Exec Comm member elected to National Academy of Sciences - Institute for Digital Research and Education

Adapted from a UCLA Samueli Newsroom article

IDRE Executive Committee member Dr. Andrea Bertozzi, a distinguished professor of mathematics in the UCLA College and of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, was one of two UCLA faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018. The honor recognizes their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”

Andrea Bertozzi, a distinguished professor of mathematics in the UCLA College and of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, was one of two UCLA faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

Dr. Andrea Bertozzi, a distinguished professor of mathematics in the UCLA College and of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, was one of two UCLA faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors that a U.S. scientist can receive. Its members have included Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright and Alexander Graham Bell. The academy announced the election of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates.

Bertozzi holds UCLA’s Betsy Wood Knapp Chair for Innovation and Creativity and is a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. She is also UCLA’s director of applied mathematics.

Bertozzi is leading UCLA’s new Simons Mathematical NanoSystems Initiative, with support from the Simons Foundation’s Math+X Investigator. The initiative focuses on two areas of research: understanding science at the nanoscale through advances in imaging and sensing technology, and, secondly, the development of micro-scale microfluidic engineering and device design.

In addition to conducting research on nanoscale imaging, Bertozzi plans to develop mathematical theories for behavior of complex fluids in microfluidic geometries in which the physics might be balanced with thermal effects, surface tension effects, contact line dynamics, magnetic forces and other physics relevant to small devices that could have many useful applications.

Bertozzi has conducted research with Jeffrey Brantingham, a UCLA professor of anthropology, and colleagues to apply mathematics to reducing crime through predictive policing. This research has resulted in a mathematical model they devised to guide where the Los Angeles Police Department should deploy officers, which led to substantially lower crime rates.

Her many honors include the Sloan Research Fellowship in 1995, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 1996, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and to the Fellows of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2010. She became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2013 and a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016.

The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology. The academy is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to furthering science and its use for the general welfare.