National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by an Act of Congress, signed by President Lincoln, as a private, nongovernmental institution to advise the nation on issues related to science and technology. Members are elected by their peers for outstanding contributions to research.

National Academy of Sciences

Leonard M. Adleman
Leonard Adleman, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Henry Salvatori Chair in Computer Science, co-invented the RSA public key crypto-system and has worked on primacy testing algorithms. His 1992 paper in Science, demonstrating that DNA can be used as a computing medium, introduced the field of molecular computing, which he has subsequently developed. Adleman and collaborators received the Association for Computing Machinery’s A.M. Turing Award for their RSA innovations. Adleman is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the AAAS. Elected 2006. ➖ FACULTY PROFILE
Steve Kay
Steve Kay, Provost Professor of Neurology, Biomedical Engineering, and Biological Sciences, is one of the world’s top experts on the genetics and genomics of circadian rhythms. Having published more than 200 papers, he was named by Thomson Reuters as one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” from 2014 to 2017 and has been cited in Science magazine’s “Breakthroughs of the Year” three times since 1997. Elected 2008. ➖ FACULTY PROFILE
Andrew J. Viterbi
Andrew Viterbi is creator of the Viterbi Algorithm, co-developer of CDMA cell phone technology and co-founder of Qualcomm. Viterbi is a recipient of the National Medal of Science, the IEEE Claude E. Shannon Award, the Marconi Foundation Award, the Christopher Columbus Award, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal and many others. Dr. Viterbi is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the AAAS, and a 2008 Laureate of the Millenium Technology Prize Foundation of Finland. Elected 1996. ➖ FACULTY PROFILE
Michael S. Waterman
Michael Waterman, University Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences, Computer Science, and Mathematics, is a pioneer in computational biology known for his contributions to the Human Genome Project. Waterman revolutionized an earlier branch of genetics research with the development of a more reliable method of DNA analysis based on solid mathematical, computational and statistical science. He co-developed the Smith-Waterman algorithm for sequence comparison and the Lander-Waterman formula for physical mapping. Elected 2001. ➖ FACULTY PROFILE

Published on December 9th, 2016

Last updated on October 20th, 2022