2019 - 2020 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.

  • William Jackson (Miller Professor 1989) was a recipient of the Astronomical Society of Pacific, 2019 Arthur B. C. Walker II Award "for outstanding achievement in astronomy and education by an African American scientist."

  • Dan Stamper-Kurn (Miller Professor 2009-2010, 2018-2019), Birgitta Whaley (Miller Professor 2002-2003), Hartmut Häffner (Miller Professor 2019-2020) and Umesh Vazirani (Miller Professor 1999-2000, 2018-2019) are director and co-directors respectively of a newly created QLCI (Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes) for Present and Future Quantum Computation, focused on advancing quantum science and engineering and training a future workforce to build and use quantum computers.

  • Judith Klinman (Miller Professor 1992, 2003-2004) is leading a collaborative team of researchers expanding the horizon of the science of PQQ biogenesis.

  • Paul Alivisatos (Miller Professor 2001-2002) was named 2021 Priestley Medalist for pioneering work in nanomaterials and service to the science community.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) received the 2020 Sustainable Water Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry for his “impactful development of water harvesting from desert air using metal-organic frameworks.”

  • Jeffrey Long (Miller Professor 2011) received the 2020 Ludwig Mond Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry for “pioneering work in the synthesis and characterization of inorganic molecules and materials exhibiting new physical phenomena.”

  • Michelle Antoine (Miller Fellow 2014-2017) won a 2019 NIH Distinguished Scholar Award for her research on “understanding how genetic and environmental insults alter the input to, computation in, and output of neural circuits to promote abnormal brain function and behavior.”

  • Venkat Guruswami (Miller Fellow 2001-2002) won a 2020 Simons Award in Theoretical Computer Science for “major advances in the theory of error-correcting codes, approximate optimization, pseudorandomness and related complexity-theoretic and mathematical aspects.”

  • Kelly Nguyen (Miller Fellow 2016-2019) was featured in the RNA Society’s article about her scientific background and her current research that focuses on telomerase structure and biology.

  • Ray Jayawardhana (Miller Fellow 2000-2002) was featured on NPR about his recently published children’s book entitled “Child of the Universe.”

  • Amy Shyer (Miller Fellow 2013-2016) was named a 2020 Searle Scholar for her research on “a multi-scale analysis of mechanics during skeletal morphogenesis.”

  • Dan Nicolau (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) is a co-author of the article in Lancet, discussing a treatment for COVID-19 with inhaled corticosteroids.

  • Miller Members elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research:

    • Anna K. Behrensmeyer (Miller Fellow 1097-1975)
    • Joel Blum (Visiting Miller Professor 2017) 
    • Katherine Freese (Visiting Miller Professor 2006)
    • Mark Kirkpatrick (Miller Felllow  1983-1985 and Visiting Miller Professor 2009)
    • Arunava Majumdar (Miller Professor 2003-2004)
    • Eliot Quataert (Miller Professor 2009-2010, Executive Committee Member 2012-2013)
    • Dean Toste (Miller Professor 2014)

  • Miller Members elected to the AAAS in 2020 in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research:

    • Kathy Collins (Miller Professor 2011)
    • Zahid Hasan (Visiting Miller Professor 2017) 
    • Philip Kim (Miller Fellow 1999-2001)
    • Chung-Pei Ma (Miller Professor 2019-2020)
    • Eve Ostriker (Visiting Miller Professor 2009)
    • Philip Phillips (Miller Fellow 1982-1984)
    • Richmond Sarpong (Miller Professor 2014)

  • William Schafer (Visiting Miller Professor 2019) was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

  • Marla Feller (MIller Fellow 1994-1996, Executive Director 2017-Present) was honored with a 2020 UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) was awarded the 2020 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science for "the invention of groundbreaking genomic technology that fundamentally changed the landscape for how we are able to approach the treatment of many devastating diseases and a host of other challenges facing mankind. Her work continues to create great promise for the future.” She was also awarded the 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship in Biology. 

