The American Association for the Advancement of Science honors 19 UF faculty as Lifetime Fellows

Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul, alongside 18 other UF faculty, has been honored as a Lifetime Fellow of AAAS. Dr. Paul was honored for “distinguished contributions to the understanding of life’s ability to move beyond planet Earth, as well as extraordinary service to the space biology science community”. Her research focuses on how plants respond to environmental change, with emphasis on spaceflight environments, extraterrestrial materials and planetary analogs.

“This is a special honor for a scientist, and I am humbled to be included. When I first received the letter, I was overwhelmed and quite literally speechless, as I absorbed what I was reading. It is an honor to be elected, but it is also an obligation to ‘pay it forward’ – from mentoring junior scientists, to continuing the tradition of recognizing the accomplishments and contributions of others.” -Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul

Paul has been active in the spaceflight research community for over 25 years; she has served that community as the President of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research, as a member of the ISS Standing Review Board, on NASA’s GeneLab Science Council, and on a Suborbital Research advisory board for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. She currently serves on the National Academies Committee on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space (CBPSS). Paul has launched 12 orbital experiments to study how plants respond to the spaceflight environment, taken her science to extreme terrestrial environments (Arctic and Antarctica) as planetary analogs, and works with genuine lunar regolith from the Apollo era to evaluate plant molecular responses to that novel environment. She also uses suborbital launch vehicles to explore the effect of the transition to space on the molecular processes of plants. Paul is a recipient of the NASA Medal of Honor for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. In addition to being an AAAS Fellow, she is a Fellow of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR).

 

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More About the 2023 AAAS Lifetime Fellows at UF

19 total UF faculty were elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s newest class of Lifetime Fellows, breaking previous records for the number of faculty awarded in a single year. The honor, which includes alumni such as Thomas Edison and W.E.B. DuBois, is among the most distinctive in academia and recognizes extraordinary impact and achievement across disciplines, from research, teaching, and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.

AAAS has awarded the following faculty from UF:

Emilio M. Bruna, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Ageliki (Lily) Elefteriadou, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

Gerrit Hoogenboom, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Prabhat Mishra, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

Cheryl Palm, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Peihua Qiu, College of Public Health and Health Professions

Bala Rathinasabapathi, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Czerne Reid, College of Medicine

Carlos M. Rinaldi-Ramos, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering

José Eduardo P. Santos, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Matthew Smith, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Pam Soltis, Florida Museum of Natural History

Lukasz Stelinski, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Maurice Swanson, College of Medicine

Nan-Yao Su, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Nian Wang, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Marta L. Wayne, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences