4 UCLA faculty elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Four UCLA faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies. Christine Borgman, Marjorie Harness Goodwin, Alan Grinnell and Jeffrey Lewis are among the nearly 250 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors chosen for membership this year.

The academy serves as an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions and perspectives to address significant challenges, with the aim of producing independent and pragmatic studies that inform national and global policy and benefit the public.

"These new members' accomplishments speak volumes about the human capacity for discovery, creativity, leadership, and persistence. They are a stellar testament to the power of knowledge to broaden our horizons and deepen our understanding," said Laurie Patton, the academy's president. "We invite every new member to celebrate their achievement and join the Academy in our work to promote the common good."

They will be inducted in October at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

UCLA's new members for 2025 are:

Christine L. Borgman
Distinguished research professor of information studies, UCLA School of Education & Information Studies

Borgman, an expert on scientific data practices, information policy and knowledge infrastructures, studies the ways in which data is created, shared and used across scholarly disciplines and in scientific contexts. As a professor and director of the UCLA Center for Knowledge Infrastructures, she has conducted leading-edge research on data-related practice and policy, with an emphasis on the importance of accessibility, interoperability, transparency and ethical stewardship in research data management. Her recent work has examined the challenges universities face in capturing and leveraging data to solve challenges and inform strategic planning. Borgman is the author of more than 300 publications, including three award-winning books: "Big Data, Little Data, No Data," "Scholarship in the Digital Age" and "From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure."

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Marjorie Harness Goodwin
Distinguished research professor of anthropology, UCLA College

Goodwin, a linguistic anthropologist, focuses on how language, touch and other embodied practices shape human interactions. Her work has examined how members of children's peer groups, families and workplace groups use everyday language and communication to construct social order, express intimacy and navigate ideas about moral behavior. Through her research and influential books, including "The Hidden Life of Girls," "He-Said-She-Said" and "Embodied Family Choreography," Goodwin has helped advance our understanding of human social dynamics and the ways people use their language, their bodies and their emotions to manage relationships and create meaning.

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Alan Grinnell
Distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology, UCLA College

Grinnell is an authority on bats and their use of echolocation - the process by which they emit high-frequency sounds and listen for return echoes to orient themselves in their environment and hunt for prey - as a substitute for vision. Much of his research has focused on mapping precisely how bats' brains and nervous systems process this auditory information, and his findings have helped inspire advances in fields like sonar, robotics and medical imaging. In addition to his work in animal behavior and sensory biology, Grinnell has had a long-standing interest in the art of the ancient Americas and is the author of "Painting the Cosmos: Art and Iconography of the Ceramics of Ancient Panama." He is a member of the Brain Research Institute at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

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Jeffrey Lewis
Professor of political science, UCLA College

Lewis, a political scientist, investigates foundational questions of democratic representation and develops innovative methods for analyzing political behavior. His research explores how preferences can be deduced from behavior. He is also a leading figure in political methodology, contributing tools that have reshaped how scholars study legislatures and electoral politics. As the curator of Voteview.com - a platform that provides free data and tools for analyzing roll call voting in the U.S. Congress - he helps advance public and scholarly understanding of ideological polarization and legislative behavior. Lewis has served as president of the Society for Political Methodology and as an editor of the American Political Science Review, helping to shape the direction of research in the discipline. Through his empirical rigor and public scholarship, Lewis has played a pivotal role in elevating both the accessibility and sophistication of political science research.

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Also joining the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2025 class is filmmaker Ava DuVernay, a UCLA alumna.

Tags: faculty news | awards and honors | information studies | education | anthropology | biological sciences | politics