2020 - 2021 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.

  • Steve Leone (Visiting Miller Professor Fall 1990, Miller Professor 2010, Executive Committee 2015 - 2021) is a co-author of the article "X-ray transient absorption reveals the 1Au (nπ*) state of pyrazine in electronic relaxation” published in Nature Communications.

  • Feng Wang (Miller Professor 2021-2022, Miller Fellow 2005-2008) is a co-author of the article "Gate-tunable plasmons in mixed-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures” published in Nature Communications.

  • Mikhail Shapiro (Miller Fellow 2011-2013) and his research team developed reporter genes that use sound instead of light. In their latest paper titled, "Ultrasensitive ultrasound imaging of gene expression with signal unmixing," they describe how it has increased the sensitivity of that technique so much that it can now image a single cell, located within body tissue, that is carrying an acoustic reporter gene.

  • Jeremy Thorner (Miller Professor 1984-1985, 1999-2000) received the prestigious 2022 Centenary Award from The Biochemical Society “for his contributions to our understanding of biological signal transduction mechanisms.” The Centenary Award, once called the Jubilee Award, is given annually to a biochemist of distinction from any country.

  • The mural “Horizon Light" was inspired by Chung-Pei Ma’s (Miller Professor 2010, 2019-2020, Executive Committee 2021) research which focuses on supermassive black holes is celebrating women of color in STEM and the work of Chung-Pei Ma in particular.

  • Xie Chen (Miller Fellow 2012-2014) and L. Mahadevan (Visiting Miller Professor 2006) were named 2021 Simons Foundation Investigators.

  • Jacqueline Cherfils (Visiting Miller Professor 2016) was elected a new member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in recognition of "research excellence and the outstanding achievements made by a life scientist".

  • Bin Yu (Miller Professor Spring 2004, Miller Professor 2016 - 2017) of Statistics, EECS and CCB has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Faculty of Business and Economics, in Switzerland. She was honored as "one of the most influential researchers of her time in Statistics and Data Science, for the excellence and impact of her work, and for her major contributions to the development and advancement of machine learning."

  • Former Miller members - Prashant Jain (Miller Fellow 2008-2011), Mikhail Shapiro (Miller Fellow 2011-2013) and Ahmet Yildiz (Miller Professor 2016-2017) named finalists of the 2021 Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences world’s largest unrestricted prize honoring early-career scientists and engineers.

  • Michael Jordan (Miller Senior Fellow 2019-Present) and Sjors Scheres (Visiting Miller Professor 2015) are among the newly elected Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society.

  • Mark Hauber (Miller Fellow 2002-2005) has been selected to receive a Humboldt Research Award in recognition of his entire academic record in integrative biology to date.

  • Dan Ibarra (Miller Fellow 2019-2022) is a co-author of the paper published by AGU.

  • Yu He (Miller Fellow 2019-2020) is a co-author of the article "Angle-resolved photoemission studies of quantum materials" published in Rev. Mod. Phys.

  • Former Miller Members elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS): Odile Eisenstein (Visiting Miller Professor 2004), Jonas Peters (Miller Fellow 1998-1999) & Ashvin Vishwanath (Miller Professor 2009).

  • Donna Blackmond (Visiting Miller Professor 2003), Odile Eisenstein (Visiting Miller Professor 2004), Glenn Fredrickson (Visiting Miller Professor 1993), N. Louise Glass (Miller Professor 2011-2012), Ursula Keller (Visiting Miller Professor 2006) and Michael Turelli (Miller Professor 2006) named new members of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

  • Kelly (Thi Hoang Duong) Nguyen (Miller Fellow 2016-2019) and Kathleen Collins (Miller Professor 2011, Executive Committee Member 2014-2015) are co-authors of the paper, "Structure of human telomerase holoenzyme with bound telomeric DNA" published in Nature.

