences
Chair Elect: Harry B. Greenberg, Stanford Univ. School of Medicine
Member-at-Large: Barbara J. McNeil, Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Electorate Nominating Committee: Nancy C. Andrews, Duke Univ.; Mary E. Klotman, Duke University School of Medicine
Council Delegate: Anna Di Gregorio, Weill Cornell Medical College; Jeffrey S. Chamberlain, Univ. of Washington; Garrett A. FitzGerald, Univ. of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; Charles M. Rice, Rockefeller Univ.
Neuroscience
Chair Elect: Don W. Cleveland, UC San Diego/Ludwig Inst. for Cancer Research
Member-at-Large: Diane Lipscombe, Brown Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Leslie C. Griffith, Brandeis Univ.; Lori L. Isom, Univ. of Michigan Medical School
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Chair Elect: Peter Wipf, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Member-at-Large: Gunda I. Georg, Univ. of Minnesota
Electorate Nominating Committee: Jeffrey Aubé, Univ. of Kansas; Amy M. Barrios, Univ. of Utah
Physics
Chair Elect: Greg Boebinger, Florida State Univ./ Univ. of Florida
Member-at-Large: Lynn R. Cominsky, Sonoma State Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Gail G. Hanson, Univ. of California, Riverside; M. Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse Univ.
Psychology
Chair Elect: Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Member-at-Large: Randi C. Martin, Rice Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Susan A. Gelman, Univ. of Michigan; Dedre Gentner, Northwestern Univ.
Council Delegate: David A. Rosenbaum, Pennsylvania State Univ.
Social, Economic, and Political Sciences
Chair Elect: Ann Bostrom, Univ. of Washington
Member-at-Large: Guillermina Jasso, New York Univ.
Electorate Nominating Committee: Stanley Presser, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Gary Sandefur, Oklahoma State Univ.
Council Delegate: Paula Stephan, Georgia State Univ.
Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering
Chair Elect: Jane Maienschein, Arizona State Univ.
Member-at-Large: Anne Fitzpatrick, U.S. Department of Energy
Electorate Nominating Committee: Anne-Marie Carroll Mazza, National Academy of Sciences; Julia A. Moore, Pew Charitable Trusts
Statistics
Chair Elect: Nicholas P. Jewell, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Member-at-Large: Charmaine Dean, Univ. of Western Ontario (Canada)
Electorate Nominating Committee: Sastry G. Pantula, Oregon State Univ.; Simon Tavaré, Univ. of Cambridge (UK)