Engineering Professor Named AAAS Fellow

LAWRENCE — Four University of Kansas professors have been elected as 2024 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellows, a distinct honor within the scientific community.

This year’s fellows:

• Timothy Jackson, department chair and professor of chemistry
• Ward Thompson, Richard S. Givens Chair and professor of chemistry
• Jon Tunge, associate chair for graduate studies and professor of chemistry
• Michael Branicky, former dean of engineering and professor of electrical engineering & computer science.

The 2024 class of AAAS fellows includes 471 scientists, engineers and researchers across many disciplines. The fellows are recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.

"I want to congratulate Professor Jackson, Professor Thompson, Professor Tunge and Professor Branicky on this prestigious honor,” Chancellor Douglas A. Girod said. “These four researchers have demonstrated excellence in their fields and have done so in a way that reflects well on our entire university. As one of the nation’s leading research institutions, KU strives to make discoveries that change the world — and these four scholars are helping us fulfill that mission every day.”

Timothy Jackson

Jackson was recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of bioinorganic chemistry, particularly through the combined use of kinetic, spectroscopic and computational methods to develop electronic structure-activity correlations of bioinspired manganese complexes. 

His research looks at bioinorganic chemistry, which involves the role of metals in biology, such as how the human body uses iron enzymes to transport oxygen or how plants use manganese enzymes to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. Understanding these reactions can help develop more environmentally friendly methods for the chemical industry.

Jackson earned a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004. Prior to joining KU, he was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota from 2005 to 2007.

Ward Thompson

Thompson was recognized for distinguished contributions in theoretical chemical dynamics and spectroscopy, including seminal studies on chemistry in nanoscale confinement and the calculation of activation energies.

His work focuses on understanding chemical dynamics in liquids, namely how, and how fast, molecules move and react. He uses theoretical chemistry to predict experimental results and uncover molecular-level mechanistic information in systems relevant to applications including catalysis, radiation chemistry and geochemistry.

Thompson earned a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley in 1996. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado from 1997 to 2000.

Jon Tunge

Tunge was recognized for the advancement of critical synthetic strategies involving the environmentally benign formation and utilization of organometallics. 

His research involves developing methods of promoting chemical reactions with the inherent energy in molecules rather than high-energy reagents or wasteful reagents to trigger chemical reactions. Reagents can often be toxic and expensive, so learning ways of triggering chemical reactions without them can improve economic efficiency and minimize toxic waste in industrial chemistry.

Tunge earned a doctorate in chemistry from Columbia University in 2000. He was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2000 to 2002.

Michael Branicky

Branicky was recognized for distinguished contributions to modeling, analysis and control of cyber-physical systems, and for applications to networked control systems and robotics. 

He studies the software that helps machines move. One of Branicky’s research interests involves cyber-physical systems, which help integrate computation and physical components. These systems are applied to a wide range of areas such as agriculture, energy, health care, manufacturing and transportation.

Branicky earned a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995. Before joining KU as dean, he was a professor and department chair at Case Western Reserve University.

Including the four new honorees, KU now has 33 AAAS fellows as active faculty members across all its campuses.

To become a fellow, a researcher must be nominated by either one of the AAAS’s 24 steering groups, the organization’s CEO or three previously elected fellows, so long as two of those three fellows are not from the nominee’s institution. The nomination is referred to a relevant steering committee, which sends a list of finalists to the AAAS Council for selection.

Earlier this week, Sudip Parikh, CEO of AAAS and executive publisher of the Science family of journals, delivered a talk on KU’s Lawrence campus. Parikh shared the science and technology goals identified by the Vision for American Science & Technology Task Force, which he chairs. The group of more than 70 of the nation’s most influential leaders in science, industry, education and philanthropy includes KU's Barbara Bichelmeyer, chief academic officer, provost & executive vice chancellor. The task force recently unveiled a road map guiding the science and technology enterprise to support America’s leadership on an increasingly competitive world stage.