Five UC Davis faculty are among 471 members elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this year. The new fellows will be presented with a certificate and rosette pin in a ceremony during the association's annual meeting in Boston next February.

Peter J. Richerson, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, was elected "for distinguished contributions to the newly emerging field of evolutionary social science, particularly for the development and application of cultural evolutionary theory." Richerson's pioneering work, almost all in collaboration with Professor Robert Boyd at UCLA, applies concepts and methods of evolutionary biology to the phenomena of cultural change in humans. Recently, he and UC Davis colleagues Richard McElreath, associate professor of anthropology, and Mark Lubell, associate professor of environmental science and policy, have developed laboratory investigations of culture transmission and cultural evolution.

Entomology professor Thomas Scott studies the ecology, evolution and control of mosquitoes and how they transmit diseases such as dengue fever, yellow fever, St. Louis encephalitis and West Nile fever. Working in countries including Thailand, Peru and Mexico, Scott and colleagues are generating data to assess current recommendations to prevent mosquito-borne disease, testing fundamental assumptions in public health policy and developing strategies to prevent some of the most important infectious diseases of humans.

In Thailand, his research group is studying the relationships between mosquito populations and human infection with dengue fever. In Peru, they are comparing how different patterns of human activity affect peoples' risk of dengue fever infection. His lab combines ecology and population biology into genetic strategies for preventing disease transmission by mosquitoes.

Gang-yu Liu, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and the NEAT organized research unit, was elected "for distinguished contributions in nanoscale patterning and measurement." One area of Liu's research is on making very small patterns of chemical and biological molecules, such as proteins, DNA or other molecules, on surfaces. This technology could be applied to make a new generation of chips and devices for genetic, biomedical and biomaterials science and for cellular biology applications. Her laboratory has also discovered that these small patterns show new behaviors when participating in chemical and biological reactions. These new properties could be harnessed to engineer new materials and devices.

Professor David Rocke, Division of Biostatistics, School of Medicine, and Department of Applied Science, College of Engineering, was elected for his service to professional societies and for his work on applying statistics and computational methods in biology.

Trained in mathematics, Rocke has developed methods to analyze the very large amounts of data generated by gene expression microarrays and other high-throughput techniques in biology and medicine. Microarrays are devices used to run tens of thousands of biological tests at the same time. Rocke has held a number of appointments and committee positions for professional societies, including serving on the Science Policy Committee for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and as treasurer of the International Society for Computational Biology.

Bruno Nachtergaele is professor and current chair of the Department of Mathematics. He was honored for his work on mathematical physics especially quantum spin systems, and for editorial contributions to journals in mathematical physics.

Nachtergaele works on mathematical techniques to study quantum mechanical models for the individual and collective behavior of atoms. He has obtained results about the structure of molecules, the behavior of crystals, magnetic properties of materials and the relation between the microscopic laws of quantum physics and the dynamics of fluids and gases. Nachtergaele's research has potential applications to chemistry, physics, materials science and the theory of quantum information and computation.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science was founded in 1848 and is the world's largest general scientific society. It is publisher of the journal Science.