Two University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering professors have been elected as members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for their excellence in original scientific research. They are chemical engineering and materials science Regents Professor Frank Bates and mathematics Professor Maury Bramson.
Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Bates and Bramson are two of only 84 researchers nationwide to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year. They will be inducted into the Academy next spring during the National Academy of Sciences 155th Annual Meeting.
Bates is a world-renown polymer scientist who focuses his research on block co-polymers. His group’s research program affects a variety of technologically important fields, including polymer processing, composites, fracture mechanics, separations, catalysis, and drug delivery. Bates has been an author or co-author of nearly 400 research papers on research ranging from plastics and rubber made from renewable sources to coatings for more effective oral medicines. He has received numerous past awards and becomes one of the few scientists who are members of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bramson works in probability theory, a field in mathematics that often includes applications to the physical and biological sciences, engineering, computer science, operations research, and finance. His specialties include random systems with many interacting components, also known as interacting particle systems, (with applications to mathematical physics, physical chemistry, and biological systems), branching Brownian motion (with applications to mathematical physics and biological systems), and stochastic networks (with applications to electrical and industrial engineering, computer science, and operations research). Bramson is a fellow at the American Mathematical Society and has spoken at the International Congress of Mathematicians.
The National Academy of Sciences is an honorific society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Among the Academy’s renowned members are Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright, and Alexander Graham Bell. About 200 Academy members have won Nobel Prizes.
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