Barth, Tetali Elected 2023 AAAS Fellows

Five Carnegie Mellon University faculty members have been elected as 2023 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Among them are Alison Barth and Prasad Tetali of the Mellon College of Science.

They are among the 502 scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their distinguished achievements by the world's largest scientific society.

A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor. The newly elected AAAS Fellows will be honored for their achievements this spring at a celebration in Washington D.C.

Alison Barth

Barth has been recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of cellular and systems neuroscience, particularly in linking molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity to behavioral learning.

Barth, who joined Carnegie Mellon in 2002, holds The Maxwell H. and Gloria C. Connan Professorship in the Life Sciences along with appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute.

She has been a pioneer in developing molecular methods to understand brain-scale neural circuit plasticity and function. Her recent work has focused on understanding brain algorithms that enable learning, and using these circuit principles to design robust and efficient engineered systems.

Barth has received numerous awards, including the McKnight Foundation’s Memory and Cognitive Disorders Award, the Humboldt Foundation’s Bessel Research Award and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship.

Barth earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

Prasad Tetali

Tetali has been recognized for contributions to discrete mathematics and service to the scientific community. The Alexander M. Knaster Professor and head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Tetali focuses his research on probability theory, discrete mathematics and approximation algorithms.

In 2021, Tetali came to Carnegie Mellon from Georgia Tech, where he has been a member of the School of Mathematics faculty since 1994 and held a joint appointment in the College of Computing since 2000. There, he was a Regents’ Professor and director of the algorithms, combinatorics and optimization Ph.D. program. As an educator, he has advised many doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows and undergraduate students.

Tetali has published more than 100 research papers and given numerous invited lectures in his fields of expertise. Among his research honors, Tetali was named a fellow of both the American Mathematical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Tetali earned his bachelor's degree from Andhra University in India, his master's degree in computer science and automation from the Indian Institute of Science and his doctoral degree from New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He completed postdoctoral work at AT&T Bell Labs.

Additional Carnegie Mellon faculty inducted this year include Philip LeDuc, professor of mechanical engineering; Linda Argote, Thomas Lord Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory; and Matt Mason, faculty emeritus of the Robotics Institute.