Three OSU researchers, all in the College of Science, were named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of their extraordinary achievements in advancing science: Michael Freitag, David Maddison and Mas Subramanian.
The AAAS denotes fellows based on “efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.” Freitag, Maddison and Subramanian are among the 416 AAAS members awarded the lifetime honor of being a 2018 elected Fellow of the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society.
Freitag, Maddison and Subramanian join 13 other faculty who are AAAS Fellows in the College of Science. Overall, 36 professors at Oregon State have held this honor since 1965.
“I am absolutely delighted that all three AAAS Fellows this year are from the College of Science. They exemplify and enrich the College’s commitment to outstanding research, scientific leadership, as well as excellent teaching and mentoring. I warmly congratulate them on receiving this prestigious honor,” said Roy Haggerty, Dean of the College of Science.
“This is the first time in OSU history that we have had three fellows from a single college in one year, and only the fourth time that there have been three or more fellows from OSU in a single year,” added Haggerty.
Freitag was honored in the field of biological sciences for contributions to fungal genetics and genomics, “particularly in dissection of fungal centromeres and chromatin function, including cell biological tools to interrogate cell polarization,” the AAAS said in a statement.
Freitag, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, researches how genes are regulated by DNA or protein modifications, and as part of that work has found a way to unlock the ability of fungi to produce new molecules that could be medically important.
Maddison, also honored in biological sciences, was selected for his work in phylogenetic systematics, “including software tools that revolutionized how phylogenies are studied, and advances in beetle evolutionary biology.”
He studies the origins of beetle diversity, including the nature of their evolutionary tree, and documents the species of ground beetles. Maddison also is co-developer of two of the more widely used software packages in phylogenetic biology. He is a professor of integrative biology and holds the endowed Harold and Leona Rice Professorship of Systematic Entomology.
Subramanian, the Milton Harris Professor of Materials Science at OSU, was honored for his contributions to the field of materials chemistry, “particularly for several ground-breaking functional materials discoveries and transforming them into knowledge and practical applications.” His work includes discovering the stable, non-toxic, heat-resistant, infrared-reflecting pigment known as YInMn blue.
The new Fellows will be recognized on February 16, 2019, in Washington, D.C., during the AAAS annual meeting. AAAS’ annual tradition of recognizing leading scientists as Fellows dates to 1874. The full list of 2018 Fellows was also published in the Nov. 29 issue of Science, published by AAAS.
Read more about each of the 2018 Fellows:
Molecular Geneticist elected AAAS Fellow
Biologist elected AAAS Fellow for work in phylogenetic systematics
Chemist who discovered YInMn blue elected AAAS Fellow
