Thursday, October 27, 2005

Writer: Kim Cretors, 706/542-1168, kcretors@franklin.uga.edu
Contact: Lonnie Shekhtman, 202/326-6434, lshekhtm@aaas.org

American Association for the Advancement of Science names five UGA researchers AAAS Fellows

Athens, Ga. – Five University of Georgia researchers, all faculty members of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

The five UGA faculty members are Michael Arnold, Jeffrey Bennetzen, Robert Ivarie and Richard Meagher, all with UGA’s department of genetics, and Susan R. Wessler in the department of plant biology.

“The work of each of these five faculty members is representative of the research excellence at the Franklin College and across the UGA campus,” said Dean Garnett S. Stokes. “I’m delighted that their AAAS peers have chosen to honor them for their outstanding research efforts.”

This year 376 AAAS members were awarded the honor because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications, according to the association. New fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (the colors represent science and engineering respectively) at a ceremony on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006, during the Fellows Forum at the association’s annual meeting in St. Louis, Mo.

Arnold was recognized for “significant discoveries in the area of plant evolutionary biology, particularly for helping to define the fundamental role of reticulate evolution”; Bennetzen (the Norman and Doris Giles/Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular Genetics) for “distinguished contributions to plant genomics, particularly for discovery of the lineage-specific contributions of different classes of transposable elements to genome structure and evolution”; and Ivarie for “distinguished contributions to avian genomics and repetitive elements and to avian transgenics for pharmaceutical protein production in egg whites.”

The AAAS honored Meagher for “distinguished contributions to the fields of plant cell biology, plant biotechnology and phytoremediation” and Wessler (Distinguished Research Professor of Plant Biology and Regents Professor) for “pioneering studies of the major mutagenic role of plant transposable elements in generating genetic diversity and fueling plant genome evolution.”

The 2006 AAAS Fellows will be announced in the “AAAS News and Notes” section of the Oct. 28 issue of the journal Science.

AAAS (www.aaas.org) is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more.

The Franklin College at UGA is home to 30 academic departments and more than 30 centers, institutes and special programs. With more than 630 faculty members, the Franklin College serves every undergraduate student at UGA during his or her academic tenure through core curriculum, academic advising, study abroad, and majors in the arts and humanities and the biological and social sciences.

Bennetzen

Meagher

Wessler