3 Brown researchers named AAAS fellows

PROVIDENCE – Three Brown University faculty members have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for their significant contributions to the life and physical sciences.
• Carle Pieters – a professor of geological sciences who has taught at Brown since 1980 – was chosen for “distinguished contributions to the study of the Moon and to our knowledge of the composition of planetary bodies through infrared spectroscopy.”
One of the world’s foremost lunar scientists, Pieters is the author of more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals and is an elected member of the International Academy of Astronautics. She began her career by studying lunar samples from the Apollo missions.
Today, she is principal investigator on the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), overseeing the design and construction of an imaging spectrometer scheduled to fly next year on India’s first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1; her team then will use the data to create a high-resolution map of the moon’s surface features and composition. Pieters also is active in the Dawn mission, launched by NASA in September, that aims to study two of the solar system’s largest asteroids: Vesta and Ceres.
• Stephen McGarvey – a professor of community health and anthropology at Brown, where he has taught since 1984, and the director of Brown’s International Health Institute – was chosen for his international health research.
McGarvey is best known his research on genetic and environmental factors in diabetes, obesity and smoking among Pacific Islanders and his studies of the ecology of schistosomiasis in East Asia.
He serves as co-editor of the journal Annals of Human Biology, and sits on editorial boards for publications including Anthropological Science and the American Journal of Human Biology. McGarvey also has served on several expert panels, for groups including the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization.
• Mary Carskadon – a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, where she has taught since 1985, and director of chronobiology at Bradley Hospital – was elected for “probing the nature of circadian rhythms in human adolescence.”
Carskadon, who also is deputy editor of the journal Sleep, is the winner of several major sleep research and education awards. Her work has affected policy in many school districts, prompting administrators to consider later daily class starting times for teenagers.
AAAS fellows are elected by their peers in the group, the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science.
The three Brown researchers are among 471 AAAS members awarded the honor this year, for distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications. The new fellows will be honored in February during a formal ceremony at the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston.

For additional information, visit www.brown.edu.

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