AAAS and the University of Manitoba Announce 2017 Fellow

Dr. Stefi Alison Baum, Dean of Science at the University of Manitoba has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 396 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, 17 February, 2018, at the AAAS Fellows Forum, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Central Time during the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

This year’s AAAS Fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science on 24 November 2017.

Dr. Stefi Baum has been honoured for her work on galaxies, imaging techniques, STEM education and outreach

As part of the AAAS Section on Astronomy, Dr. Baum was elected as an AAAS Fellow for distinguished contributions to the fields of activity in galaxies, the development of imaging techniques, and STEM education and outreach, and for service to astrophysics.

Baum explains: “Science is for me a continuous source of wonder, excitement, and contribution and to be valued by one’s colleagues through such a nomination is humbling and inspiring.”

Dr. Baum’s nomination as a AAAS Fellow is the first University of Manitoba faculty member nomination since 1996, when Dr. Phyllis McAlpine received the honour. Only 22 U of M scholars have been so honoured since 1908. Drs. Matthew Parker and Andrew Buller received the honour in 1911 and 1925, respectively, and have buildings on campus named after them. More recently, Dr. Arnold Naimark, president of the U of M from 1981 to 1996, was named a AAAS Fellow in 1966. Dr. Emőke Szathmáry, president emeritus of the U of M, was named a Fellow of the AAAS previous to her presidency at the U of M.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the Association’s 24 sections, or by any three Fellows who are current AAAS members (so long as two of the three sponsors are not affiliated with the nominee’s institution), or by the AAAS chief executive officer. Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected.

Each steering group reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and a final list is forwarded to the AAAS Council, which votes on the aggregate list.

The Council is the policymaking body of the Association, chaired by the AAAS president, and consisting of the members of the board of directors, the retiring section chairs, delegates from each electorate and each regional division, and two delegates from the National Association of Academies of Science.

The University of Manitoba – Manitoba’s research university – has a tradition of excellence in research, scholarly work and other creative activities spanning over 140 years, having made seminal contributions in many fields and finding life-changing solutions to problems being faced by peoples of Manitoba, Canada, and the world through fundamental and applied research.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances, Science Immunology, and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert! (www.eurekalert.org), the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.