  • Two former Miller members are among this year’s 184 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellows. William Bialek (Miller Fellow 1986-1987) was awarded the fellowship for his research in a variety of theoretical problems at the interface of physics and biology, from the dynamics of individual biological molecules to learning and cognition.
    Christopher Chang (Miller Professor 2011-2012) is recognized for his research on metals in biology and energy. He has pursued new concepts in sensing and catalysis that draw from core disciplines of inorganic, organic and biological chemistry..

  • Michael Manga (Miller Fellow 1994 - 1996, Miller Professor 2008 - 2009, Executive Committee Member 2009 - 2012, Executive Director 2010 - 2016, Symposium Chair 2018-Present) is a co-author of the paper "Brittle fragmentation by rapid gas separation in a Hawaiian fountain" published in Nature Geoscience.

  • Miller Fellow Dan Ibarra helped co-found the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in Geoscience group, a grassroots, member-driven organization committed to building a community that supports AAPIs within geosciences.

  • The Martin Meyerson Berkeley Faculty Research Lectures, a 108-year-old campus tradition celebrating excellence in research at UC Berkeley, features K. Birgitta Whaley (Miller Professor 2002-2003) who will present a lecture entitled "Can we see Quantum Mechanics at Work Around Us?"

  • Chung-Pei Ma (Miller Professor 2010, 2019-2020) leads the MASSIVE survey of local galaxies, which provided data for 43 of the galaxies — two-thirds of those employed in the new analysis, using a relatively new and potentially more precise technique for measuring cosmic distances, which employs the average stellar brightness within giant elliptical galaxies as a rung on the distance ladder.

  • Current members: Dan Ibarra (Miller Fellow 2019-2022) and James Olzmann (Miller Professor 2020-2021) were nominated and recently elected as full members to The Philippine-American Academy of Science and Engineering (PAASE) this year

  • Kirk Lohmueller (Miller Fellow 2010-2013) is a co-author of a paper "Negative selection on complex traits limits phenotype prediction accuracy between populations" published in AJHG (The American Journal of Human Genetics: Cell Press).

  • Greg Engel (Miller Fellow 2005-2008) is a senior author on the study of a microorganism called green sulfur bacteria. Scientists found that a species of bacteria called C. tepidum employs the laws of quantum mechanics to protect itself from oxygen damage.

  • Manos Mavrikakis (Visiting Miller Professor 2019) is the recipient of the 2021 Robert Burwell Lectureship in Catalysis in recognition of substantial contributions to one or more areas in the field of catalysis with emphasis on discovery and understanding of catalytic phenomena, catalytic reaction mechanisms and identification and description of catalytic sites and species.

  • Paul Alivisatos (Miller Professor 2001-2002) named the next President of the University of Chicago! “Paul Alivisatos is superbly equipped to serve as president of the University in a way that honors its legacy while building upon it for the next generation of scholars and students.”

  • Rebekah Dawson (Miller Fellow 2013-2015) has been awarded the 2021 Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) "for her important contributions on planet formation and dynamics, particularly on hot Jupiter exoplanets and the connection between planetary composition and orbital structure."

  • New observations led by astronomer Imke de Pater (Miller Professor 1993, 2003-2004) confirm volcanic contribution to the atmosphere of the Jupiter’s moon Io.

  • Paul Alivisatos (Miller Professor 2001-2002) and Michael Grätzel received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category "for their fundamental contributions to the development of new nanomaterials already in use for the production of renewable energies and in latest-generation electronics."

  • Jeffrey Long (Miller Professor 2011, 2021-2022) is discussing a carbon capture, a promising technology under development for NETs (negative emissions technologies) using a material called a MOF, or metal-organic framework.

  • Dan Nicolau (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) reports on a significant work on COVID-19. His work shows positive results using a steroid inhaler if exposed to the virus, minimizing effects.

  • William Dietrich (Miller Professor 1998) and project scientist Dino Bellugi recently published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about their research in identifying landslide prone areas.

  • Benjamin Good (Miller Fellow 2016 - 2019) was awarded a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship in Computational & Evolutionary Molecular Biology. The two-year fellowship is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers.

