Three Yale scientists, Hui Cao, Peter Raymond and Karen Seto, were named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last week.
The AAAS is the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society and consists of members from over 91 countries around the world. The association works on research, connects people to jobs and produces journals and articles on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Cao, Raymond and Seto are three of 396 newly selected fellows who the AAAS will honor at its annual meeting, which will take place in Austin, Texas in February 2018. This year, 91 percent of those nominated were elected to the rank of AAAS fellow. Previously elected AAAS fellows nominate the scholars, who can currently receive the fellowship in any one of 24 sections within AAAS, including physics, astronomy and anthropology, among others.
According to the AAAS website, individuals qualify for nominations if their efforts to advance science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished, and if they have been members of the association for four years leading up to the year of nomination. As AAAS fellows, Seto, Raymond and Cao will serve as ambassadors for advancing scientific endeavors in their respective areas of expertise.
“I am in the amazing position of being able to decide the subject matter I will study next and have had the good fortune to work with many excellent scholars,” said Raymond, who is a professor of ecosystem and ecology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Raymond currently works on the biogeochemistry of natural systems, focusing on carbon and nitrogen cycles within aquatic systems. He was named a fellow under the Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences section. Moving forward, Raymond told the News, he hopes to be “more integrative” with his research.
Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, studies land change and the environmental impacts of urbanization on the planet. She has co-founded and co-chaired several global research projects like Urbanization and Global Environmental Change and Future Earth and served on numerous National Research Council Committees where she worked on urban sustainability. Seto was named a fellow under the Geology and Geography section.
Seto said she felt deeply honored to have been named a fellow of the AAAS and plans to continue studying the relationship between urbanization and the environment. She added that she is especially interested in both urbanization in mountain environments and the ways in which urbanization shapes people’s relationship with food systems.
Cao, professor of applied physics and physics at the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, currently works on understanding and controlling light transport, scattering, absorption and amplification for fundamental physical studies. She was named a fellow under the Physics section.
According to an AAAS representative, Seto, Raymond and Cao will be joining more than 10,000 active fellows who have been, “recognized for their special contributions to the advancement of science and engineering.”
The tradition of AAAS fellows dates back to 1874.
Grace Kang | grace.kang@yale.edu