Gilman Elected 2019 AAAS Fellow

Buhl Professor of Theoretical Physics Fred Gilman has been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) 2019 class of fellows. Gilman was recognized for his work elucidating the fundamental nature of CP violation and his sustained and successful leadership in the particle physics and cosmology communities.

Gilman has a record of national and international professional service and leadership. Most recently, he served for six years as chair of the committee overseeing the construction of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. From 1999 to 2005, he chaired the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, which advises the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy (DOE) on setting the nation’s priorities for particle physics. For over a decade he was one of three senior advisors designated by the DOE under the U.S.-China Agreement on Cooperation in High Energy Physics. This led to new Chinese facilities and increased collaboration in particle physics experiments in both China and the United States.  

Gilman joined the Carnegie Mellon University faculty in 1995. He was the head of the Department of Physics from 1999-2008, where he led its growth in emerging fields such as cosmology and biological physics. He was dean of the Mellon College of Science (MCS) from 2007-2016, where he ushered in many new innovations. He was deeply engaged in and actively oversaw the development and implementation of a new MCS Core Education for undergraduate students; introduced a framework for decreasing bias and increasing diversity in recruiting that has been adopted by other colleges at the university; joined with the dean of the College of Engineering to provide seed funding for new interdisciplinary collaborations; and led the construction of a major neurobiology facility while renovating many labs and creating interactive common spaces in the Mellon Institute.

Prior to arriving at Carnegie Mellon, Gilman was the associate director of the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) and led the physics research portion of the SSC project. He previously spent 23 years as a faculty member at Stanford University.  

Gilman’s research has focused on the physics of heavy quarks and leptons and on the difference in the behavior of matter and antimatter (CP violation), which in turn is a key component of an explanation of the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe.

Gilman will be recognized along with Kathryn Roeder, vice provost for faculty and professor of statistics and computational biology at CMU, and the other 2019 fellows at the AAAS Fellows Forum on Feb. 15, during the association’s annual meeting held in Seattle, Washington.