Welcome to the Club

Two Iowa State University faculty members – Jonathan Wendel and Dan Shechtman – are among the 143 scholars elected this year to the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious honor that recognizes contributions to scientific research. Iowa State has had 14 faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences, which helps provide science, technology, and health pol-icy advice to the federal government and other organizations. Wendel, an evolutionary biologist and Distinguished Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences, shed light on the process and importance of genome doubling in plants. Israel-based Shechtman, an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering who’s also affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames National Laboratory, accepted the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals.