Six U-M faculty elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Six University of Michigan professors are among 120 new members inducted into the National Academy of Sciences for distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

In addition, 24 international members were recognized.

Kent Berridge, the James Olds Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, has a research lab that seeks answers to questions about the brain, particularly regarding "wanting" and "liking."

Lee Hartmann, the Leo Goldberg Collegiate Professor of Astronomy, emeritus, studies how vast cold clouds of gas and dust fragment and then collapse, forming stars and their surrounding disks. His research examines how planets form within these disks. Using models that link observation and theory, Hartmann looks at how variations in initial conditions and the physical processes that dominate a star's evolution contribute to the variety of systems we observe-from binaries to planetary systems like our own.

Jeffrey Lagarias, the Harold Mead Stark Distinguished University Professor of Mathematics, has contributed to number theory and theoretical computer science. At U-M, he has been active in the number theory group over the last few years, with additional contributions to many other fields.

Vonnie McLoyd, the Ewart A.C. Thomas Collegiate Professor of Psychology, researches the role of parental behavior and family relations as paths through which economic conditions such as poverty, parental job loss, and parental work characteristics influence youth's socioemotional adjustment. She also studies processes that protect youth from, or increase youth's vulnerability to, the effects of experiences in peer and neighborhood contexts known to compromise socioemotional adjustment (e.g., neighborhood violence, peer victimization, racial discrimination).

Jonathan Overpeck, the Samuel A. Graham Dean and William B. Stapp Collegiate Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability. An interdisciplinary climate scientist, Overpeck is an expert on climate change, climate-vegetation interactions, Earth history, environmental science, and sustainability.

Henry Wellman, the Harold W. Stevenson Collegiate Professor Emeritus of Psychology, has research interests that focus on children's acquisition of foundational knowledge - early acquired understandings that shape and frame later cognitive developments - studied via naturalistic and laboratory studies with infants and young children.

Those elected bring the total number of active members to 2,617 and the total number of international members to 537. International members are non-voting members of the academy, with citizenship outside the United States.

NAS is a private, nonprofit institution established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership and, with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

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