Two University of California, Davis, professors, a geophysicist who works with virtual reality and a historian of women in China, are among the new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced today, April 24. They are Louise Kellogg, professor of geology and Susan Mann, professor emerita of history.

"I'm delighted to welcome Professors Kellogg and Mann to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi, who was herself elected to membership in 2011. "It's a fitting recognition of the great contributions they have made, and continue to make, to science, education and scholarship."

"Election to the academy honors individual accomplishment and calls upon members to serve the public good," said Academy President Leslie C. Berlowitz, announcing the new slate of members. "We look forward to drawing on the knowledge and expertise of these distinguished men and women to advance solutions to the pressing policy challenges of the day."

Kellogg studies how the slow movement of rock deep in the Earth's interior drives the movement of tectonic plates, building mountains as well as causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

She is director of the W. M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences or KeckCAVES, which uses an immersive, three-dimensional "virtual reality" environment to explore large sets of data. Researchers have used the facility for everything from exploring groundwater pathways and earthquake faults to visiting the bottom of Lake Tahoe and the landscape of Mars.

The KeckCAVES has also been heavily involved in education and outreach to the public, for example working with the Tahoe Environmental Research Center to develop new data displays for visitors, and has collaborated on artistic productions.

Kellogg earned her bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, master of engineering and doctor of philosophy degrees from Cornell University. She joined UC Davis as an assistant professor of geology in 1990 and chaired the Department of Geology from 2000 to 2008. She also serves as the director of the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics at UC Davis, which is supported through the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Susan Mann is internationally known for her pioneering work on the history of women in China. She retired from the Department of History in June 2010, after nearly 30 years of teaching in the University of California system.

Mann earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a master's and doctor of philosophy degrees from Stanford University. She taught at the University of Chicago and UC Santa Cruz before joining the faculty at UC Davis in 1989. In her career at UC Davis, Mann served as chair of both the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of History.

Among her many honors, Mann in 2000 was elected president of the Association of Asian Studies, an organization of 7,000 historians, literary scholars and social scientists. She has received both the Outstanding Mentor Award from the UC Davis Consortium for Women and Research and the Faculty Research Lecturer award from the Davis Division of the Academic Senate, among many other awards.

She has published four books and numerous other publications. Mann's book "Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century" (1997) was awarded the Joseph R. Levenson Prize, the premier annual prize awarded in the field of pre-20th century China.

Other new members elected to the academy this year include actors Robert DeNiro and Sally Field, musicians Bruce Springsteen and Herbie Hancock, Nobel prizewinner Bruce Beutler, and astronaut and former Senator John Glenn.

With Kellogg and Mann, 24 current and emeritus UC Davis faculty have been elected to the academy including Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi and painter Wayne Thiebaud.

The full list of the new members is located at https://www.amacad.org/members.aspx. The new class will be inducted during an Oct. 12 ceremony at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading "thinkers and doers" from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.