April 19, 2023

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S) announced today that Sankar Ghosh, Ph.D., Chair and Silverstein and Hutt Family Professor of the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University has been elected a member. Dr. Ghosh thus joins some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from academia, the arts, public policy, and research in one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. The primary criteria for election are excellence in one’s field and a record of continued accomplishment. The current members represent today’s innovative thinkers in every field and profession, including over 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.

The Academy, which was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good. The academy’s dual mission remains essentially the same more than 240 years later, with honorees from increasingly diverse fields and with work focused on the arts, democracy, education, global affairs and science.

Dr. Ghosh joins 269 other distinguished new members of the Academy elected this year. The American Academy elects members in thirty-one sections that are organized within five classes. New members are elected through a process that starts with nominations, is then reviewed by individual sections, and finally the entire membership.

Dr. Ghosh was previously elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2022, to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2021 and elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008, which makes him one of only four faculty members at Columbia University to hold memberships in all four of these scientific societies.

For more details, see the official announcement from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.