Five University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty members, including three from the IGB, have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest honorary societies in the United States. Nancy M. Amato (M-CELS), Rashid Bashir (CGD/M-CELS), Alison Bell (GNDP leader), Charles Gammie and Paul Selvin are among the 250 inductees for 2024. 

Founded in 1780, the academy recognizes scientists, artists, scholars and leaders who have distinguished themselves in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

Nancy M. Amato, Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering and department head of computer science, works at the intersection of robotics, parallel and distributed computing, computational geometry and biology. Her research group has developed novel algorithms and new realms of application from robotic task and motion planning to computer-aided design, virtual and augmented reality, protein folding and computing with biological neurons. She is passionate about broadening participation in the field of computing. Amato is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Rashid Bashir is the Grainger distinguished professor of bioengineering and dean of The Grainger College of Engineering at Illinois. Bashir’s research focuses on integrating engineering and technology with biology and medicine, from the molecular scale to tissues and systems. His group has developed various lab-on-a-chip and point-of-care diagnostic devices to detect disease, infection and sepsis from bodily fluids, as well as miniature biological robots for applications in medicine and engineering. Bashir is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society and others. He was on the founding team of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the U. of I. and is currently on the leadership advisory committee of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago. 

Professor of evolution, ecology and behavior Alison Bell studies the evolution of behavior in the three-spined stickleback fish. She is a pioneer in the study of animal personality, using genomics and other tools to understand the causes and consequences of individual behavior differences. She is a member of the Animal Behavior Society, the International Society for Behavioral Ecology and the American Society of Naturalists. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.