Professor Dr. Ralf I. Kaiser has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Photo courtesy of http://manoa.hawaii.edu
Contact: William Ditto, (808) 956-6451 Dean, College of Natural Sciences
By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)–University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Chemistry Professor Dr. Ralf I. Kaiser has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
This year 701 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, 16 February from 8 to 10 a.m. at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2013 AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.
This year’s AAAS Fellows was formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science on November 30, 2012.
As part of the section on Chemistry, Kaiser was elected as an AAAS Fellow for distinguished contributions in the field of reaction dynamics, particularly for understanding formation mechanisms of complex molecules in extraterrestrial environments and in combustion systems.
Kaiser received his diploma from the University of Münster, Germany in 1991 and his PhD in 1994 in Chemistry from the same institute. After three years at the University of California at Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow, he conducted his Habilitation in Physics before joining the faculty of the Department of Chemistry of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2002.
The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the Association’s 24 sections, or by any three Fellows who are current AAAS members (so long as two of the three sponsors are not affiliated with the nominee’s institution), or by the AAAS chief executive officer.
Each steering group then reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and a final list is forwarded to the AAAS Council, which votes on the aggregate list.
The Council is the policymaking body of the Association, chaired by the AAAS president, and consisting of the members of the board of directors, the retiring section chairs, delegates from each electorate and each regional division, and two delegates from the National Association of Academies of Science