2018 - 2019 News

Below is a list of our Miller members who have recently received awards or who have been highlighted in the media. Also, the Miller Newsletters is another way to find out what is currently happening in our Miller Community.

  • Richmond Sarpong (Miller Professor 2017-2018) named a 2019 American Chemical Society (ACS) Fellow for his outstanding achievements in chemistry and important contributions to the ACS and their profession.

  • Kathy Day's (Chief Administrative Officer for the Miller Institute 1989-2019) tribute brick was installed at the UC Botanical Gardens! It's in the Tribute Plaza in the bottom right corner square.

  • Linda Wilbrecht (incoming Miller Professor 2019) was awarded a SFARI Foundation Winter 2019 Pilot Award to study the influence of autism risk genes on reinforcement learning and corticostriatal circuit development.

  • Four Miller Fellow Alumni Received Presidential Early Career Awards:

    • Prashant Jain (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) studies the interaction of light with matter, designs nanoparticle catalysts, and develops methods for mimicking plant photosynthesis.
    • Heather Knutson (Miller Fellow 2009-2012) focuses her research on the study of exoplanets, their composition and formation.
    • Rebecca Schulman's (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) expertise is in developing programmable, active devices that self-assemble from DNA. Her research group focuses on molecular electronic devices and tools for biological and biophysical research.
    • Yogesh Surendranath (Miller Fellow 2011-2013) focuses on addressing global challenges in the areas of chemical catalysis, energy storage and utilization, and environmental stewardship.

  • Lewis Feldman (Miller Fellow 1976-1978) was appointed as Director of the University of California Botanical Garden

  • Barbara Romanowicz (Miller Professor 2010) was awarded Marcus Milling Medal in recognition of her consistent contributions of high-quality scientific achievements and service to the Earth Sciences having lasting, historic value.

  • Miller Members Among Newly Elected 2019 NAS Fellows:

    • Chris Greene (Visiting Miller Professor 2007) was recognized for his distinguished contributions to Theoretical Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics.
    • Rebecca Heald (Miller Professor 2009-2010) was honored for her advanced research that explores two fundamental areas of biology: cell division and size control.
    • Marc Kamionkowski (Visiting Miller Professor 2010) was recognized for his research in particle physics, dark matter, inflation, the cosmic microwave background and gravitational waves./li>
    • Omar Yaghi (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) was honored for having pioneered reticular chemistry, which is a new field of chemistry that is concerned with stitching molecular building blocks together by strong bonds to make open frameworks.

  • Miller Members Among Newly Elected 2019 Royal Society of London Fellows:

    • Inez Fung (Miller Professor 2016-2017) was honored for modeling models the processes that maintain and alter the composition of the atmosphere and the climate.
    • Richard Harland (Miller Professor 2010) was honored for his advanced studies of control of embryonic gene expression in vertebrate embryos, focusing most recently on the frog Xenopus tropicalis.
    • Martin Head-Gordon (Miller Professor 2001-2002) was recognized for his research of the development of methods to predict the electronic structure of new and interesting molecules.
    • Brian Staskawicz (Miller Professor 2002-2003) was honored for his advanced contributions in research of plants’ innate immunity with the goal of engineering disease resistance in agricultural crops.

  • Miller Members Among Newly Elected 2019 AAAS Fellows:

    • Eugene Chiang (Miller Professor 2013) was honored for his research in theoretical astrophysics, with an emphasis on understanding the origin of planetary systems.
    • Jeff Long (Miller Professor 2011) was honored for his advanced research in chemical and biomolecular engineering.
    • Kam-Biu Luk (Miller Professor 2001) was recognized for his research of the nature of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, especially of the neutrinos and nucleon decay.
    • Alex Meyer (Visiting Miller Professor 1996) was honored for his advanced contributions in zoology and evolutionary biology.
    • Chris Shannon (Miller Professor 2001-2002) was recognized for her contributions in Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Economics.

  • Sarah Keller (Somorjai Visiting Miller Professor 2015-2016) was recognized with the Cottrell Plus STAR Award for her outstanding research and educational accomplishments.

  • Dan Nicolau (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) has been working to create half-living, half-synthetic bio-computers with the ability to multi-task. His full paper on his research has been published in the Royal Society’s Interface Focus journal.

  • Robert Littlejohn (Miller Professor 1992) has been selected as a recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’s most prestigious honor for teaching.

  • Ehud Isacoff (Miller Professor 2013) and a team of researchers designed the gene therapy to regain sight, delivered via an inactivated virus targeted to retinal ganglion cells and loaded it with the gene for a light-sensitive receptor, the green (medium-wavelength) cone opsin.

  • Stephen Leone (Visiting Miller Professor 1990, Miller Professor 2010, Executive Committee & Advisory Board Member 2015-2019) & Norman Yao (Miller Fellow 2014-17) awarded the Keck Foundation Funding to utilize a new technique, ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy, to address important unanswered questions about the formation of non-equilibrium topological phases.

  • National Academy of Sciences Honors Miller Members for their extraordinary scientific achievements::

    • Jacqueline Barton (Advisory Board Member 1999-2005) - was honored with a NAS Award in Chemical Sciences for innovative research in the chemical sciences that contributes to a better understanding of the natural sciences and to the benefit of humanity.
    • Anna Behrensmeyer (Miller Fellow 1973-1975) - was recognized with the 2019 G. K. Warren Prize for her distinguished accomplishment in fluviatile geology and closely related aspects of the geological sciences.
    • Tom Griffiths (Miller Professor 2017-2018) - received a 2019 Troland Research Award for his work that combines behavioral and computer science to provide a greater understanding of both human cognition and machine learning.
    • Norman Pace (Visiting Miller Professor 1993) - was honored with the 2019 Stanley Miller Medal. Pace, known as the father of microbial ecology, has made groundbreaking discoveries into the study of RNA, and through it life on earth.

  • Miller Members Elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering::

    • Gary Brudvig (Miller Fellow 2007-2008) (Miller Fellow 1980-1982) cited for work in natural photosynthesis and in applying his knowledge for alternative solar energy applications in artificial photosynthesis.
    • Jeffrey Townsend (Miller Fellow 2002-2005) was honored in recognition of the development of innovative approaches to population biology, including the evolution of antimicrobial resistance, disease evolution and transmission, and evolution of tumorigenesis; and research that has enabled curtailment of pathogen evolution, outbreak mitigation, and informed therapeutic approaches to cancer metastasis and evolution of therapeutic resistance in cancer.

  • Miller Members Named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science::

    • Corrie Moreau (Miller Fellow 2007-2008) was honored with the Jeremy Knowles Award for the inter-disciplinary research between chemistry and the life sciences.
    • Sung-Hou Kim (Miller Professor 2009) was honored with the Centenary Prize for inventing new chemical reactions that are used to make molecules with multiple applications, including the discovery of new pharmaceuticals. The Centenary Prize is awarded to outstanding chemists, who are also exceptional communicators from overseas, to give lectures in the British Isles.

  • Shirshendu Ganguly (Miller Fellow 2016-18) is among 126 early-career scholars named 2019 Sloan Research Fellow in Mathematics, who represent the most promising scientific researchers working today

  • Michelle Antoine (Miller Fellow 2014-2017) is one of the co-authors studying the genetics of autism in mouse models of the disorder.

  • Ambika Kamath (Miller Fellow 2018-2021) won the 2019 Jasper Loftus-Hills Young Investigator Award.

  • Miller Members Named Winners of the 2019 American Chemical Society Awards:

    • Matthew Francis (Miller Fellow 1999-2001) was honored with the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, sponsored by Arthur C. Cope Fund.
    • Harry Gray (Visiting Miller Professor 1985) was honored with the Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, sponsored by Avantor Performance Materials.
    • Jeffrey Long (Miller Professor 2011) was recognized with the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry, sponsored by the F. Albert Cotton Endowment Fund.
    • Manos Mavrikakis (Visiting Miller Professor 2019) was presented with the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis, sponsored by the Gabor A. & Judith K. Somorjai Endowment Fund.
    • Daniel Neumark (Miller Professor 1999-2000) was presented with the Peter Debye Award in Physical Chemistry, sponsored by DuPont.
    • Gregory Voth (Visiting Miller Professor 2003) was presented with the Joel Henry Hildebrand Award in the Theoretical & Experimental Chemistry of Liquids, sponsored by the ExxonMobil Research & Engineering.

  • Selected from a pool of exceptional colleagues, Britt Glaunsinger (Miller Professor 2015), Arash Komeili (Miller Professor 2016-2017) and Simonetta Gribaldo (incoming Visiting Miller Professor 2019) were elected into the American Academy of Microbiology based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.

