The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) has elected five NYU faculty as fellows: Leslie Greengard, a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; Yusef Komunyakaa, a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English; Trevor Morrison, dean of NYU’s School of Law; Debraj Ray, a Silver Professor in the Department of Economics; and Christopher Wood, a professor in the Department of German.

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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) has elected five New York University faculty as fellows: Leslie Greengard, a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; Yusef Komunyakaa, a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English; Trevor Morrison, dean of NYU’s School of Law; Debraj Ray, a Silver Professor in the Department of Economics; and Christopher Wood, a professor in the Department of German.

Other AAAS fellows selected this year include the following: novelist Colm Tóibín; La Opinión Publisher and CEO Monica Lozano; former Botswanan President Festus Mogae; and autism author and spokesperson Temple Grandin. 

“It is an honor to welcome this new class of exceptional women and men as part of our distinguished membership,” said Don Randel, chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors. “Their election affords us an invaluable opportunity to bring their expertise and knowledge to bear on some of the most significant challenges of our day. We look forward to engaging these new members in the work of the Academy.”

Greengard, founding director of the Simons Center for Data Analysis, has made contributions to the fields of scientific computing, data analysis, and integral equations and co-developed the Fast Multipole Method (FMM), a mathematical technique whose applications range from chip simulation to molecular modeling.

Komunyakaa, a Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, has published 17 collections of his verses, including The Emperor of Water Clocks; Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999; Talking Dirty to the Gods; and I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head. His plays and libretti, including, Gilgamesh and Testimony, among others, have been performed internationally.

Morrison’s research and teaching interests are in constitutional law (especially separation of powers and federalism), federal courts, and the law of the executive branch. He served in the White House as associate counsel to President Barack Obama in 2009, and earlier in his career was a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ray’s research spans several fields in economics. He is the author of Development Economics and A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Coalition Formation. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a winner of the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal of the Indian Econometric Society as well as co-editor of the American Economic Review.

Research by Wood, chair of NYU’s Department of German, centers on art’s “temporalities,” such as anachronism, archaism, and typology, as well as on the history of the discipline of art history. His authored and co-authored works include Anachronic Renaissance, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, and Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on October 8, 2016, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world. Current Academy research focuses on higher education, the humanities, and the arts; science and technology policy; global security and energy; and American institutions and the public good. The Academy’s work is advanced by its elected members, who are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs from around the world.
 

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