Six College of Science Faculty Members Named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Top row from left: J. Martin Bollinger, Donald Bryant, Nina Fedoroff

Bottom row from left: Hong Ma, James Rosenberger, and Alexander Wolszczan

Six faculty members from Penn State's Eberly College of Science have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The Fellows are Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology J. Martin Bollinger, Jr., Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Donald A. Bryant, Evan Pugh Professor of Life Sciences and the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences Nina Fedoroff, Distinguished Professor of Biology Hong Ma, Professor of Statistics James L. Rosenberger, and Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Alexander Wolszczan.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world's largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science. Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers. This year, 503 Fellows were selected for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. The Fellows will receive certificates and pins during the AAAS meeting in Washington, D.C. in February.

Bollinger was named a Fellow for his revolutionary work in chemistry, particularly for establishing new and unprecedented paradigms of dioxygen -- an allotrope of oxygen -- and carbon-hydrogen bond activation -- a reaction that cleaves a carbon-hydrogen bond.

Bryant is honored for distinguished contributions to microbiology, particularly for ecological, biochemical, metabolic, genetic, and genomic analyses of chlorophototrophic bacteria and their light-harvesting systems.

Fedoroff is honored for her pioneering research in the fields of plant genetics, plant responses to environmental stress, and genetically modified crops.

Ma is honored for distinguished contributions to the field of reproductive plant biology, particularly for molecular genetics of flower development, anther differentiation, and meiosis in Arabidopsis -- small flowering plants related to cabbage and mustard that are used extensively in plant research.

Rosenberger is honored for exemplary professional service to statistics and to science more broadly. He also is honored as a consultant, a researcher, a teacher, and an academic and research administrator.

Wolszczan is honored for the discovery of the multiple planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 -- the first planetary-mass objects ever discovered outside our Solar System.