Six honored by AAAS

P. Dee Boersma

Six UW professors are among 251 nationwide tapped as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are chosen based on their “efforts toward advancing science or fostering applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished,” according to the association. Information about UW winners follows:

Zoology Professor P. Dee Boersma was cited for distinguished scientific contributions to the new field of conservation biology and for activities in improving policies to protect endangered species. She is a past president of the Society for Conservation Biology and serves on its board of governors, and is widely known for her research involving Magellenic penguins, now in its 18th year. She received her doctorate in 1974 at Ohio State University in Columbus. That same year she joined the UW as an assistant professor of environmental studies. In 1981 she became associate professor of zoology and environmental studies, and became a full professor in both departments in 1988. In 1993 she returned to her home department of zoology and also became an adjunct professor of women studies.

Suzanne G. Brainard

Suzanne G. Brainard, an affiliate associate professor in both technical communication in the College of Engineering and in the department of women studies, is executive director of the Center for Workforce Development. She was elected to the Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering section for “advancing the participation of all, especially women, in engineering through scholarship, mentoring, policy and leadership of national non-profit organizations.” Brainard is one of three co-founders of the Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network (WEPAN) and serves on the congressionally mandated Committee on Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering. Her research has focused on longitudinal studies that examine retention in engineering and science as well as long-term climate studies in the UW College of Engineering and national climate surveys. Brainard earned her doctorate in educational psychology from Ohio State University in 1972.

Denice D. Denton

Denice D. Denton, professor of electrical engineering and dean of the College of Engineering, was cited for leading edge research in micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS, technology and for national leadership in engineering education. In addition to work in MEMS, Denton’s research involves the plasma deposition of polymers used in photonics, the long-term reliability of polymers used in integrated circuits and developing new ways to analyze and evaluate changes in science, math and engineering education. She has served as co-director of the National Institute for Science Education, chaired the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Board on Engineering Education and is currently a member of the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Engineering Education. Denton earned her doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. She worked as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent time in Switzerland at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as both a visiting scientist and visiting professor before coming to the UW as dean of engineering in 1996.

Randall T. Moon

Randall T. Moon, professor of pharmacology and an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was elected to the Biological Sciences section “for consistent, significant contributions to the fields of cell and developmental biology, particularly for increasing the understanding of the molecular basis of primary embryonic induction.” His laboratory focuses on the very basics of how vertebrate embryos develop, including how certain cells, for example, become nerve tissue and others become pigment cells. For more than 10 years he has been particularly interested in identifying the signal transduction pathways activated by the Wnt family of secreted proteins, and in understanding the functions of Wnt signaling during development. His work is done largely with frog embryos and zebrafish, using molecular biology techniques to understand which genes and their proteins control certain developmental steps and how they work. Moon earned his Ph.D. from the UW Department of Zoology in 1982. After postdoctoral research in cell and molecular biology at the California Institute of Technology, he returned to the UW to join the School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology in 1985.

M. Patricia Morse

Acting zoology Professor M. Patricia Morse was cited for contributions in marine invertebrate zoology, for improvement of scientific education and for leadership in professional societies. For 34 years, she was a biology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, and for the last four was a program director for the National Science Foundation. She has published extensively on the biology of mollusks and more recently in the area of science education. Morse is a past president of Sigma X, the Scientific Research Society; and the American Society of Zoologists (now the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology). She earned her doctorate from the University of New Hampshire in Durham. For more than 20 years she has spent summers doing research at the UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories, and she joined the faculty in 1998.

James W. Murray

Professor James W. Murray, an oceanographer and chemist, studies how gases, trace metals, nutrients and radioactive isotopes are distributed in oceans, lakes and sediments. He has, for example, studied how organic carbon cycles between the surface and the deep ocean, an important consideration for those trying to model and predict the fate of natural and human-caused carbon dioxide. The work is at the heart of major international efforts such as the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study, for which Murray served on the steering committee. Murray also was the director of JGOFS’s Equatorial Pacific Process Study. In naming Murray a fellow, AAAS commended him for, among other things, “selfless leadership of major ocean expeditions.” In recent years, he has worked in the Black Sea, the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, the eastern tropical Pacific off Mexico, Monterey Bay and Puget Sound. Murray earned his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and joined the UW in 1973. He is on the faculty of the School of Oceanography, has an adjunct appointment in chemistry and is a senior fellow in the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Oceans.

Founded in 1848, AAAS represents the world’s largest federation of scientists and has more than 143,000 individual members. The association publishes the weekly, peer-reviewed journal Science and conducts many programs in the areas of science policy, science education and international scientific cooperation.