Award
Winners

  • Shirley M. Tilghman

    Gold Key Award

    View BIo

  • Xin Zhang

    Walston Chubb Award for Innovation

    View BIo

  • Maryam Naghibolhosseini

    Young Investigator Award

    View BIo

  • John A. Rogers

    William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement

    View BIo

  • Ken Miller

    John P. McGovern Science and Society Award

    View BIo

  • Malgosia Wilk

    Evan Ferguson Award for Service to the Society

    Click Here

Shirley M. Tilghman, PhD

Princeton University

GOLD KEY AWARD

For extraordinary contributions to her profession and for fostering critical innovations to enhance the health of the research enterprise, to cultivate integrity in research, and to promote the public understanding of science for the purpose of improving the human condition.

Biography

A prominent molecular biologist, innovator, and educational leader, Dr. Tilghman is president emerita and professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University. A pioneer in research on genetics and genomics, Tilghman was a leading adviser for the National Institutes of Health’s Human Genome Project. In addition to serving as Princeton’s president from 2001–2013, she was named to Harvard University’s principal fiduciary governing board, the Harvard Corporation, in 2015, where she still serves today.

+ Read More

A native of Toronto, Tilghman received her bachelor of science degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1968. After two years of secondary school teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa, she earned her PhD in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia. She did postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health and contributed to many scientific breakthroughs as an independent investigator at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia. In 1986, she began her career at Princeton as the Howard A. Prior Professor of Life Sciences. Over the next 15 years, she held many additional council and leadership positions at the university before being named president in 2001. Tilghman’s exceptional contributions to science have earned her many awards including 2002’s L’Oreal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science, 2003’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Developmental Biology, and 2007’s Genetics Society of America Medal.

In addition to her reputation as a distinguished scientist and researcher, Tilghman has been a nationally recognized leader and advocate throughout her career on behalf of women and young scientists. She has chaired organizations and authored recent publications focused on educational reform, the importance of DEI in science, and promoting efforts to make the early careers of young scientists as meaningful and productive as possible.

Xin Zhang, PhD

Boston University

WALSTON CHUBB AWARD FOR INNOVATION

Biography

Xin Zhang is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Boston University. Her research is generally focused on the development of metamaterials and microelectromechanical systems (or microsystems), from their fundamental physics and mathematical underpinnings, their design and development, through to their use in real world applications.

Three distinct research themes and applications areas are represented by Zhang’s recent work, namely metamaterials and microsystems: 1) with tunable and nonlinear responses for photonic and optical applications, 2) for clinical medical imaging technologies, and 3) for acoustic silencing and noise reduction.

+ Read More

Zhang's recent research on metamaterials, both those that enable highly efficient, air-permeable sound silencing and noise reduction and those that markedly boost MRI signal-to-noise ratio and thus significantly improve the performance of MRI, have drawn significant worldwide interest from the scientific community and industry, with the stories having been picked up by numerous media outlets.

In addition to the Walston Chubb Award, Zhang’s other recent honors and awards include the Guggenheim Fellow, ASME Per Bruel Gold Medal, STAT Madness All-Star Award, and IEEE EMBS Technical Achievement Award. She is a Sigma Xi member and an Elected Fellow of National Academy of Inventors, AAAS, AIMBE, APS, ASME, IEEE, and Optica, and Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Zhang is Director of both the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU Site) and Teachers (RET Site) in Integrated Nanomanufacturing at Boston University. She also serves as Associate Director of the Boston University Nanotechnology Innovation Center (BUnano).

Maryam Naghibolhosseini, PhD

Michigan State University

YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD

Biography

Dr. Naghibolhosseini is an Assistant Professor in the department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders and the director of Analysis of Voice and Hearing Laboratory (AVAH Lab) at Michigan State University. The research in AVAH lab is focused on studying voice production, speech acoustics, and auditory sound processing.

Dr. Naghibolhosseini is applying advanced image processing, machine learning, and statistical analysis techniques to investigate the vocal function and its underlying mechanisms in norm and disorder. She also employs computational mathematics to perform biomechanical modeling of voice production and human auditory system. Her research goal is to determine the relationships between the vocal mechanisms, the generated speech sounds, and the perceived voice quality to improve voice assessment and treatment procedures.

+ Read More

She received her BS and MS in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering. She obtained her PhD from the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

She was the recipient of the 'ASHA Early Career Contributions in Research Award' in 2020, 'NIH NIDCD K01 Career Development Award' in 2019, Acoustical Society of America (ASA) Young Investigator Grant in 2018 by Women in Acoustics, and the 2017 Sataloff Young Investigator Award, co-sponsored by Elsevier and The Voice Foundation.

John A. Rogers, PhD

Northwestern University

WILLIAM PROCTER PRIZE FOR SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVMENT

Biography

John A. Rogers is on the faculty at Northwestern University, where he is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery, with affiliate appointments in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chemistry. He obtained BA and BS degrees in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1989. From MIT, he received SM degrees in physics and in chemistry in 1992 and the PhD degree in physical chemistry in 1995, under the mentorship of Prof. K.A. Nelson in research on ultrafast laser systems and spectroscopic methods. From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows, working with Prof. G.M. Whitesides on materials and methods in soft lithography and with engineers at a startup company that he co-founded based on his PhD research, Active Impulse Systems (AIS).

+ Read More

He joined Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department in 1997 and served as Director of this department from the end of 2000 to 2002. During this time, he pursued various projects in plastic electronics, fiber optics and precision laser metrology techniques. He then spent thirteen years on the faculty at the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign, most recently as the Swanlund Chair Professor, the highest chaired position at the university, and as the Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In 2016, he moved to Northwestern to become the Director of the recently endowed Querrey/Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. His interests are in unusual materials and fabrication techniques for broad classes of microsystems technologies, with an emphasis on bio-inspired and bio-integrated devices, across applications that range from maternal, fetal and neonatal health to neuroscience research.

Rogers has published nearly 900 papers, he is a co-inventor on more than 100 patents and he has co-founded several successful technology companies based on his research, including AIS (acquired by Philips Electronics), MC10 (acquired by Medidata), Epicore Biosystems (partnerships with Gatorade), Neurolux, Sibel Health (partnerships with Drager and the Gates Foundation) and Rhaeos. His research has been recognized by many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award for American Ingenuity in the Physical Sciences (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2019) and the Guggenheim Fellowship (2021). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds Honorary Professorships at Fudan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from the University of Houston and the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Rogers' most significant career achievements, however, are in engaging students and postdoctoral fellows in basic and applied research, nearly 200 of whom have successfully passed through his group over the last twenty years - in fields spanning biomedical engineering, materials science, physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. All but two are currently pursuing careers in science and/or technology; more than 120 are in faculty positions at leading research universities around the world, including MIT (female), Stanford, Duke (female), Dartmouth, Northwestern, Princeton (female), Cornell, Georgia Tech, the University of Texas at Austin (female), the University of California at Santa Barbara (female) and many others here in the US; Seoul National University, KAIST, Yonsei University and others in Korea; the University of Heidelberg (female), ETH Zurich (female), TU Delft (female) and others in Europe; and Tsinghua University (female), Peking University and others in China. Throughout his time as a faculty member, Rogers has also encouraged undergraduate involvement in research, typically hosting between 20 and 40 undergraduates per year in his laboratory, for a cumulative total of more than 250, a majority of whom co-authored papers as part of their experience.

Ken Miller, PhD

Brown University

JOHN P. MCGOVERN SCIENCE & SOCIETY AWARD

Biography

Kenneth R. Miller is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Brown University and President of the National Center for Science Education. He earned his Ph. D. in Biology from the University of Colorado and taught at Harvard for six years before joining the faculty at Brown. In addition to his research work in cell biology, he is coauthor (with Joseph S. Levine) of the nation’s leading high school biology textbook.

+ Read More

He has written extensively on evolution, and in 2005 served as lead witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial on evolution and intelligent design. His books include Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution (1999), Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (2008), and The Human Instinct: How we evolved to have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will (2018).

His honors include the Public Understanding of Science Award from AAAS, the Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Gregor Mendel Medal from Villanova University, and the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame University.

Malgosia Wilk, PhD

University of Texas at Arlington

EVAN FERGUSON AWARD FOR SERVICE TO THE SOCIETY

Biography