  • William Dietrich (Miller Professor 1998) and project scientist Dino Bellugi recently published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about their research in identifying landslide prone areas.

  • Steven Beissinger (Miller Professor 2020-2021) with the UC Berkeley’s Grinnell Resurvey Project's co-authors discussed findings how animals across the planet are responding to climate change.

  • Michael Manga (Miller Fellow 1994 - 1996, Miller Professor 2008 - 2009, Executive Committee Member 2009 - 2012, Executive Director 2010 - 2016, Symposium Chair 2018-Present) published new findings on the variability of Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

  • Alex Filippenko (Miller Senior Fellow 2017- Present) was named a 2021 AAS Fellow for “for his seminal contributions to studies of black holes, active galaxies, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and the accelerating expansion of the universe and for his success in educating the general public about astronomy.”

  • Georgios Moschidis (Miller Fellow 2018-2021) was awarded Clay Research Fellowship.

  • Yi Cui (Miller Fellow 2003-2005) & Zahid Hasan (Visiting Miller Professor 2017) were among eight scientists and engineers honored by the U.S. Department of Energy with the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award!
    Yi Cui was honored for his “insightful introduction of nanosciences in battery research,” the announcement said, adding, “His multiple innovative ideas have transformed the battery field in a very impactful way and enabled new types of high energy density batteries and low-cost energy storage solutions.”
    Zahid Hasan was honored for “experiments using advanced spin-angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy which led to seminal discoveries of new phases of matter and new fermionic quasiparticles.”

  • Heino Falcke (Visiting Miller Professor 2006) and his colleague, Sheperd Doeleman are recipients of the 2021 Henry Draper Medal "for their vision and their leadership within the EHT collaboration, embracing theory, instrumentation, observation and analysis in combining radio telescopes around the world to image the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the nearby galaxy M87, thereby validating Einstein’s general theory of relativity."

  • Yi Cui (Miller Fellow 2003-2005) was recently appointed as the Director of Precourt Institute for Energy, overseeing all the energy-related activity at Stanford.

  • John Hartwig (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) was awarded the 2021 ACS Arthur C. Cope Award for the discovery, development, and mechanistic elucidation of practical reactions catalyzed by transition-metal complexes, including C–H bond functionalization and cross-coupling.

  • Sarah Keller (Somorjai Visiting Miller Professor 2015-2016) was named a 2021 Fellow of the Biophysical Society "for pioneering, fundamental experimental contributions to the understanding of miscibility phase transitions in membrane systems."

  • Chang Liu (Miller Fellow 2009-2012) is a co-principal investigator of the research study where an in vitro technology that can rapidly hypermutate antibodies has been developed. This method can be used to target SARS-CoV-2 virus.

  • Mikhail Shapiro (Miller Fellow 2011-2013) has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to fund his research into acoustic biosensors.

  • The Miller Institute congratulates former Miller Members for being elected as 2020 AAAS Fellows:

    • Yi Cui  (Miller Fellow 2003-2005)
    • William Dichtel (Visiting Miller Professor 2016) 
    • Jiaxing Huang (Miller Fellow 2004-2007)
    • Prashant K. Jain (Miller Fellow 2008-2011)
    • Norman Murray (Visiting Miller Professor 2003)
    • Talat Shahnaz Rahman (Visiting Miller Professor 2018)
    • Robert Ritchie (Miller Fellow 1974-1976)
    • Jason E. Stajich (Miller Fellow 2006-2009)
    • Rory Waterman (Miller Fellow 2004-2007)
    • Peidong Yang (Miller Professor 2009)

  • Danqing Wang (Miller Fellow 2019-2022) was selected to be on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Science for 2021 for her research that "has led to the ability to produce very low-powered lasers at this scale, which has implications for medical devices and other applications."

  • Anna Ho (Miller Fellow 2020-2023) wrote the cover article for this month's edition of Scientific American. She studies the catastrophic deaths of massive stars.

  • Ron Cohen (Miller Professor 2015-2016) discussed results of the study on Monitoring Urban Greenhouse Gases during the COVID-19 pandemic in "Nature Communications." Alex Turner (Miller Fellow 2017-2020) is a coauthor of the study.

  • Miller Senior Fellow Alex Filippenko was recently featured on Lex Fridman's popular series of interviews, "Supernovae, Dark Energy, Aliens & the Expanding Universe."

  • Miller Fellow (2018-2021) Ambika Kamath is featured in a NYT article calling on science journals to turn words into actions.

  • Cara Brook (Miller Fellow 2017-2020) was named L’Oréal For Women in Science fellow for her research on understanding wild bats & on seeking development of therapeutics to combat COVID-19.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) & Emmanuelle Charpentier were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of a method for genome editing."

  • Roger Penrose (Visiting Miller Professor 1978-1979), Reinhard Genzel (Miller Fellow 1980-1982) and Andrea Ghez shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy."

  • Vayu Maini Rekdal (Miller Fellow 2020-2023) was one of six exceptional young scientists chosen as laureates of the prestigious International Birnstiel Award for Doctoral Studies in the Molecular Life Sciences!

  • Alex Turner (Miller Fellow 2017-2020) was honored with the 2020 AGU JAMES R. HOLTON AWARD! This award recognizes early-career scientists with exceptional scientific research contributions and accomplishments.

  • Two former Miller Fellows, Prashant Jain (2008-2011) and Mikhail Shapiro (2011-2013) were featured as 10 early- and mid-career scientists who are pushing the boundaries of scientific inquiry by the Science News! All of this year’s honorees are age 40 and under, and all were nominated by Nobel laureates, recently elected members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences or previous SN 10 scientists.

  • Bin Yu ((Miller Professor 2004, 2016-2017) and her team at Berkeley have developed novel statistical machine learning approaches and are combining their work with the domain expertise of collaborators to solve important problems in the fields of neuroscience, genomics and precision medicine.

  • Michael Jordan (Miller Professor 2008, 2017-2018, Miller Senior Fellow 2019-present) and Bin Yu (Miller Professor 2004, 2016-2017) are both UC Berkeley co-PIs at the new Institute, called the Foundations of Data Science Institute (FODSI). The National Science Foundation has awarded $12.5 million to establish a multidisciplinary institute—a collaboration between UC Berkeley and MIT—to improve our understanding of critical issues in data science, including modeling, statistical inference, computational efficiency, and societal impacts.

  • Rebekah Dawson (Miller Fellow 2013-2015) was awarded the 2020 Harold C. Urey Prize by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (DPS) in recognition of her outstanding achievements in planetary science.

  • Peidong Yang (Miller Professor 2009) awarded 2020 Global Energy Prize for the pioneering invention of nanoparticle based solar cell and artificial photosynthesis.

  • Bin Yu (Miller Professor 2004, 2016-2017) is co-principal investigator of the project, the Collaboration on the Theoretical Foundations of Deep Learning, awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Simons Foundation to a UC Berkeley-led program to gain a theoretical understanding of deep learning.

  • Alison Galvani (Miller Fellow 2002-2004) was featured in "The Lancet" as "an international star in the field of modelling of infectious diseases. She has made major contributions in our understanding of the dynamics and impact of a variety of infectious diseases outbreaks including HIV/AIDS, Zika, Ebola, and influenza, among many others and now most recently COVID-19.” Alison reminisced about her being a Miller Research Fellow as a generous fellowship that allowed flexibility with her research at the University of California, Berkeley.

  • Kelly Nguyen (Miller Fellow 2016-2019) honored with Suffrage Science award! The award celebrates women in science and engineering and encourage others to enter science and reach senior leadership roles.

  • William R. Dichtel (Visiting Miller Professor 2016) is a 2020 Winner of the Blavatnik Award for Young Chemists for pioneering methods to create novel, porous materials from simple, carbon-based building blocks.