Four Rochester professors named AAAS fellows

Kautz

Jaenike

Maquat

Tanenhaus

he American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest federation of scientists, has elected four professors from the University as fellows. John Jaenike, Michael Tanenhaus, Lynne Maquat, and Henry Kautz were honored for the advances they’ve brought to their respective fields and will be presented with a certificate at the Fellows Forum during the 2006 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco on February 17.

Jaenike, professor and chair of the Department of Biology, works to understand how parasite-host symbiosis affects evolution. The work shows that parasites may be a much more influential part of evolution than anyone previously knew.

Work by Maquat, the Dean’s Endowed Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, most recently has focused on how human cells protect themselves from constant and potentially destructive changes in gene expression through an RNA-mediated mechanism. According to a recently published article, her team’s research is important because the protection itself can contribute to disease, and the ability to sidestep it may lead to new treatments for genetic disorders.

Tanenhaus, professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, was honored for demonstrating the highly interactive nature of language processing and for innovations in methods of studying language processing. Much of his research looks at how we resolve ambiguity in listening or reading as we develop interpretations before we’ve reached the ends of words, phrases, or sentences.

Kautz, professor of computer science, is founding a University center for artificial intelligence research that will bring together computer science and neuroscience.