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Four UC Berkeley faculty named AAAS fellows

By Sarah Yang

Four faculty members at the University of California, Berkeley, have been named 2010 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

The UC Berkeley researchers are among 503 new AAAS fellows named today (Tuesday, Jan. 11). The honor, bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers, recognizes distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

With this announcement, UC Berkeley now boasts 216 AAAS fellows among its faculty.

The new fellows and their citations are:

David Collier , Robson Professor of Political Science, for outstanding comparative scholarship, important research on Latin American politics and leadership in efforts to reconcile quantitative/qualitative divides long prevalent within political science.

Benito O. de Lumen , professor of nutritional science and toxicology, for important contributions to natural-products biochemistry, with special regard to the discovery of lunasin, a cancer preventative from seeds of common crop plants.

Eugene Wong , professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer sciences, for pioneering contributions in stochastic processes and database management systems as an academic and an entrepreneur, and for distinguished government service.

Patricia Claire Zambryski , professor of plant and microbial biology, for distinguished contributions to the field of plant biology that focus on the genetic transformation of plant cells by Agrobacterium and on plant cell communication via plasmodesmata.

The AAAS will present the new fellows with a gold and blue rosette pin and an official certificate on Feb. 19, 2011, at the society’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

The society was founded in 1848, and includes some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science serving 10 million individuals. The tradition of AAAS fellows, who are chosen by their peers, began in 1874.