{"635303":{"#nid":"635303","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Brown, Engle, Nemirovski Elected to National Academy of Sciences","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EScientific endeavors across Georgia Tech are broad, deep, and varied \u2014 a fact underscored last week when the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.nasonline.org\/news-and-multimedia\/news\/2020-nas-election.html\u0022\u003ENational Academy of Sciences announced three Tech scholars among its newest members.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/news-events\/stories\/2020\/4\/marilyn-brown-elected-national-academy-sciences\/634835\u0022\u003EMarilyn Brown\u003C\/a\u003E is one of the nation\u2019s top analysts of clean energy policy; Randall Engle is a leader in understanding individual differences in memory and attention; and Arkadi Nemirovski has helped shape the field of continuous optimization.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEach now joins an elite group of the nation\u2019s foremost scientists in a historic moment for the Institute: It\u2019s the first time three scientists from Tech have been elected to the Academy in a single year.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe election of Georgia Tech faculty members from across multiple disciplines into the National Academy of Sciences is extraordinary,\u201d said Rafael L.\u0026nbsp;Bras, provost, executive vice president for Academic Affairs, and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. \u201cWe are incredibly proud and congratulate Professors Brown, Engle, and Nemirovski on this well-deserved honor. This distinction is a testament to their significant contributions and an honor that recognizes that critical research happens at the intersection of disciplines.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EElection to the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.nasonline.org\/\u0022\u003ENational Academy of Sciences\u003C\/a\u003E is among the highest honors a scientist can receive, recognizing \u201cdistinguished and continuing achievements in original research,\u201d as the Academy puts it. It has been reserved for just 2,403 people in the United States. Nominations for new members can come only from current Academy members.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIn the hierarchy of scientific acknowledgment, the only things higher are the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize,\u201d said \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/psychology.gatech.edu\/people\/faculty\/340\u0022\u003EEngle, professor in the School of Psychology.\u003C\/a\u003E \u201cIn my wildest dreams, I never imagined it for myself.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEngle studies the nature of working memory and its relationship to attention control. At its most basic, his work focuses on how people differ in their ability to concentrate on a single task. Understanding these differences helps us understand why individuals\u2019 cognitive performance varies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEngle came to Georgia Tech in 1995 to lead the School of Psychology. After 13 years, he stepped down to create the Georgia State University\/Georgia Tech Center for Advanced Brain Imaging. His work has been influential in social and developmental psychology, emotion, and psychopathology, among other areas. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI don\u2019t know of any successful scientists who do what we do for the glory. We are driven by questions and are so fortunate to have jobs where people actually pay us to spend our lives looking through the metaphorical microscope,\u201d Engle said. \u201cAt the same time, we all love having our work acknowledged and respected by our scientific heroes. That is what this feels like: People who I have read about in my field since I was an undergraduate are saying that my work has value.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELike Engle, Nemirovski expressed surprise at his election to the Academy, despite more than five decades of contributions to optimization theory and algorithms.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhile I respect my professional achievements, I do not value them as matching the honor,\u201d said Nemirovski, who came to Georgia Tech in 2005 and is the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.isye.gatech.edu\/users\/arkadi-nemirovski\u0022\u003EJohn Hunter Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYet he is credited with several significant achievements in the field of convex optimization \u2014 the Ellipsoid algorithm (with D. Yudin), mirror descent, interior point methods for nonlinear convex problems (with Y. Nesterov), and robust optimization (with A. Ben-Tal) \u2014 and in non-parametric statistics (with A. Juditsky).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn fact, Nemirovski credited his collaborators with helping him build an impactful career.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe excellent professional training I got under supervision of Professor Eugene Shilov at the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, and the honor and privilege to communicate and, in many cases, to collaborate with outstanding colleagues \u2014 Boris Polyak, Rafail Khasminskii, Yuri Nesterov, Aharon Ben-Tal, Anatoli Iouditski, Alexander Shapiro, David Donoho, Stephen Boyd \u2014 their influence made me what I am as a professional,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENemirovski also is a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBrown has established herself as an international leader in the analysis of clean energy policies. She\u2019s a pioneer in incorporating behavioral and social science principles into complex energy-engineering models that are used to evaluate policy proposals and to assess opportunities such as the size of the energy-efficiency gap in the United States.