Science association recognizes 20 at UCI

The largest general scientific society in the world has elected more UCI researchers as fellows this year than any other university in the nation.

The American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, which also publishes the prestigious journal “Science,” named 486 fellows for their accomplishments in research, teaching, technology or administration. This year, 20 were from UCI.

That increases the total number of UCI scientists with such an honor to 105, UCI spokesman Tom Vasich said.

“That’s a pretty dramatic increase,” he said. “There’s no particular reason why, other than the fact that this is a year in which we’ve had a number of significant achievers in our faculty.”

But those achievements are coming from major improvements on campus over the last couple of decades, said James Bullock, a physics and astronomy professor and director of the UCI Cosmology Center.

“It’s just so great for UC Irvine,” he said. “I think it’s indicative of the kind of growth this campus has shown over the last 10 to 20 years. The type of research being done locally at Irvine — most of us who work here know that it’s first rate.”

Bullock was made a fellow this year for his research into dark matter, the invisible but heavily theorized substance that scientists believe makes up most of the mass of the universe, and inquiries into the way galaxies form.

“By understanding how the dark matter clumps and grows with time, and how these halos of dark matter establish themselves around galaxies, you can learn a lot about the makeup of the universe,” he said.

The achievements of other UCI fellows named this year range from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to research into spinal cord injuries, experiments in evolution and theoretical studies of new magnetic materials.

— Michael Alexander