Awards Ceremony

The National Academy of Sciences is an honorific society of

distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering

research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and techno-

logy and to their use for the general welfare. Since 1886 the

National Academy of Sciences has given awards to recognize

outstanding contributions to science and to encourage innova-

tive research. To date the Academy has presented awards to

more than 900 individuals in the physical, biological, and social

sciences. A display in the Members’ Room showcases the

awards.

Information about National Academy of Sciences awards,

including nomination details, is available at

nasonline.org/awards.

Meeting

APRIL 25–27, 2020

APRIL 25–27, 2020

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2020 Awards

Cozzarelli Prize

The Cozzarelli Prize, named in honor of late Editor-in-Chief Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, is awarded annually to six research teams whose PNAS articles have made outstanding contributions to their fields. The articles broadly represent the six Academy classes.

AWARDEES

Class I • Physical and Mathematical SciencesDaniel R. Moberg, Daniel Becker, Christoph W. Dierking, Florian Zurheide, Bernhard Bandow, Udo Buck, Arpa Hudait, Valeria Molinero, Francesco Paesani, and Thomas Zeuch, The end of ice I. 116, 24413–24419.

Class II • Biological SciencesEelco C. Tromer, Jolien J. E. van Hooff, Geert J. P. L. Kops, and Berend Snel, Mosaic origin of the eukaryotic kinetochore. 116, 12873–12882.

Class III • Engineering and Applied SciencesDerek E. Moulton, Alain Goriely, and Régis Chirat, Mechanics unlocks the morphogenetic puzzle of interlocking bivalved shells. 117, 43–51.

Class IV • Biomedical SciencesAlexander T. Tveit, Anne Grethe Hestnes, Serina L. Robinson, Arno Schintl-meister, Svetlana N. Dedysh, Nico Jehmlich, Martin von Bergen, Craig Herbold, Michael Wagner, Andreas Richter, and Mette M. Svenning, Wide-spread soil bacterium that oxidizes atmospheric methane. 116, 8515–8524.

Class V • Behavioral and Social SciencesClark Spencer Larsen, Christopher J. Knüsel, Scott D. Haddow, Marin A. Pilloud, Marco Milella, Joshua W. Sadvari, Jessica Pearson, Christopher B. Ruff, Evan M. Garofalo, Emmy Bocaege, Barbara J. Betz, Irene Dori, and Bonnie Glencross, Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers. 116, 12615–12623.

Class VI • Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental SciencesWilliam Nordhaus, Economics of the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet. 116, 12261–12269

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2020 Awards

Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship

Provided for by funds from the Arthur L. Day Bequest and presented since 1972. Awarded in recognition of an individual making lasting contributions to the study of the physics of the Earth.

Awarded to

LINDA T. ELKINS–TANTON

Arizona State University

For her work that combines geodynamic modeling, petrology, geochemistry, and field investigations to provide first–order constraints and fundamental insights into planetary chemical differentiation processes.

Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences

Established by a gift from Richard C. Atkinson. Presented since 2014 to honor significant advances in the psychological and cognitive sciences with important implications for formal and systematic theory in these fields. Two awards will be presented.

Awarded to

RICHARD N. ASLIN

Haskins Laboratories Yale University

For his groundbreaking innovations and seminal contributions to the field of infancy, from visual and perceptual development to early language acquisition and, most recently, to brain imaging in infants; and also for his outstanding advocacy and support for women in science.

and to

SUSAN ELIZABETH CAREY

Harvard University

For her discoveries of the mechanisms by which core cognition undergoes conceptual change in childhood and over history, thereby revolutionizing our understanding of how humans construct an understanding of objects, numbers, living kinds, and the physical world.

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2020 Awards

James Craig Watson Medal

Presented since 1887 to recognize contributions to the science of astronomy.

Awarded to

LISA KEWLEY

Australian National University

For her fundamental contributions to our understanding of galaxy collisions, cosmic chemical abundances, galactic energetics, and the star–formation history of galaxies by elucidating key processes in star–forming galaxies, including nebular physics, accretion by supermassive black holes, and oxygen enrichment.

Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal

Established by the gift of Michael S. Kovalenko in memory of his wife, Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko. Presented since 1952 in recognition of important contributions to the medical sciences.

Awarded to

BERT VOGELSTEIN

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Ludwig Center Lustgarten Laboratory Howard Hughes Medical Institute

For his pioneering work in elucidating the fundamental principles of the molecular basis of human cancer and the application of this knowledge to improve the clinical management of patients.

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2020 Awards

John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science

Presented since 1932 to recognize noteworthy and distinguished accomplishment in any field of science within the scope of the Academy charter. The 2020 John J. Carty Award honors research in the physical sciences.

Awarded to

CAROLYN R. BERTOZZI

Stanford University

For her invention of bioorthogonal chemistry–a broadly applicable class of processes for scalable production of novel biomaterials. Her innovative technologies have been extensively translated to commercial settings for therapeutic and diagnostics discovery. She also employs these tools for glycobiology studies and tuberculosis research.

Maryam Mirzakhani Prize in Mathematics

Inaugural presentation. Formerly the NAS Award in Mathematics and established in 1988 by the American Mathematical Society, the mathematics prize honors exceptional contributions to the mathematical sciences by a midcareer mathematician. The prize was renamed to honor the late Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017), a highly accomplished and talented mathematician, professor at Stanford University, and member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Awarded to

LARRY GUTH

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

For developing surprising, original, and deep connections between geometry, analysis, topology, and combinatorics, which have led to the solution of, or major advances on, many outstanding problems in these fields.

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2020 Awards

Michael and Sheila Held Prize

Established in 2017 by the bequest of Michael and Sheila Held to honor outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in the areas of combinatorial and discrete optimization, or related parts of computer science, such as the design and analysis of algorithms and complexity theory.

Awarded to

JULIA CHUZHOY

Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago

For her foundational research on algorithms for routing in networks and finding disjoint paths in graphs, which has introduced powerful new techniques and resolved deep open questions in both discrete optimization and in the structure of graphs.

NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing

Supported by Annual Reviews in honor of J. Murray Luck. Presented since 1979 to recognize authors for excellence in scientific reviewing. The 2020 award honors reviews in the social sciences.

Awarded to

CHRISTINA MASLACH

University of California, Berkeley

For her insightful, integrative reviews discovering and developing the rigorous research and multidimensional theory of worker or job burnout and interventions to mitigate it, thereby advancing science and improving human wellbeing.

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2020 Awards

NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science

Established by the IBM Corporation in honor of Ralph E. Gomory. Presented since 1990 for original scientific work of intrinsic scientific importance and with significant beneficial applications in industry. The 2020 award honors research in sustainability.

Awarded to

SHUJI NAKAMURA

University of California, Santa Barbara

For his pioneering discoveries, synthesis and commercial development of Gallium nitride LEDs and their use in sustainable solid–state light sources, which are reducing global greenhouse gas emissions while also reducing costs to those adopting this technology.

NAS Award in Chemical Sciences

Supported by The Merck Company Foundation. Presented since 1979 to recognize innovative research in chemical sciences that contributes to the better understanding of the natural sciences and to the benefit of humanity.

Awarded to

JOHN C. TULLY

Yale University

For his pioneering contributions to our understanding of the rates and pathways of chemical processes in gas phase, condensed phase, and surfaces through insightful analyses and creation of computational tools such as surface hopping, which is the standard starting point for simulating molecular motion evolving on multiple potential energy surfaces.

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2020 Awards

NAS Award in Molecular Biology

Supported by Pfizer, Inc., and presented since 1962. Awarded to recognize a recent notable discovery in molecular biology by a young scientist who is a citizen of the United States.

Awarded to

HASHIM MURTADHA AL–HASHIMI

Duke University

For revealing the dynamic nature of RNA and DNA conformation through innovative use of NMR methods. The discovery of RNA conformation ensembles and transient formation of non–Watson–Crick base pairs has illuminated the impact of folding and form on nucleic acid function including protein and small–molecule binding, mutations, and cancer.

NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences

Established by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Presented since 2017 to recognize research by a midcareer scientist at a US institution who has made an extraordinary contribution to agriculture or to the understanding of the biology of a species fundamentally important to agriculture or food production.

Awarded to

ZACHARY B. LIPPMAN

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Howard Hughes Medical Institute

For his outstanding studies of mechanisms controlling plant stem cell maturation, for providing a means of circumventing negative epistasis arising when combining desirable agricultural traits, and for developing a CRISPR/Cas9 strategy for engineering quantitative trait variation for increased yield – a technique that will find widespread application.

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2020 Awards

Pradel Research Award

Established by the bequest of Jules Pradel. Presented since 2012 to recognize and further outstanding research in neuroscience.

Awarded to

LESLIE B. VOSSHALL

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Rockefeller University

For her seminal discoveries about the nature and organization of insect olfactory systems. She identified multiple classes of sensory recep-tors in Drosophila, defined the rules by which they recognize odors, and subsequently richly extended this work to sensory biology and inte-gration in the disease–bearing mosquito Aedes aegypti.

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2020 Awards

Troland Research Award

Established by the bequest of Leonard T. Troland. Presented since 1984 to recognize unusual achievement and further empirical research in psychology regarding the relationships of consciousness and the physical world. Two awards will be presented.

Awarded to

MICHAEL C. FRANK

Stanford University

For his work revolutionizing our understanding of language acquisition by placing it in its social context. Through elegant experimentation, sophisticated corpus analysis, and state–of–the–art computational modeling, he has shown how the young learner’s capabilities interact with input and context to drive language learning.

and to

NIM TOTTENHAM

Columbia University

For her innovative discoveries of critical windows of affective development during childhood and adolescence, their underlying neural basis at the circuit level and their disruption following early life stress.

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2020 Awards

NAS Public Welfare Medal

Presented since 1914 by the Council of the Academy to honor distinguished contribution in the application of science to the public welfare.

Awarded to

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON

University of Pennsylvania

For her non–partisan crusade to ensure the integrity of facts in public discourse and development of the science of scientific communication to promote public understanding of complex issues.