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe developed an approach as a regulator of the Tennessee Valley Authority that characterizes energy efficiency in terms of a power plant \u2014 in essence, the size, cost, and reliability of the plant that would not have to be built if companies took steps to conserve energy. She also developed carbon accounting methods at Georgia Tech that were applied to the first carbon footprint assessments of the nation\u2019s largest 100 metropolitan areas.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cBeing elected to the National Academy of Sciences is a great honor,\u201d said \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/people\/faculty\/brown\u0022\u003EBrown, Regents Professor and Brook Byers Professor in Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.\u003C\/a\u003E \u201cIt is also a great testament to the outstanding faculty and students across Georgia Tech, who are fostering the kind of sustainable energy systems and policies that will help the world step back from the brink of climate disaster.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBrown arrived at Georgia Tech in 2006 after establishing herself at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a national leader in the analysis and interpretation of energy futures in the United States. A year later, she and her co-authors won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III Assessment Report on Mitigation of Climate Change.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEarlier this year, Brown also was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cColleagues like Professors Brown, Engle, and Nemirovski are what makes Georgia Tech such a special place,\u201d Bras said. \u201cThey are true scholars and dedicated teachers, and they are examples to their students, their friends, and colleagues. We all rejoice with them.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBrook Byers Professor, Marilyn Brown is among 3 Georgia Tech faculty elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Election to the Academy is among the highest honors a scientist can achieve.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EScientific endeavors across Georgia Tech are broad, deep, and varied \u0026mdash; a fact underscored last week when the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.nasonline.org\/news-and-multimedia\/news\/2020-nas-election.html\u0022\u003ENational Academy of Sciences announced three Tech scholars among its newest members.\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/news-events\/stories\/2020\/4\/marilyn-brown-elected-national-academy-sciences\/634835\u0022\u003EMarilyn Brown\u003C\/a\u003E is one of the nation\u0026rsquo;s top analysts of clean energy policy; Randall Engle is a leader in understanding individual differences in memory and attention; and Arkadi Nemirovski has helped shape the field of continuous optimization. Each now joins an elite group of the nation\u0026rsquo;s foremost scientists in a historic moment for the Institute: It\u0026rsquo;s the first time three scientists from Tech have been elected to the Academy in a single year.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch3\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/sustainable.gatech.edu\/bigideas\/brown-engle-nemirovski-elected-national-academy-sciences\u0022\u003ERead More...\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/h3\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Election to the Academy is among the highest honors a scientist can achieve."}],"uid":"27338","created_gmt":"2020-05-12 16:06:19","changed_gmt":"2025-06-18 16:20:23","author":"Brent Verrill","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2020-05-08T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2020-05-08T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"635231":{"id":"635231","type":"image","title":"2020 NAS Members: Randall Engle, Arkadi Nemirovski, Marilyn Brown","body":null,"created":"1588957715","gmt_created":"2020-05-08 17:08:35","changed":"1588957715","gmt_changed":"2020-05-08 17:08:35","alt":"Randall Engle, Arkadi Nemirovksi, and Marilyn Brown, who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.","file":{"fid":"241717","name":"NAS-Members-2020-Engle-Nemirovski-Brown-combo.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/NAS-Members-2020-Engle-Nemirovski-Brown-combo.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/NAS-Members-2020-Engle-Nemirovski-Brown-combo.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":307836,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/NAS-Members-2020-Engle-Nemirovski-Brown-combo.jpg?itok=jCR3P8mc"}}},"media_ids":["635231"],"related_links":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/people\/faculty\/brown","title":"Marilyn Brown"},{"url":"https:\/\/psychology.gatech.edu\/people\/faculty\/340","title":"Randall Engle"},{"url":"https:\/\/www.isye.gatech.edu\/users\/arkadi-nemirovski","title":"Arkadi Nemirovsky"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.nasonline.org\/","title":"National Academy of Sciences"}],"groups":[{"id":"244191","name":"Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[{"id":"166871","name":"bbiss_big_ideas"},{"id":"330","name":"Marilyn Brown"},{"id":"8342","name":"Arkadi Nemirovski"},{"id":"76091","name":"Randall Engle"},{"id":"167015","name":"National Academy of Science"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39531","name":"Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure"},{"id":"194566","name":"Sustainable Systems"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71871","name":"Campus and Community"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jstewart@gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJoshua Stewart\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404.894.6016\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jstewart@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}