Douglas Durian and I. Joseph Kroll Elected AAAS Fellows

Two professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy have been named to the 2021 class of American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows. They are among 564 scientists, engineers, and innovators recognized by the organization for their “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.”

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. AAAS Fellows are nominated and elected by current AAAS members in a tradition that stretches back to 1874.

The new AAAS Fellows are:

Douglas Durian, Mary Amanda Wood Professor of Physics , specializes in soft matter physics. His research interests center on elucidating the microscopic origin of behavior in dense packings of particles ranging from colloids and bubbles to grains and pebbles. Besides physics, Durian’s work impacts disciplines such as mechanics engineering, materials science, and geology. Durian serves on several editorial boards, is co-founder and associated director for Penn’s new Center for Soft and Living Matter, and recently served as chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Soft Matter.

I. Joseph Kroll’s research is in the field of particle physics at colliding-beam experiments. He is currently a member of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. There, his group has played a leading role in the search and discovery of the Higgs boson and in searches for as-yet-undiscovered particles that may explain unanswered questions in the current standard model of particle physics. Kroll is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is the co-recipient of the 2013 European Physical Society (EPS) High Energy and Particle Physics prize for the discovery of the Higgs boson and the 2019 EPS High Energy and Particle Physics prize for the discovery of the top quark.