Four University of Arizona faculty members have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. 

The following U of A faculty members are among 471 scientists, engineers and innovators in the new AAAS class, announced Thursday. 

• Liesl Folks, professor of electrical and computer engineering
• Luciano M. Matzkin, professor of entomology
• Armin Sorooshian, professor of chemical and environmental engineering
• Dr. Jil C. Tardiff, professor of biomedical engineering

"We are proud our faculty colleagues who have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science," said U of A President Suresh Garimella. "This is a significant recognition and a testament to the impressive work done every day at the University of Arizona and the strength of our impact."

The new fellows "are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities," said Sudip S. Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. "At a time when the future of the scientific enterprise in the U.S. and around the world is uncertain, their work demonstrates the value of sustained investment in science and engineering."

The new fellows will be celebrated at a forum in Washington, D.C., on June 7. The 2024 class will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science in March.

Liesl Folks

Folks, founding director of the Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing at the U of A, is being recognized for her "contributions to the field of nanoscale magnetism and magnetic materials and metrology, particularly for applications in spin-electronic devices applied to data storage and logic."

"It is a great honor to be elected as a fellow of the AAAS, which is a powerful voice for the role of science in society and for the scientists who are working to advance knowledge across the disciplines," Folks said. 

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A professor of electrical and computer engineering, Folks spent 16 years in Silicon Valley in research and development, working on nanoscale devices and materials for data storage applications. 

"Supporting the effort to advance manufacturing was so intellectually stimulating, and there were always technically exciting problems to work on. To add to the complexity, the teams involved were spread around the Pacific Rim," Folks said. 

Recently, Folks has been focused on strategies for assuring resilience of the supply of semiconductors for the U.S. and other nations. In 2024, she chaired the National Academies panel that authored the report "Strategies to Enable Assured Access to Semiconductors for the Department of Defense."

From 2019 to 2023, Folks served as U of A provost before taking on the role of vice president for semiconductor strategy and founding the Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing. 

Folks has been a dedicated mentor to women and underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and math for many years and has advocated for broadening participation in STEM. She also was elected the first female president of the IEEE Magnetics Society. 

"I think it's important for faculty to be strongly involved in their professional organizations and communities and to be part of the dialogue about where the discipline is going and how best to collectively deliver impacts that are positive for society and humanity," Folks said.

Luciano M. Matzkin

Matzkin, a professor in the Department of Entomology, is recognized for his "distinguished contributions to evolutionary biology, particularly the ecological genomics of cactophilic Drosophila."

A genus containing over 2,000 species, Drosophila, commonly known as fruit flies, help scientists study evolution, genetics, genomics, molecular biology, development and ecology. While most labs around the world focus on a single species, D. melanogaster, Matzkin has been working on an ecologically diverse group of species, the cactophilic Drosophila. 

Cactophilic Drosophila are found only in the Americas and primarily feed on rotting cactus tissue. These flies have adapted to detoxify the toxic compounds in cacti and deal with environmental challenges like thermal stress, desiccation and food scarcity, Matzkin said. 

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Matzkin has been working with cactophilic Drosophila since he was an undergraduate.

"What really drove me back then and still drives me today is how cactophilic Drosophila is such a powerful system to ask fundamental questions in evolutionary biology," Matzkin said.

The two fundamental questions that drive his research are how organisms adapt to their local ecological conditions or environments and how natural selection, more specifically sexual selection, can lead to the generation of reproductive barriers that result in the formation of new species. 

"I am thankful to be in the U of A's Department of Entomology, where, for two years in a row, we are ranked as the No. 1 entomology department in the world," Matzkin said. 

Matzkin, originally from Argentina, earned his bachelor's degree in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine and pursued a doctorate in ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University in New York. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the U of A Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2003, joined the U of A faculty in 2017 as an associate professor of entomology, and is now a professor. 

Armin Sorooshian

A professor of chemical and environmental engineering, Sorooshian is recognized for his "distinguished contributions to the fields of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering, particularly innovations of tools and methods to measure aerosol and clouds and their impact on air quality."

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It was during his doctoral studies in chemical engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 2008 that Sorooshian developed an interest for studying aerosol particles. As part of his postdoctoral work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado, he specialized in particle-cloud interactions, where particles serve as essential seeds for cloud droplets. Using aircraft had always fascinated Sorooshian, which led him into atmospheric aerosol particle research.

"It's underappreciated what these particles do to our daily lives. COVID was a clear demonstration of aerosols in action. Aerosols affect climate, health and visibility among other things," Sorooshian said. 

Sorooshian joined the U of A faculty in 2009. He leads a major NASA mission called ACTIVATE and has been coordinating a team of over 130 people from various institutions. The project conducted research flights across three years over the northwest Atlantic to study particle-cloud interactions. 

Sorooshian also does ozone research. His team is addressing Arizona's persistent ground-level ozone problem, particularly in Maricopa County. 

"I got into this occupation because of my passion for teaching and advising, something that keeps me going," Sorooshian said. "I love the opportunity to get students excited about research with fieldwork."

Dr. Jil C. Tardiff

Tardiff is a professor of biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering. She maintains an active clinical practice and has a secondary appointment in the College of Medicine – Tucson. Tardiff's career has been focused on understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease that can result in heart failure and sudden death.

AAAS is honoring Tardiff for her work in "the field of molecular and translational cardiovascular science, particularly for elucidating the genetic and biophysical basis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and dilated cardiomyopathy."

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Tardiff earned a bachelor's degree in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and medical and doctoral degrees from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York 1992. She joined Albert Einstein as an assistant professor in 2001 and was promoted to associate professor in 2008. Since 2012, Tardiff has held the Steven M. Gootter Endowed Chair for the Prevention of Sudden Cardiac Death at the U of A.

"One of the greatest mysteries of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy has always been understanding how genetics result in this complex progressive disorder that has a risk of sudden cardiac death. Patients have many morbidities – they have trouble exercising, climbing stairs and have a lot of difficulties with their day-to-day living as the disease progresses," Tardiff said.

As director of one of the Southwest's largest hypertrophic cardiomyopathy clinics, Tardiff provides specialized care that attracts patients nationwide. Besides patient treatment, she is also involved in studies of proteins that are crucial for heart muscle contraction. Her collaborative studies with Steven D. Schwartz, a Regents Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, have led to a novel comprehensive approach that integrates computational and structural methods to studying the dynamic effects of mutations in heart muscle fibers. This has facilitated the development of new methods for testing potential drugs for this cardiac disorder.