Dr. Leonid Kruglyak elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Leonid Kruglyak, PhD elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 11 UCLA faculty members were elected, and the campus is No. 2 in the nation in the number of honorees.

Top row (from left): Walter Allen, Blaire Van Valkenburgh, Haruzo Hida and Brad Shaffer. Middle row: Min Zhou, Peter Narins, Patricia Gandara, and John Agnew. Bottom row: George Varghese, Wilfrid Gangbo, and Leonid Kruglyak.

Eleven UCLA faculty members were elected today to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. A total of 261 artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors were elected, including honorary members from 16 countries.

UCLA had the second-most honorees among colleges and universities, preceded only by Harvard. Stanford was third, UC Berkeley fourth, and MIT and Yale tied for fifth.

In February, UCLA was No. 1 in the number of professors selected for 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, an honor widely seen as evidence of the quality of an institution’s science, math and economics faculty.

The David Geffen School of Medicine’s 2022 American Academy of Arts and Sciences honorees is:

Leonid Kruglyak
Distinguished professor of human genetics and biological chemistry
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Kruglyak is UCLA’s Diller-von Furstenberg Professor of Human Genetics, chair of the department of human genetics, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He studies the complex genetic basis of heritable traits, which involves many genes that interact with one another and the environment, and his laboratory conducts experiments using computational analysis and model organisms. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Innovation Award in Functional Genomics, the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics, and the Edward Novitski Prize from the Genetics Society of America.

“These individuals excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise, and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future,” David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, said of this year’s honorees.

“Membership is an honor, and also an opportunity to shape ideas and influence policy in areas as diverse as the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, and science,” said Nancy C. Andrews, chair of the academy’s board of directors.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals. Previous fellows have included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and UCLA astrophysicist Andrea Ghez.

The academy also serves an independent policy research center engaged in studies of complex and emerging problems. Its current membership represents some of today’s most innovative thinkers across a variety of fields and professions and includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners.

Original Article: 11 UCLA faculty members elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences