University of Colorado at Boulder professors Margaret Murnane and Reid Hastie have joined former Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton and film director Martin Scorsese in the 2006 class of new fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Murnane and Hastie were among 175 new fellows of the prestigious academy announced late last month. The academy is comprised of scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business. Fellows are nominated and elected by current members.
Murnane, a CU-Boulder physics professor and fellow at JILA, and her husband Henry Kaptyen are known as world leaders in the field of experimental ultrafast optical science. Their work on short light pulses from lasers has applications for optical technology, faster computer chips, micro-machining, biological imaging and other fields.
Hastie, an adjunct professor of psychology at CU-Boulder and professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago, is a recognized authority on judgment and decision-making. His primary research interests are in the legal, managerial, medical, engineering and personal decision-making arenas, as well as memory and cognition and social psychology.
Murnane is a member of the elite National Academy of Sciences, the 21st CU-Boulder professor to receive the honor. Election to the NAS is considered one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on American scientists or engineers.
She also is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, praised for "significant contributions to the science of short-pulse lasers and their applications, especially to the understanding of laser-produced plasmas."
Murnane is one of seven CU-Boulder faculty members to win a prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "genius grant." She also received worldwide recognition when she won the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, given each year to the top woman physicist under the age of 40.
Hastie has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals on decision-making, memory and cognition, and social psychology. His research has been funded continuously by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health since 1975.
He has served on review panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Research Council as well as 16 professional journal editorial boards.
He is a fellow of the American Psychological Society, and a member of the Cognitive Science Society, Judgment and Decision Making Society, Psychonomic Society,
Society for Experimental Social Psychology and the Society of Experimental Psychologists.
Hastie's current research work includes study of the psychology of investment decisions, civil jury decision-making, and decision-making competencies across the adult life span.
In addition to teaching at CU-Boulder and a stint as director of the university's Center for Research on Judgment and Policy, Hastie has taught at Harvard University and Northwestern University. He holds psychology degrees from Stanford University, the University of California at San Diego and Yale University.
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