Matyjaszewski, Roeder Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University's Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and Kathryn Roeder have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

NAS membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.

Krzysztof Matyjaszewski

Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner University Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Mellon College of Science's Department of Chemistry, is world renowned for his discovery of atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), one of the most effective and widely used methods of controlled radical polymerization. ATRP has allowed for the creation of a wide range of materials with highly specific, tailored functionalities, including "smart" materials.

Matyjaszewski's work has been licensed to companies worldwide and he has been cited in the scientific literature more than 100,000 times, making him one of the most cited chemists in the world. He was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2006, a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010 and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2014. He is a member of Australian, Polish and Russian Academies of Sciences. He received the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, the 2013 AkzoNobel North American Science Award, the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, among many other awards.

Kathryn Roeder

Roeder, UPMC Professor of Statistics and Life Sciences, serves as CMU's vice provost for faculty in addition to her faculty appointments in the Statistics & Data Science and Computational Biology departments. Her research focuses on developing statistical tools for finding associations between patterns of genetic variation and complex disease. Roeder's research group utilizes modern statistical methods such as high dimensional statistics, statistical machine learning, nonparametric methods and networks to solve biologically relevant problems.

An elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Roeder has received the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies' Presidents' Award and George W. Snedecor Award. The University of Alabama at Birmingham also presented her with the Janet L. Norwood Award for outstanding achievement by a woman in statistical sciences.

Matyjaszewski and Roeder are among 100 new members and 25 foreign associates to elected to the academy in 2019. CMU has been home to 20 NAS members.

NAS is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine — provides science, engineering and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.