Two from Academic Health Center Named AAAS Fellows

UC President Santa Ono, PhD, and environmental health’s Alvaro Puga, PhD, have been selected as Fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

They are joined by Bruce Ault, PhD, of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, and Prabir Bhattacharya, PhD, of the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The four will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013, during the AAAS annual meeting in Boston.

AAAS fellowship status is given annually to distinguished individuals by society members and their peers. Ault, Bhattacharya, Ono and Puga are among 702 AAAS members elected this year for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. UC now has 24 faculty members who are AAAS Fellows.

Santa Ono, PhD

Ono, UC president, professor in the College of Medicine’s pediatrics department and professor of biology in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a AAAS Fellow for his research in the field of molecular immunology and gene expression. AAAS also recognizes him for his "leadership of all academic and research activities of a major research university.”

Ono’s research focuses on the pathogenesis of allergic inflammation in the eye and the role of the immune response in age-related macular degeneration.

"I feel very honored to be elected into the company of so many distinguished researchers and scientists, both here at the University of Cincinnati and around the world,” says Ono.

Ono served as UC’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost from 2010 until he was named interim president in August 2012. In October 2012, UC’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to appoint Ono as 28th president of the university.

Ono’s prior awards as a researcher include: Helen Hay Whitney Fellow at Harvard University, the American Diabetes Association Career Development Award, the Arthritis Foundation Investigator Award, the Roche Award and the Pharmacia International Award in Allergy Research. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Societies of Medicine and Chemistry and the American Academy of Allergy and Immunology.

Alvaro Puga, PhD

Puga, a professor in the College of Medicine’s top-ranked environmental health department, was named an AAAS Fellow for his contributions to the field of environmental genetics.

Puga is an associate director for UC’s Center for Environmental Genetics and is considered to be the pioneer of the use of molecular biology to study the biological responses to toxic insult.

"I feel honored and elated with the thought that other scientists considered my work worthy of this distinction,” says Puga.

Puga has previously been named by the UC Department of Environmental Health as recipient of the Director’s Award for Excellence in Research. His department and the UC College of Medicine have also honored him with faculty and teaching awards.

The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publishes the journal Science. Founded in 1848, the society includes more than 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. A nonprofit organization, the society is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs and science education.

Read more about UC’s full list of Fellow recipients

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