Six Illinois faculty members have been elected 2016 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, including two with ties to ECE ILLINOIS. They are among the 391 new Fellows chosen for their efforts to advance science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.

ECE Professor and MNTL Director Brian T Cunningham was honored for “exceptional contributions to the advancement of photonic crystal-based biosensing.” His group focuses on creating sensors for a wide variety of medical and scientific applications using materials with unique light-bending and reflecting properties, such as a smartphone biosensor for on-the-spot sample analysis.

ECE Affiliate and the Saburo Muroga Professor of Computer Science Josep Torrellas was recognized for “distinguished contributions to the field of computer architecture, particularly for designs of shared-memory multiprocessor architectures and thread-level speculation.” He is the director of the Center for Programmable Extreme Scale Computing and his research explores new processor, memory and system technologies and organizations to build novel multiprocessor computer architectures.

Four other Illinois faculty members were also honored this year: Jianjun Cheng, professor of materials science and engineering; Kevin T. Pitts, physics professor; Bruce L. Rhoads, professor of geography and geographic information science; and Chad M. Rienstra, chemistry professor.

“These members of our faculty exemplify the extraordinary scholarship, innovation and teaching that defines Illinois,” said Edward Feser, the interim vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost at Illinois. “They are leaders in their fields who have made highly significant contributions to their disciplines and the academy. We are proud they are our colleagues.”

Founded in 1848, the American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world's largest general scientific society. Fellows are chosen by their peers for their outstanding contributions to the field. The new Fellows will be honored at the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.