April 20, 2009
Matthew Tirrell, incoming Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and current Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tirrell is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Tirrell is a leader in academia and an outstanding scholar in materials science in the areas of surface properties and biomolecular materials. An independent policy research center, the academy is made up of scholars and practitioners from diverse fields, which enables the organization to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.
Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected as fellows and foreign honorary members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The academy will welcome this year’s new class at its annual Induction Ceremony on October 10, at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.