Six members of the Smart Support of the UC Berkeley of a diversified range of domains are among the nearly 250 newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization announced in a recent press release. New Berkeley voters include leading experts in mathematics, statistics, IT, molecular biology, neurobiology and comparative literature.
Since 1780, the Academy has honored excellence and summoned leaders of all disciplines and divisions to examine new ideas, tackle matters of importance and work together to meet the challenges of the nation.
“The achievements of these new members say a lot about the human capacity of discovery, creativity, leadership and perseverance. “We invite each new member to celebrate their success and join the Academy in our work to promote the common good.”
The induction ceremonies for the new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2025. The winners of Berkeley are:
Ian AgolMathematics teacher. Agol studies the geometry and topology of curved forms and spaces, mainly 3 hyperbolic manifolds.
Yang DanProfessor of molecular and cellular biology and neuroscience and chair of Chancellor of the Life Sciences in Neuroscience. Dan’s laboratory uses a variety of techniques – including optogenetics, electrophysiology, imagery and tracing of circuits mediated by virus – to identify circuits in the brain control of mammals and how the frontal cortex of the brain exerts control of senior frames.
Leslie V. KurkeProfessor of Greek studies and ancient Roman and comparative literature. Kurke specializes in archaic and classic Greek literature, with a particular accent on archaic Greek poetry in its social, Herodotus and early prose context.
Donald C. RioBiochemical professor, biophysics and structural biology. Rio’s laboratory is studying how certain DNA pieces, called transposons, move in the genome and how proteins can modify the activity of the genes in different tissues by cutting and reassuring messenger RNA. These processes are essential to understand the evolution, the regulation of genes and the origins of certain diseases.
Dawn X. SongProfessor of electrical engineering and computer science. SONG studies are studying security and confidentiality problems in IT systems and networks, including software security, networking, safety of databases, distributed systems security, applied cryptography and the intersection of learning and automatic security.
Philip B. StarkDistinguished professor of statistics. Stark studies the problems of inference and the quantification of uncertainty with applications in physical and social sciences. His achievements include the creation of methods to audit elections in more than 15 American states.