  • Scott Tremaine (Visiting Miller Professor 2013) was awarded the 2020 AAS Henry Norris Russell Lectureship Award, celebrating his career of eminence in astronomical research.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) was announced as the 2019 Innovator of the Year by Innovation & Tech Today.

  • Jill Banfield (Miller Professor 2006-2007) & Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) featured in a new documentary "Human Nature."

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) awarded the German Chemical Society Gold Medal for his contributions to Reticular Chemistry, which includes metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and molecular weaving.

  • Jason Stajich (Miller Fellow 2006-2009) elected a 2020 Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

  • Naomi Ginsberg (Miller Professor 2017-2018) receives the ACS 2020 Early-Career Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry.

  • Peter Hintz (Miller Fellow 2015-2017) & Sung-Jin Oh (Miller Fellow 2013-2016) named the 2020 Sloan Research Fellows in Mathematics.

  • Cara Brook (Miller Fellow 2017-2020), a first co-author in a new University of California, Berkeley study discusses why bats’ fierce immune response to viruses could drive viruses to replicate faster. It’s no coincidence that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years — SARS, MERS, Ebola and likely the newly arrived 2019-nCoV virus — originated in bats.

  • Stacey Combes (Miller Fellow 2004-2007) described how bees can choose to use an energy-efficient economy mode of flight for heavy loads in new study from UC Davis published in Science Advances.

  • Cédric Villani (Visiting Miller Professor 2004), a prizewinning mathematician and a deputy in the National Assembly makes the case that he should be elected a mayor of Paris with the campaign slogan “Le Nouveau Paris,” envisioning the City of Light as the city of the future: “Trust science, to invent new urban lives.” More In the News

  • Peidong Yang (Miller Professor 2009) and his collegues created a type of halide perovskite crystal that emits blue light, something that has been hard to achieve with the trendy new material.

  • Monica Olvera de la Cruz (Visiting Miller Professor 2016) was a collaborator and a co-author of a study published in the journal Nature describing an achievement in designing a synthetic material that is as effective as naturally occurring proteins in transporting molecules through membranes, a major milestone that could transform such fields as medicine, life sciences, alternative energy and environmental science.

  • Gabor Somorjai (Miller Professor 1977-1978, Miller Senior Fellow 2009-2014) was honored with the Helmholtz Medal of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities for his outstanding scientific achievements in the fields of humanities, social sciences, mathematics and natural sciences, biology, medicine and engineering sciences. It is conferred at the ceremonial session on the Academy’s Leibniz Day celebration.

  • Ehud Isacoff (Miller Professor 2013) shares the 2020–22 McKnight Award with his collaborator, New York University Professor of Neuroscience Dirk Trauner for their work on photo-activation of dopamine receptors in models of Parkinson's Disease

  • Corrie Moreau (Miller Fellow 2007 - 2008) and Andy Suarez (Miller Fellow 2001 - 2003) have species named after them.

  • Doug Hemingway (Miller Fellow 2015 - 2018) is a co-author of the article "Cascading parallel fractures on Enceladus" published in Nature Astronomy.

  • Ambika Kamath's (Miller Fellow 2018 - 2021) paper "An alternative hypothesis for the evolution of same-sex sexual behaviour in animals" was featured in the NYTimes, Scientific American, and Nature.

  • Ehud Isacoff (Miller Professor 2013) is a co-director of the new Weill Neurohub, an innovative research network that will forge and nurture new collaborations between neuroscientists and researchers for a common cause: discovering new treatments for brain disease.

  • Jitendra Malik (Miller Professor 2001) is a co-author of the new AI research that developed a computer algorithm, called PatchFCN that helps finding tiny brain hemorrhages in head scans — an advance that one day may help doctors treat patients with traumatic brain injuries, strokes and aneurysms.

  • James Peebles (Visiting Miller Professor 1987) has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology.”

  • Robert Ritchie (Miller Fellow 1974 - 1976) is a co-leader and a co-author of the project investigating and discovering the secret of the Arapaima fish impermeable armor. The work could serve as inspiration for stronger, lightweight and flexible synthetic armors.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) was honored with the 2019 Life Sciences Leadership Award as California's most innovative and dedicated life sciences leader for her ongoing contributions to California's life sciences sector.

