2017 - 2018 News

Below is a list of our Miller members who have recently received awards or who have been highlighted in the media. Also, the Miller Newsletters is another way to find out what is currently happening in our Miller Community.

  • Chen Li's (Miller Fellow 2012-2015) Terradynamics Lab's journal paper on mechanical principles of winged self-righting wins the 6th Advanced Robotics Best Paper Award.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009), one of the most brilliant scientists working in the field of crystalline-porous solids research is awarded the 2018 Eni Energy Transition Award for exceptional innovation in the hydrocarbon sector towards the decarbonization of the energy system.

  • Richard Henderson's (Visiting Miller Professor 1993) honored with a RSE Royal Medal for his work in the field of electron microscopy that resulted in new treatments for several serious diseases and saving lives.

  • Bin Yu (Miller Professor 2004, 2016-2017) received a prestigious Scott Award for her dedication and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the statistics field and for her mentorship of women students, as well as for her scientific contributions to statistical and machine learning methodology.

  • Ray Jayawardhana (Miller Fellow 2000-2002), distinguished astrophysicist, renowned science writer and accomplished academic leader has been named the 22nd dean of Cornel's College of Arts and Sciences.

  • Two Miller Members named the 2018 Cottrell Scholars based on their innovative research proposals and education programs:

    • Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere (Miller Fellow 2010-2013) - astronomy, The Physics, Observational Signatures, and Consequences of Galactic Winds Driven by Active Galactic Nuclei
    • Meredith Hughes (Miller Fellow 2010-2013) - astronomy, The Last Gasp of Planet Formation: Gas and Dust in Debris Disks.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) was awarded the 2018 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for the pioneering work in the development of the powerful nanoscale tool CRISPR-Cas9 to edit DNA. The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, given every other year by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Kavli Foundaion to “laureates who represent truly pioneering science, the kind of science which will benefit humanity in a profound way.”

  • Christophe Copéret (Somorjai Visiting Miller Professor 2015), a co-author of the international team of chemists that found a method to accelerate the development of new catalysts. Using NMR spectroscopy together with computational chemisty, they can evaluate whether or not molecules can enable reactions.

  • Dan Stamper-Kurn (Miller Professor 2009 - 2010, 2018-2019) has been named a Distinguished Scholar of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) “in appreciation of his groundbreaking contributions to the field of Ultracold Quantum Gases and Quantum Optics.”

  • Gabor Somorjai (Miller Professor 1977-1979, Miller Senior Fellow 2009 - 2014) makes the case for pursuing new forms of hybrid catalysis in a perspective article, A Vision for Unifying Catalysis published this month in the journal Nature Catalysis.

  • Miller Members named winners of the 2018 Royal Society of Chemistry Awards:

    • Christopher Chang (Miller Professor 2011-2012) was honored with the Jeremy Knowles Award for the inter-disciplinary research between chemistry and the life sciences.
    • John Hartwig (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) was honored with the Centenary Prize for inventing new chemical reactions that are used to make molecules with multiple applications, including the discovery of new pharmaceuticals. The Centenary Prize is awarded to outstanding chemists, who are also exceptional communicators from overseas, to give lectures in the British Isles.
    • Daniel Neumark (Miller Professor 1999-2000) was recognized with the Bourke Award for developing novel experiments in chemical reaction dynamics that probe the breaking and making of chemical bonds. The Bourke Award enables distinguished scientists from overseas to lecture in the UK in the field of physical chemistry or chemical physics.
    • Dean Toste (Miller Professor 2014) was presented with the Catalysis in Organic Chemistry Award for the development and mechanistic understanding of novel catalytic concepts in organic chemistry.

  • Mikhail Shapiro (Miller Fellow 2011 - 2013) is one of 13 scholars recognized with 2018 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award for his frontier accomplishments in research of molecular engineering for noninvasive imaging and control of cellular function.

  • Miller Members Among Newly Elected 2018 NAS Fellows:

    • Ron Ekers (Visiting Miller Professor 2001) is recognized for his distinguished contributions to radio astronomy and radio astronomical techniques. A hallmark of his career has been wide-ranging, innovative experiments involving the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, galaxies, quasars and the cosmic microwave background.
    • Ehud Isacoff (Miller Professor 2013) is honored for his continuing research in four intersecting and complementary areas: mechanisms of ion channel function, synapse development and plasticity, neural circuit function, and the design of novel probes for the optical detection of neuronal signaling.
    • Mehran Kardar (Visiting Miller Professor 2002) is recognized for his distinguished achievements in Statistical Mechanics, and in particular for the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang (KPZ) equation in theoretical physics, which has been named after him and collaborators.
    • Michael Manga (Miller Fellow 1994-1996, Miller Professor 2008-2009, Executive Director 2010-2016) is honored for his studies of geological fluid mechanics and magma flow prior to eruptions.

