Six UCLA professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Six UCLA professors are among 220 distinguished scholars, scientists, authors, artists, and business and philanthropic leaders elected today to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments. The new fellows and 17 foreign honorary members join one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers. Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected leaders from each generation. Previous fellows have included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. UCLA is tied with Yale University for eighth in the nation in the number of 2012 fellows and ranks second in the western U.S. behind only Stanford University; Harvard University ranks first in the country. An applied mathematician and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, Caflisch has applied sophisticated mathematics to complex problems in plasma physics and has conducted research on nanotechnology and computational finance, among other areas of study.