Chemistry professor Shaul Mukamel elected to AAAS

Shaul Mukamel, Chancellor’s Professor of chemistry at UC Irvine, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He joins some of the world’s most accomplished leaders in academia, business, public affairs and the humanities, including rock star Bruce Springsteen, astronaut and politician John Glenn, and Nobel laureates in medicine and the arts. Mukamel is a pioneer in the fields of nonlinear optics and multidimensional spectroscopy and has been hailed by fellow academics as one of the most important theoretical physicists. His work straddles chemistry and physics, and he received the Hamburg Award for physics last fall. His group’s research focuses on how large molecules, biological complexes and semiconductors  can be studied using  sequences of ultrafast laser pulses. Infrared lasers are utilized to examine the structure and nuclear motions of proteins, while visible and ultraviolet lasers are employed to probe light harvesting and elementary charge separation processes in photosynthesis. Mukamel’s seminal 1995 book on the principles of nonlinear spectroscopy is widely used by researchers in the field. “I’m honored and delighted by my election to the AAAS,” Mukamel said. “It’s humbling to be in the company of so many distinguished scientists and artists. This election was a wonderful surprise; I was not aware that I had been nominated.” The full list of new members is at https://www.amacad.org/members.aspx. One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the AAAS is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications and studies of science and technology policy; energy and global security; social policy and American institutions; and the humanities, arts and education.