Engineers Alan Needleman and Arto Nurmikko, physicist J. Michael Kosterlitz, and ecologist Jerry M. Melillo have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a distinction of excellence in science, scholarship, business, public affairs and the arts. Needleman, Nurmikko and Kosterlitz are professors at Brown; Melillo is a researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory who holds a joint appointment at Brown through the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has inducted four members of the Brown University community as fellows of the honorary society, which includes the world’s leading thinkers in scholarship and science, public affairs and business, and the arts and humanities.

Official induction ceremonies occurred at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on Saturday, Oct. 6, 2007, in Cambridge, Mass. Engineers Alan Needleman and Arto Nurmikko, physicist J. Michael Kosterlitz, and ecologist Jerry M. Melillo were Brown University’s representatives in the AAAS Class of 2007. Also included was former Brown Provost Robert Zimmer, who now serves as president of the University of Chicago.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences selects its members through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.

Members of the Brown community in the 227th AAAS class of fellows:

Jerry M. Melillo is co-director of the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Ecosystems Center and a professor (MBL) of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. Melillo oversees research on global change, management of coastal zone ecosystems, and globalization and transformation of the tropical landscape. He specializes in understanding the impacts of human activities on the biogeochemistry of ecological systems. He has been president of the Ecological Society of America and of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), and was recently elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Melillo is affiliated with Brown through the Brown-MBL Graduate Program in Biological and Environmental Sciences, which offers students the chance to work with scientists at both locations and enhances the research potential of both institutions.

Other fellows elected to the Academy this year include former Vice President Albert Gore Jr.; former Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; New York mayor and businessman Michael Bloomberg; Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt; New York Times investigative correspondent James Risen; filmmaker Spike Lee; economists Gregory Mankiw and Murray Weidenbaum; astronomer Donald Brownlee; robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks; Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter; supercomputer expert David Shaw; pianist Emanuel Ax; historian Nell Painter; former White House official and Berkeley Law Dean Christopher Edley; classicist Sabine MacCormack; and international public health leader Allan Rosenfield.