Lee Riedinger and Michael Simpson, joint faculty members of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The two are leaders of the UT-ORNL Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. Riedinger is the center’s director and Simpson is the center’s assistant director.
The Bredesen Center opened this fall and offers a unique doctoral degree in engineering and energy sciences and a highly competitive distinguished graduate fellowship program.
Riedinger was recognized by the AAAS for “his leadership in fostering interdisciplinary research and graduate education collaborations between universities and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.”
Riedinger has been on the UT physics faculty for more than forty years and was recognized by the AAAS “for seminal studies of atomic nuclei at high spin.” Riedinger has authored 200 publications, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 1983 and 1984, was a science advisor to Senator Howard Baker. In 1993, he received the UT Chancellor’s Research Scholar Award and in 2008 served as UT’s Macebearer, the university’s highest faculty honor.
Simpson, of ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and distinguished R&D staff, holds a joint faculty appointment with UT as a professor of materials science and engineering. He was recognized for his “distinguished contribution to the application of engineering principles to the study of biological systems and for leadership in the field of noise biology.”
In 2009, Simpson received the UT–Battelle Distinguished Scientist Award, in 2008 was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and in 2007 was named a Battelle Memorial Institute Distinguished Inventor. He began a joint faculty appointment with UT in 1993 and has authored or co-authored more than 140 publications.
UT has forty-three AAAS fellows, including some joint faculty at ORNL.
AAAS is one of the largest scientific organizations in the world, serving more than 250 individual science societies with more than 10 million members. It also publishes the prestigious journal Science.
This year, 539 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New fellows will be presented with an official certificate on February 18 at the 2011 AAAS annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Fellows must be nominated for membership either by three current fellows, the CEO of AAAS or by the leaders of their specific section of AAAS. Nominations are subject to approval by the AAAS Council. The first class of fellows was named in 1874.
For more information on the nomination process and to search a database of current AAAS Fellows, visit http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/fellows/.
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C O N T A C T:
Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)