Johnston, Vaida inducted into American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Two University of Colorado faculty members recently were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Veronica Vaida, University of Colorado Boulder, and Mark Johnston, University of Colorado School of Medicine, were among 180  influential artists, scientists, scholars, authors and institutional leaders who were inducted during a ceremony in early October.

Vaida, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and Johnston, a professor and chair of the program in molecular biology at the School of Medicine, were elected to the academy in recognition of their exceptional achievements in scientific research.

Vaida’s research uses spectroscopy to explore different chemical reactions in the atmosphere, with many of these reactions having environmental implications. She is the 23rd CU-Boulder faculty member to be elected to the academy.

Johnston’s research includes examining how cells regulate and sense glucose, the fuel of life. He has focused on the yeast S. cerevisiae, which has evolved several sophisticated mechanisms for sensing and using the widely varying amounts of glucose it encounters during its lifetime.

Among the other new members elected this year were U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, actor and director Clint Eastwood, journalist Judy Woodruff, and Amazon.com founder and chairman Jeff Bezos. Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business and public affairs.