Howard and Grejner-Brzezinska named AAAS Fellows

The 2021 class of Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) includes College of Engineering Dean Ayanna Howard, Professor Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska, and five other faculty members at The Ohio State University.

The AAAS Fellowship, recognizing scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications, is one of the most prestigious honors a U.S. scientist can receive. Fellows are elected by their academic peers.

“The venerable tradition of American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowships includes such recognizable scientific greats as sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, anthropologist Margaret Mead and astronaut Ellen Ochoa,” Ohio State President Kristina M. Johnson said. “As a scientist myself, I am honored on behalf of every member of the Ohio State community who has been selected to join this distinguished group of scientists, researchers, engineers and innovators. The range of achievements and contributions of our newest AAAS Fellows exemplifies how vital innovation and discovery are to enriching lives and building a better world.”

The 2021 class of AAAS Fellows includes 564 scientists, engineers and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines.

Howard was recognized for significant contributions to human-robot interaction and for improving access and equity through artificial intelligence technologies. An accomplished roboticist, entrepreneur and educator, she became dean of the College of Engineering on March 1, 2021. Previously she was chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. Howard’s career spans higher education, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the private sector. She also is the founder and president of the board of directors of Zyrobotics, a Georgia Tech spin-off company that develops mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs.

Among many accolades, Forbes named Dean Howard to its America's Top 50 Women In Tech list. In May 2021, the Association for Computing Machinery named her the ACM Athena Lecturer in recognition of fundamental contributions to the development of accessible human-robotic systems and artificial intelligence, along with forging new paths to broaden participation in computing.

Grejner-Brzezinska was honored for distinguished contributions to the field of positioning, navigation and timing with specific applications to personal navigation, autonomous mobility and navigation in GPS-denied environments. A professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, she also is Ohio State's interim vice president for Knowledge Enterprise, a University Distinguished Professor, and the Lowber B. Strange Endowed Chair in Engineering.

In 2019, Grejner-Brzezinska became the first woman from Ohio State to be named to the National Academy of Engineering. She has published over 350 peer reviewed journal and proceedings papers, numerous technical reports and five book chapters on GPS and navigation, and led nearly 60 sponsored research projects with the total budget of over $30 million. 

Ohio State’s other five new Fellows are:

• Bear Braumoeller, professor of political science, for distinguished contributions to the fields of political methodology, social science theory and applied policy analysis.
• Joshua Goldberger, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, for distinguished contributions to the field of materials chemistry, particularly for developing new two-dimensional and layered materials with applications in electronics.
• Zihai Li, director of the Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology and professor of medical oncology, for distinguished contributions to the field of molecular immunology, particularly the roles of the heat shock protein 96 in chaperone biology, cancer progression, immune response and tolerance.
• Michael Annan Lisa, professor of physics, for development of azimuthally sensitive femtoscopy for relativistic heavy-ion collisions and his discovery, via global polarization measurements, of the unprecedented vorticity of quark-gluon plasma created in such collisions.
• Harvey Miller, professor of geography, for novel, sustained and impactful scholarship on analytical time geography, GIScience and spatial analysis in a data-rich world, and sustainable mobility.

The new Fellows will be celebrated later this year during an in-person gathering when it is feasible from a public health and safety perspective.