Six Faculty: Election to American Academy of Arts & Sciences – UPENN Almanac

Six Faculty: Election to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Six members of the University of Pennsylvania faculty have been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. They join more than 250 new members honored in 2021, recognized for their work to help solve the worlds most urgent challenges, create meaning through art, and contribute to the common good.

Cristina Bicchieri is the S. J. Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics in the School of Arts & Sciences. She is also a professor of legal studies at the Wharton School. She is the director of the Center for Social Norms & Behavioral Dynamics and founding director of the Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program. Her research sits at the intersection of philosophy, game theory, and psychology, with a primary research focus on judgment and decision-making, as well as on how expectations affect behavior. Dr. Bicchieris work also examines the nature and evolution of social norms, how to measure them, and what strategies are necessary to foster social change.

Michael Hanchard is the Gustav C. Kuemmerle Professor of Africana Studies and professor of political science in the School of Arts & Sciences. He also serves as director of the Marginalized Populations Project, a collaborative research initiative designed to explore political dynamics between populations with unequal, minimal, or non-existent state protections and national governments. His research and teaching interests combine a specialization in comparative politics with an interest in contemporary political theory, encompassing themes of nationalism, racism, xenophobia, and citizenship.

Vijay Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering with appointments in the departments of mechanical engineering & applied mechanics, computer & information science, and electrical & systems engineering. He is an internationally recognized robotics expert who specializes in multi-agent systems, teams of robots that can cooperate to complete a task. Dr. Kumars research on new ways for these teams to sense their environments and communicate will help them collaborate on tasks that no single robot could do on its own, whether splitting up to count oranges in an orchard or coming together to lift a heavy payload.

Stanley Plotkin is an emeritus professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, an emeritus professor of virology at the Wistar Institute, and former director of infectious diseases at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Dr. Plotkin has spent his career focused on developing vaccines for diseases like rubella, polio, rabies, varicella, and cytomegalovirus. He is also a founding member of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

Sarah Tishkoff is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology, holding appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Arts & Sciences. She is also director of the Penn Center for Global Genomics and Health Equity. Dr. Tishkoff studies human genetic diversity, specifically that of African populations, blending field, lab, and computational approaches. Her work has not only elucidated African population history but also how genetic variation affects traits such as disease susceptibility or ability to metabolize drugs.

Kenneth Zaret is the Joseph Leidy Professor in the department of cell and developmental biology at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is also the director of Penns Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IRM). Dr. Zaret joined Penn in 2009 as associate director of IRM and co-director of the epigenetics program, where he served until 2014. He is also a member of the Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Group. The Zaret Lab focuses on understanding how genes are regulated to allow one type of cell to change into another type, cell type control that occurs in embryonic development and tissue regeneration.

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Six Faculty: Election to American Academy of Arts & Sciences - UPENN Almanac