  • Birgitta Whaley (Miller Professor 2002 - 2003) is among seven new advisers appointed to the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and is a foremost expert in the fields of quantum information, quantum physics, molecular quantum mechanics and quantum biology.

  • Kenneth Ribet (Miller Professor 1990) was honored by Brown University in a new plaque celebrating his contribution to the University's Open Curriculum.

  • Nicole King (Miller Professor 2018-2019) and researchers in her lab have found a new species of choanoflagellate. The organism could offer clues about animals’ early evolution.

  • Roland Bürgmann (Miller Professor 2014, Member, Executive Committee & Advisory Board) was featured on KQED talking about the recent earthquakes.

  • Kam-Biu Luk (Miller Professor Fall 2001) won the 2019 Future Science Prize for his role in the neutrino discoveries of the past two decades, especially his leadership of the Daya Bay experiment.

  • Norm Yao awarded 2020 George E. Valley, Jr. Prize by the American Physical Society "For the elucidation of non-equilibrium quantum phases of matter, in particular time crystalline order, and for enabling the realization of these phases in quantum optical systems."

  • Ehud Altman (Visiting Miller Professor 2012) and Dung-Hai Lee (Miller Professor 1999) received Moore Foundation Award titled “Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Theory Center.”

  • Randy Schekman (Miller Senior Fellow 2008 - 2013) discussed new Parkinson’s research in his new article and at the Aging, Research and Technology Innovation Summit.

  • Jerry Mitrovica (Visiting Miller Professor 2004) was named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow for "revising our understanding of the dynamics and structure of Earth’s interior and developing models to better predict the geometry and sources of sea level change in the modern world and the geological past."

  • Nicole King (Miller Professor 2018-2019) was named a 2019 Pew Trust Innovation Fund Investigator to explore the innate immune response in aquatic, unicellular organisms called choanoflagellates.

  • Nicola Spaldin (Miller Professor 2007) has been awarded the 2019 Swiss Science Prize by the Marcel Benoist Foundation "for her ground-breaking research in multiferroic materials, with which she has laid the foundations for new ultrafast and energy-efficient data storage technologies."

  • Paul Alivisatos (Miller Professor 2001-2002) was named a recipient of the prestigious 2019 Robert A. Welch Award in Chemistry for his important research contributions in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology which have had a significant, positive impact on humankind.

  • Miller Members named winners of the 2020 Breakthrough Prize:

    • Xie Chen (Miller Fellow 2012-2014) was recognized among other physicists with the 2020 New Horizons in Physics Prize "For incisive contributions to the understanding of topological states of matter and the relationships between them."
    • Sergio Ferrara (Visiting Miller Professor 2008) was honored with a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics to recognize the discovery of the theory of supergravity.
    • Feryal Özel (Visiting Miller Professor 2014) was recognized among The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration Prizewinners.

  • Arash Komeili (Miller Professor 2016-2017) was named one of 2019-2020 Bakar Fellows for engineering bacteria to efficiently isolate metals from minerals, thereby minimizing the environmental damage typical of traditional mining.

  • JoAnne Stubbe (Incoming Visiting Miller Professor 2020) was named 2020 Priestley Medalist as the top mechanistic biochemist of her generation with the American Chemical Society’s highest honor.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) has been honored with the 2019 Welfare Betterment Prize, a relatively new Hong Kong-based prize, for her pioneering discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.

  • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) penned the introduction to the recently published articles about new research into reticular chemistry In a new virtual collection from ACS Central Science.

  • Norm Yao (Miller Fellow 2014-2017) was recognized by the American Physical Society's 2020 George E. Valley Jr. Prize "For the elucidation of non-equilibrium quantum phases of matter, in particular time crystalline order, and for enabling the realization of these phases in quantum optical systems."

  • Daniel Fletcher's (Miller Professor 2019-2020) bioengineering laboratory was awarded a $1.9 million Gates Foundation grant to support the scaled-up production of the LoaScope, a mobile phone-based microscope to enable mapping of Loa loa prevalence and intensity in Central and West Africa.