PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

6-Feb-2014

Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University

Rice University Professor Naomi Halas today joined the elite rank of scientists who have been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Halas is one of 67 new NAE members announced today and was elected to the NAS in 2013.

Less than 5 percent of NAS and NAE members have dual membership, and Halas is one of 12 women ever chosen for the dual honor. Election to these academies is one of the highest honors that can be conferred upon a U.S. scientist or engineer.

Halas is Rice's Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, and physics and astronomy. She also is the founding director of Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics and director of the Rice Quantum Institute. She is the first person in the university's history to be elected to both the NAS and NAE for research done at Rice.

The national academies -- private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter -- date to the formation of the NAS in 1863. Today, the academies include the NAS, NAE, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

"Election to a national academy is an honor bestowed by one's peers in the academy, and the fact that Naomi has earned the rare distinction of being elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science is a testament to her sustained, long-standing and fundamental contributions to cross-disciplinary science," said Ned Thomas, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering and professor in materials science and nanoengineering and in chemical and biomolecular engineering. "Rice is doubly honored because the contributions were all made right here over the course of her remarkable Rice career."

Halas' research crosses boundaries of applied physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, medicine and optics. She joined Rice in the first wave of researchers recruited by the late Richard Smalley to explore the frontiers of nanotechnology. Halas, who had trained at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center and at Bell Laboratories, was uniquely positioned for nanoscience because of her training in both chemistry and physics.

Halas said Rice's small size was attractive, largely because of the corresponding culture of interdepartmental collaboration made possible by the campus's various institutes.

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Rice's Naomi Halas elected to National Academy of Engineering