Mar 27, 2025

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to share that five UC Irvine researchers have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It is my honor to recognize these scholars for their accomplishments, which have significantly contributed to their fields. With this cohort, UC Irvine now has 154 AAAS fellows.

Below are the new fellows from UC Irvine and the AAAS citation for each:

  • Kevork N. Abazajian, Professor, Physics and Astronomy – for seminal work in understanding the role of neutrinos in cosmology and new ways to detect sterile neutrino dark matter.
  • Aaron J. Barth, Professor, Physics and Astronomy – for distinguished contributions to the field of observational astronomy, including measurement of masses of supermassive black holes and reverberation mapping of active galactic nuclei.
  • Melinda Gormley, Research and Policy Coordinator, Center for Population, Inequality and Policy, and a Lead and Coordinator of the NSF CAREER Institute at UC Irvine – for outstanding contributions to the integration into science policy of pressing issues of scientific integrity, professional ethics, and the public communication of science in its historical context.
  • Nalini Venkatasubramanian, Professor, Computer Science – for distinguished contributions to the field of distributed computing, particularly developing the foundations of adaptive middleware for distributed systems and its realization through IoT-enabled systems for smart, resilient communities.
  • Thomas Zimmermann, Chancellor's Professor, Informatics, and Donald Bren Professor in Information and Computer Sciences – for distinguished contributions to the field of software engineering, particularly in mining software repositories, defect prediction, and developer productivity and experience through innovative empirical research.

The new fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin. The new class also will be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science.

Please join me in congratulating our colleagues on this achievement.

Sincerely,

Hal Stern
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
Distinguished Professor, Department of Statistics