  • Mikhail Shapiro (Miller Fellow 2011-13) was honored with the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for the development of noninvasive diagnostic tools to monitor and manipulate the mammalian microbiome—the complement of microbes that cohabit the bodies of mammals and fulfill crucial physiological functions.

  • John Hartwig (Visiting Miller Professor 2009) shares the 2019 Wolf Prize in Chemistry for development of efficient transition-metal catalysts that have revolutionized drug manufacturing.

  • Alejandro Rico Guevara (Miller Fellow 2017-2020) shared evidence gathered by high-speed video about how the deadly beaks are deployed in male-to-male conflict in a recent paper organizing and summing up 10 years of research.

  • Eric Neuscamman (Miller Fellow 2011-2014) has been awarded an NSF CAREER grant in Quantum Chemistry.

  • Alejandro Rico Guevara(Miller Fellow 2017-2020), the lead scientist on the project and the lead author of a paper describing how the shape of the bill affects hummingbird feeding and fighting strategies in the January 2019 issue of the journal Integrative Organismal Biology.

  • Arash Komeili (Miller Professor 2016-2017) uses bacterial magnetosomes as a model system to study the molecular mechanisms governing the biogenesis and maintenance of bacterial organelles.

  • Dan Nicolau (Miller Fellow 2008-2011) being named an ARC Future Fellow for his project, "Scalable biocomputing on networks: design and mathematical foundations" that aims to develop technology with the potential to disrupt computation by providing a way to solve combinatorial mathematical problems in an efficient manner.

  • Chang Liu (Miller Fellow 2009-2012), senior author of the innovative research project published in Cell that details a new method for simplifying and accelerating directed evolution experiments in labs. "The technique will stimulate new applications and new avenues of investigation which will continue to expand our ability to compose new DNA." - Frances Arnold.

  • Paul Alivisatos (Miller Professor 2001-2002) has been awarded the 2018 Wilhelm Exner Medal for for his pioneering research in nanoscience.

  • Jeremy Thorner (Miller Professor 1984-1985, 1999-2000) named a winner of the ASBMB Herbert Tabor Research Award for excellence in biological chemistry, molecular biology and contributions to the community of scientists.

  • Richmond Sarpong (Miller Professor 2017-2018) has been recognized with the 2019 Mukaiyama Award for his outstanding contributions to synthetic organic chemistry. Professor Sarpong will deliver an award lecture at the SSOCJ meeting in Tokyo next year.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) is awarded the Medal of Honor from American Cancer Society for her valuable contributions in the fight against cancer through basic research, clinical research and cancer control. Doudna's discoveries allowed her to tweak the bacterial systems to create CRISPR-Cas9.

  • Norman Yao (Miller Fellow 2014-2017) is a recipient of the 2018 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. He is one of the 18 innovative, early-career scientists and engineers will receive $875,000 over five years to pursue his research in complex quantum mechanical systems.

  • Barbara Meyer (Miller Senior Fellow 2013-2018) is one of only a few NAS members elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) for her "groundbreaking work on chromosome dynamics that impact gene expression, development, and heredity using the nematode as a model organism."

  • Barbara Meyer (Miller Senior Fellow 2013-2018) has been honored with the ASCB’s highest scientific honor — the E.B. Wilson Medal. “Barbara’s contribution stands far apart because it is the product of a sustained brilliance….”

  • Bin Yu (Miller Professor 2016-2017) is on a team of 8 colleagues from UC Berkeley, UCSF and Stanford that just received a highly selective Chan-Zuckerberg Intercampus Research Award for their proposal called "Multi-scale deep learning and single-cell models of cardiovascular health".

  • Mikhail Shapiro (Miller Fellow 2011-2013) received the 2018 Roger Tsien Award for Excellence in Chemical Biology for making significant contributions to the field of molecular imaging in the area of chemical biology. This includes the creation and/or use of novel chemistries to probe biological systems using noninvasive imaging approaches.

  • Alison Feder (Miller Fellow 2018-2021) has been named winner of the very first Milner Prize by the Milner Centre for Evolution.

  • Jennifer Doudna (Miller Senior Fellow 2017) moved part of her research efforts to the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, where she launched new collaborations that will help advance this breakthrough technique to solve some of humankind’s most intractable diseases.

  • Douglas Hemingway (Miller Fellow 2015-2018) is a co-author of the research on lunar swirls that provide clues about the possible origins of the Moon's crustal magnetic anomalies.

  • Maciej Zworski (Miller Professor 2015) received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of Université Paris-Sud