  • Maryam Modjaz (Miller Fellow 2007-2010) was a recipient of the Humboldt Research Fellowship in Astronomy.

  • Selected from a pool of exceptional colleagues, Britt Glaunsinger (Miller Professor 2015) and Marla Feller (Executive Director / Miller Fellow 1994-96), were honored as the 2018 Graduate Division's Distinguished Faculty Mentor Awards Recipients. A celebration was held on April 12, 2018.

  • Three Former Miller Members Among Newly Elected 2018 AAAS Fellows:

    • Eliot Quataert (Miller Professor 2009-2010) is recognized for his scientifically distinguished achievements in studying black holes, stellar physics, plasma astrophysics, and galaxy formation.
    • F. Dean Toste (Miller Professor 2014) is honored for development of catalysts, catalytic reactions and methods for organic synthesis.
    • Birgitta Whaley (Miller Professor 2002-2003) is recognized for distinguished contributions to the studies of quantum physics, molecular quantum mechanics, and quantum information.

  • Simone Ferraro (Miller Fellow 2015-2018) - is one of the authors of the study on mapping the network of filaments connecting the Universe's visible matter, focusing on the relationship between the underlying dark matter and the filaments.

  • Melissa Wilson Sayres (Miller Fellow 2011-2014) is a winner of the 2018 SMBE Allan Wilson Junior Award for Independent Research in recognition of her contribution in analyzing large-scale genomic and transcriptomic datasets to study sex-specific processes.

  • Four Miller Members have been awarded 2018 Guggenheim Fellowships::

    • Arup K. Chakraborty (Miller Professor 2006) is honored for his research of induction of broadly neutralizing antibodies against highly mutable pathogens.
    • Will Dichtel (Visiting Miller Professor 2016) is recognized for development of structurally precise organic materials.
    • Shri Kulkarni (Visiting Miller Professor 1995) is honored for his contributions to the studies of exotic cosmological explosions.
    • Lisa Randall (Visiting Miller Professor 2012) is recognized for distinguished contributions to the studies of black hole mergers and their environment.

  • Dustin Rubenstein (Miller Fellow 2006-2009) is one of the winners of The Society of Columbia Graduates 2018 Great Teachers Award as an integrative behavioral and evolutionary ecologist who studies the evolution of complex animal societies and how organisms adapt to and cope with environmental change.

  • Alex Filippenko (Miller Fellow 1984-1986, Miller Professor 1996, 2005, Miller Senior Fellow 2017) - a co-author of the report about a new technique for astronomers to study individual stars in galaxies formed during the earliest days of the universe. These observations can provide a rare look at how stars evolve, especially the most luminous ones.

  • Dan Nicolau (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) contributed to the article about the phenomenon called network effects, featured in The Financial Times.

  • William Bialek (Miller Fellow 1986-1987) is awarded the 2018 Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics "for the application of general theoretical principles of physics and information theory to help understand and predict how biological systems function across a variety of scales, from molecules and cells, to brains and animal collectives."

  • Susan Marqusee (Miller Professor 2016-2017) is the recipient of The Protein Society's 2018 Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award, which recognizes researchers in protein science whose contributions have significant impacts in the broader field of biology. She is a world expert in the field of protein folding, and her influential research "has produced the most detailed view of the energy landscape of a protein."

  • Michael Jordan (Miller Professor 2008, 2017-2018) has been named a Plenary Lecturer at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), an honor that has been bestowed on only a small handful of computer scientists over the 121 year history of the ICM.

  • 2018 UC Berkeley Distinguished Faculty Mentor Awards:

    • Marla Feller (Miller Institute Executive Director, Miller Fellow 1994 - 1996) - is honored for her commitment to equitable access and opportunity in the sciences, as well as her support for a broad range of researchers – from graduate students, to postdocs, to other faculty members.
    • Britt Glaunsinger (Miller Professor 2015) - is recognized for her commitment to scientific communication and individual development; her innovations in providing holistic and structured mentorship have ensured success for her students.

  • Roland Bürgmann (Miller Professor 2014) is a co-author of the paper about a geological phenomenon called subsidence.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) awarded 2018 Wolf Prize for “pioneering reticular chemistry via metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs).”

  • Peter Hintz (Miller Fellow 2015-2017) is a co-author of a team of researchers that made significant progress toward proving the black hole stability conjecture, a critical mathematical test of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

  • Michael Jordan (Miller Professor 2008, 2017-2018) is a co-lead of the Expeditions project. The NSF Expeditions in Computing Award was one of three announced by the National Science Foundation for research teams pursuing large-scale, far-reaching and potentially transformative research in computer and information science and engineering.

  • Three Former Miller Fellows Are Among the 2018 Sloan Fellowship Awardees::

    • Qian Chen (Miller Fellow 2012 - 2015) is credited for her research of the new paradigm of building, mesoscopic imaging, and understanding active soft matter, the artificial materials analogue of smart living systems.
    • Rebekah (Bekki) Dawson (Miller Fellow 2013 - 2015) is honored for insights into extra-solar planets, debris disks, dynamics of planetary and satellite systems, the Kuiper Belt, planet formation, signal processing.
    • Norman Yao (Miller Fellow 2014 - 2017) is recognized for exploring uncharted territories at the interface between AMO physics, condensed matter, and quantum information science.

  • Constance Chang-Hasnain (Miller Professor 2003 - 2004), the John R. Whinnery Distinguished Chair in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, was elected to NAE for her contributions to wavelength tunable diode lasers and multi-wavelength laser arrays.

  • Claude-André Faucher-Giguère (Miller Fellow 2010 - 2013) has been named as one of the 2018 Cottrell Scholars for his innovative research proposal and education program, "The Physics, Observational Signatures, and Consequences of Galactic Winds Driven by Active Galactic Nuclei."

  • Barbara Meyer (Miller Senior Fellow 2013-2018) has been recognized by the Genetics Society with the 2018 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal for her groundbreaking work on chromosome behaviors that govern gene expression, development, and heredity.

    Barbara Meyer has been awarded the 2017 Francis Amory Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for distinguished achievements in the area of medicine and reproductive physiology.

  • Svante Pääbo (Visiting Miller Professor 2013) received the 2018 HFSP Nakasone Award for his discovery of the extent to which hybridization with Neanderthals and Denisovans has shaped the evolution of modern humans, and his development of techniques for sequencing DNA from fossils.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences “for his pioneering work in the conception and synthesis of new crystalline materials, MOFs and COFs, of major impact in science and engineering,” with potential applications that extend to “the capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) and trapping water molecules in air to produce water for drinking.”

  • Corrie Moreau (Miller Fellow 2007-2008) has been appointed as the Robert A. Pritzker Director of the Integrative Research Center. In this position, she will facilitate and promote the work of the ~70 scientists to develop a vision for scientific research using 35 million specimens and artifacts.

  • National Academy of Sciences Honors Two Miller Members for their extraordinary scientific achievements:

    • Ewine F. van Dishoeck (Visiting Miller Professor 2000) - is recognized for improving our understanding of how molecules, stars, and planets form.
    • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) - is honored for co-inventing the technology for efficient site-specific genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas9 nucleases.

  • Richard Saykally (Miller Professor 1985-1986, 1997-1998, 2006) is recognized with the E. Bright Wilson Award in Spectroscopy for the development of powerful new laser spectroscopy technology and its application for pioneering studies of molecular ions, water, and aqueous solutions and their surfaces.

  • Alejandro Rico-Guevara's (Miller Fellow 2017-2020) research on hummingbirds is featured in the Fall 2017 "Insight" issue of the Department of Integrative Biology. He will be giving an invited seminar at Yale in March. Camera traps that Alejandro and his team use in their research were chosen as the top conservation tech innovation for 2017.

  • Former Miller Professors Received Humboldt Foundation Research Awards:

    • Allen Goldstein (Miller Professor 2011), atmospheric chemist is credited for studying the balance between natural and human sources of trace gases and aerosols in earth’s atmosphere, included the gases that contribute to air pollution, climate change and ozone depletion.
    • Hitoshi Murayama (Miller Professor 2006), physicist is honored for theoretical work on particle physics, quantum field theory, collider physics, dark matter, dark energy, inflation, grand unification and neutrino physics.

  • Miller Members Elected AAAS Fellows:

    • Marla Feller (Miller Fellow 1994 - 1996) is credited for her outstanding, influential, original discoveries in neuroscience, particularly mechanisms and development roles for activity waves, gap junctions and motion detection in the retina.
    • Ron Cohen (Miller Professor 2015 - 2016) is honored for insights into how chemistry affects the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, especially the chemistry of nitrogen oxides and the isotopes of water.
    • Marc Kamionkowski (Visiting Miller Professor 2010) is recognized for his contributions to theoretical astrophysics and cosmology, specifically his work on the theory of the cosmic microwave background, or CMB.
    • Ian Macara (Visiting Miller Professor 1997) is recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of cell biology, particularly for advances in understanding mechanisms driving epithelial cell polarity and aberrant cell signaling in cancer.

  • Grant Remmen (Miller Fellow 2017 - 2020) won the 2018 J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Particle Physics "for his contributions to understanding the structure and self-consistency of gravity and effective field theories using ideas from quantum field theory and holography."

  • Alexander Levitzki (Visiting Miller Professor 2008) shared EMET Life Sciences Award for his protein kinases inhibitors in cancer research. Also, he was elected as foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Jeremy Thorner (Miller Professor 1984 - 1985, 1999 - 2000) is recognized by the American Society for Cell Biology as a Fellow for his lifetime achievements in advancing cell biology.

  • Adrian Bejan (Miller Fellow 1976 - 1978) was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for 2018 for “his pioneering interdisciplinary contributions in thermodynamics and convection heat transfer that have improved the performance of engineering systems, and for constructal theory, which predicts natural design and its evolution in engineering, scientific, and social systems.”

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) receives the 2017 Albert Einstein World Award of Science Prize for his ground-breaking scientific contributions in making materials by stitching organic and inorganic units through strong bonds into robust, porous crystalline metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and for establishing a new field of chemistry - Reticular Chemistry.

  • Lucy Pao (Visiting Miller Professor 2008) wins major scientific awards this year: 2017 Control Engineering Practice Award from the American Automatic Control Council and the European Academy of Wind Energy Scientific Award 2017.

  • Naomi Ginsberg (Miller Professor 2017 - 2018) research team's approach to track nanoscale process of energy flow will enable previously unattainable correlation of local material structure to photoexcitation migration character. The research results are available online at the Nature Materials website.

  • Two Miller Members elected to the National Academy of Medicine:

    • Arup K. Chakraborty (Miller Professor 2000) - for his work on bringing together immunology and the physical and engineering sciences. He is one of a small number of individuals who are members of all three branches of the US National Academies.
    • Nicholas Jewell (Miller Professor 2004) - for his research in biostatistics and statistics related to infectious diseases, including AIDS, as well as in epidemiological data analysis, in survival analysis and stochastic processes, and in genomics.

  • Kelly (Thi Hoang Duong) Nguyen (Miller Fellow 2016 - 2019) co-authored the article presented in Nature Collection of Research, Methods, Reviews and Comment to celebrate the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 award.

  • Richard Henderson (Visiting Miller Professor 1993) shares the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution.

  • Bin Yu's (Miller Professor Spring 2004, 2016 - 2017) post was featured by NAS in honor of the World Statistics Day.

  • Inez Fung (Miller Professor 2016 - 2017) is part of an international scientific team refining the detection skills of the new Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, launched in 2014. She discusses how to verify that nations are living up to their carbon-reduction promises.

  • Jeffrey Townsend (Miller Fellow 2002 - 2005) is one of principal investigators of interdisciplinary team of Yale researchers at the Yale's New Center to Advance Biology Research to make headway on the next frontier of synthetic biology - re-engineering cells to produce novel synthetic polymers.

  • Jeff Long (Miller Professor 2011) describes a research about cooperative MOF, a fundamental new mechanism that adsorbs carbon dioxide far better than other materials. The research was supported by the Center for Gas Separations Relevant to Clean Energy Technologies, an Energy Frontier Research Center operated jointly by UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) wins the 2017 Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry International Award for his pioneering research in Reticular Chemistry and the development of porous crystalline Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs).

  • Eve Ostriker (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) recognized by the Simons Foundation with the 2017 Simons Investigator Award for her “major contributions to our understanding of the role of the interstellar medium in star formation and galactic structure and evolution, with a focus on the role of turbulence and on the effects of energy returned by massive stars to the interstellar medium.”

  • Chemists Peidong Yang (Miller Professor 2009) and Kelsey Sakimoto have turned bacteria into efficient solar collectors to convert carbon dioxide into acetic acid, which serves as food for other bacteria producing useful fuels and chemicals.

  • Cédric Villani (Visiting Miller Professor 2004), Fields Medal winner speaks to the thrill of discovery and details the sometimes perplexing life of a mathematician.

  • Steven Poe (Miller Fellow 2000-2002) has discovered two new species of Anolis in Costa Rica and Panama. He has honored Miller Institute Chief Administrative Officer, Kathryn Day, by naming one of the discoveries Anolis kathydayae, citing her contributions "to the professional and personal development of scientists and the advancement of basic science through her position running the Miller Institute".

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) who co-invented CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing shares the 2017 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for groundbreaking work leading to current medical advances.

  • John Hartwig (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) discusses a new appoach to discover chemical reactions that could help us pick up the pace, thanks to a clever method and a smart Excel spreadsheet.

  • Eric Neuscamman (Miller Fellow 2011-2014) has received 2017 Early Career Research Program award from the Department of Energy to further his work on combining theoretical chemistry and the mathematics of random processes to design high‐fidelity models for electron transfer.

  • Peidong Yang (Miller Professor 2009), study principal investigator that finds tunable halide perovskites could usher in new generation of optoelectronic devices. The findings, published online this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Louise Glass (Miller Professor 2011 - 2012) is being recognized as an outstanding mycologist by being named Fellow of Mycological Society of America and will be honored as one of two new fellows of the Mycological Society of America (MSA) at their annual meeting in Athens, GA.