Saif named Fellow of AAAS

Seven professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – including MechSE Professor Taher Saif.

AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. The Illinois recipients are among 505 scientists, engineers and innovators from around the world and across all disciplines chosen by their peers for outstanding contributions to their field.

Saif studies the effects of forces at small scales, focusing on nanoscale materials and living cells. His work on deformation in nanomaterials could lead to self-healing metal components, and his work on the effects of cellular forces has opened new research avenues in neuron function, cancer progression and biological robotics. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He also is affiliated with the department of bioengineering, the Beckman Institute, the Cancer Center at Illinois, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at Illinois.

The other Illinois recipients of this honor are: Physics professor James Eckstein, psychology professor Kara Federmeier, atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain, chemistry professor Liviu Mirica, computer science professor Grigore Rosu, and materials science and engineering professor Charles Schroeder.