Three University of Chicago scholars have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, joining other scientists and researchers chosen in “recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”
Profs. Rina Foygel Barber, Margaret Gardel and Peter Littlewood are among the 120 new members elected this year. They are honored for their groundbreaking work in a variety of fields, from biological physics to statistics.
Rina Foygel Barber is the Louis Block Professor in the Department of Statistics and the College.
Her research focuses on developing and analyzing estimation, inference and optimization tools for structured high-dimensional data problems.
She develops methods for false discovery rate control and distribution-free inference in settings with under-sampled data or unknown distributions. She also collaborates on modeling and optimization problems in medical image reconstruction.
Barber’s awards include a MacArthur Fellowship and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship.
Margaret Gardel is the Horace B. Horton Professor of Physics, Molecular Engineering and Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology. She is director of the James Franck Institute and the Center for Living Systems, a National Sciences Foundation Physics Frontier Center. She is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and a member of the Institute of Biophysical Dynamics.
Her research focuses on how collections of biological molecules build soft materials that enable cell and tissue-scale physiological processes of adhesion, migration and shape change.
Her awards include the Tel Aviv University International Prize in Biophysics, as well as the Packard Fellowship, Sloan Fellowship and the NIH Pioneer Award. She is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Peter Littlewood is professor in the Department of Physics, which he currently chairs, as well as in the James Franck Institute and the College. He is also a fellow of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, a member of the Center for Living Systems—a National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center—and a member of the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience.
Littlewood is a condensed matter physicist whose areas of interest include superconductivity and superfluids, strongly correlated electronic materials, collective dynamics of glasses, density waves in solids, neuroscience, and applications of materials for energy and sustainability.
Littlewood previously served as head of the theoretical physics research group at Bell Laboratories, as head of the Theory of Condensed Matter group at the University of Cambridge, head of the Cavendish Laboratory and Department of Physics in Cambridge, as director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and as founding executive chair of the Faraday Institution.
He serves on the advisory boards of several institutes, including the Simons Foundation, the Flatiron Institute, the Paul Scherrer Institute and the Carnegie Institute for Science. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of London and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.