AAAS Welcomes 471 Scientists and Engineers as Honorary Fellows

27 March 2025

by: Becky Ham

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Washington, D.C. - The American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the world's largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals, announces the 2024 class of AAAS Fellows, a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community. This latest class is comprised of 471 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 AAAS disciplinary Sections. View the 2024 class of Fellows.

"This year's class of Fellows are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities," said Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. "At a time when the future of the scientific enterprise in the U.S. and around the world is uncertain, their work demonstrates the value of sustained investment in science and engineering."

The Fellows are a distinguished cadre recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching and technology to administration in academia, industry and government to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public. Examples include:

• Providing leadership in biotechnology entrepreneurship, particularly mRNA therapeutics such as the COVID-19 vaccine, and fostering the development of scientific ventures
• Contributing to global public health through work on hormonal regulation of the kidneys, and providing leadership for U.S. health policy
• Helming the development of seminal technological advances in software and hardware and providing key leadership on digital and cyber policy
• Improving our understanding of wheat genome diversity and evolution, finding new genes for wheat improvement and combating wheat stem rush pathogen
• Making significant contributions to planetary science research and exploring the origins of water on Earth
• Modeling the impacts of air pollution on human health and assessing the costs and benefits of pollution policies
• Discovering the core "gears" of the body's circadian clock and how they are linked to sleep and waking patterns and neurodegenerative disease
• Developing the synthetic chemistry of nanocrystal quantum dots and their applications in clean energy technologies
• Cultivating partnerships and communities through The National Association of Biology Teachers to develop and promote best practices in teaching the life sciences
• Contributing the development of the "organ-on-a-chip" engineering to study the effects of chemicals on human tissues and organs
• Monitoring global water resources and improving our understanding of hydrology with relation to extreme events such as floods, droughts, permafrost thaw, landslides and wildfires
• Providing scholarship on the history and ethics of issues in genetics, radiation and the technologies of war
• Increasing scientific understanding of deaf languages and encouraging deaf researchers and sign language communities toward greater participation in science
• Linking age-related changes in cardiovascular function to accelerated brain aging, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases

AAAS first launched this lifetime recognition in 1874, about 25 years after the association was founded. Last year, the AAAS Fellows program celebrated its 150^th anniversary at a reception at the National Building Museum in Washington. D.C. To commemorate the occasion, Fellows from across the span of sciences shared stories of their scientific journeys and what being a Fellow means to them in an anniversary video and special compendium of stories.

The 2024 class joins the ranks of noted Fellows such as Alondra Nelson, the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to go to space; Steven Chu, 1997 Nobel laureate in physics who served as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy; Ellen Ochoa, veteran astronaut and the Johnson Space Center's first Hispanic and second female director in its history; Grace Hopper, pioneer in computer software development and programming language; and Vint Cerf, who co-designed the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet and received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The new Fellows will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate their election and will be celebrated at a forum in Washington, D.C. on June 7, 2025. The 2024 Fellows class will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science in March 2025.

AAAS Members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the Steering Committees of the association's 24 sections across scientific and engineering disciplines, by three Fellows who are current AAAS Members, or by the CEO of AAAS. Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected.