May 4, 2022

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to share that two UCI faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. This year's election of 120 members and 30 international members recognizes their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Below are the new members from UCI:

  • Svetlana Jitomirskaya, Distinguished Professor of MathematicsProfessor Jitomirskaya has been recognized for her work that involves the study of equations associated with quantum mechanics – the field in physics describing nature at the atomic and subatomic particle levels – and related mathematical inquiry. She has received accolades for her contributions to solving the long-standing Ten Martini problem and for the development of the fundamental mathematical aspects of the localization and metal-insulator transition phenomena. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she won the American Mathematical Society Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in 2005 and the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 2020.
  • Krzysztof Palczewski, Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology, Donald Bren Professor, and Irving H. Leopold Chair in OphthalmologyAn internationally renowned chemist, pharmacologist and vision scientist, Professor Palczewski has made critical contributions to the understanding of inherited and age-related retinal diseases in an effort to treat blindness. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and he received the Bressler Prize in Vision Science in 2015 and the inaugural Beckman-Argyros Award in Vision Research in 2014. He is the only person to win both the Cogan Award for the most promising young vision scientist and the Friedenwald Award for continuously outstanding ophthalmology research from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.

Please join me in congratulating these faculty members for this exemplary achievement.

Sincerely,Hal SternProvost and Executive Vice ChancellorChancellor's Professor, Department of Statistics