5 UMD Faculty Researchers Named AAAS Fellows

Edward Eisenstein was honored for his work focusing on engineering plants to improve their use as sustainable sources for energy and bioproducts like biofuels and biochemicals.

“Being named an AAAS fellow is an incredible honor for me,” he said. “I’m deeply grateful for the AAAS Council for electing me as a fellow, and I am privileged to join their ranks to continue to advance science, and application, both in the field, and throughout society.”

His research centers on poplar trees, where he studies traits that help plants better resist disease and pests, withstand environmental stress such as UV radiation and make more efficient use of limited nutrients.

By identifying how these traits are controlled, his team aims to strengthen plant performance and improve their long-term sustainability as feedstocks. The work is part of a broader effort to better understand how plants function and adapt, with potential long-term benefits for energy and the environment.

“Regardless of discipline, Maryland engineers are bound together in pursuit of the greater good: innovative, scalable, and accessible solutions to help people live happier, healthier, and more productive lives,” A. James Clark School of Engineering Dean Samuel Graham said. “Edward’s career is a study in that kind of commitment to service and engineering excellence, and we are glad to see him recognized by his peers. His example will inspire the next generation of engineers.”

Eisenstein was recently elected president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) after being named a 2025 ASBMB fellow, one of the society’s highest honors recognizing outstanding contributions to the field and service to the scientific community. He also serves as associate director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Center and a fellow at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.

“My goal as an AAAS fellow is to get more involved in advocacy for science, especially among legislators and policymakers, as well as the public,” he said.

James Farquhar, who serves as chair of geological, environmental and planetary sciences, was recognized for his research on sulfur isotope geochemistry, which revealed novel insights into the evolution of Earth's atmosphere. 

“I was really honored to get it. It felt good because a lot of the work has been done here with people at UMD, so it brought back great memories,” he said.

Farquhar, who also has a joint appointment in the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, is best known for discovering signatures of sulfur isotopes—atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons—in ancient geological samples and interpreting them to reveal how oxygen evolved in Earth’s early atmosphere.

His highly cited 2000 paper published in the journal Science provided critical evidence that Earth’s oxygen levels surged about 2.4 billion years ago during what’s called the Great Oxidation Event. Around that time, the planet’s oxygen concentration rose from virtually nothing to a few percent—“a huge jump,” Farquhar said.

His research today centers on isotopologues of methane—forms of the same molecule with different isotopes of carbon and hydrogen—to better understand how the potent greenhouse gas enters and leaves the atmosphere. This year, he plans to scale beyond the lab to set up a handful of methane isotopologue monitoring stations around the world. With international coordination, the number of global stations could proliferate by the time his career as a scientist comes to an end.

“If we could do something about a powerful greenhouse gas like methane, it would be profound,” he said. “My goal would be to see that come to fruition.”

Farquhar is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Geochemical Society/European Association of Geochemistry and the American Geophysical Union.

“James is a great leader and a top scientist in geochemistry, and this latest honor from the AAAS is further validation of his impactful research and the wide-reaching contributions to science he has made,” said Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.

Frauke Kreuter, who co-directs UMD’s Social Data Science Center, was recognized by the AAAS for her contributions to survey methodology, data metrics and standards that improve the quality of government statistics.

“The recognition is very encouraging to keep working on high-quality data, especially now where not only official statistics, but also AI models, need it,” Kreuter said. “Over the years, I have been impressed and inspired by the work of AAAS fellows, including many from the University of Maryland. It is an honor to now be named among them.”

Kreuter is also the founder of UMD’s International Program for Survey and Data Science, developed in response to the increasing demand from researchers and practitioners for the appropriate methods and right tools to face a changing data environment. In addition, she co-founded the nonprofit Coleridge Initiative, which accelerates data-driven research and policy around human beings and their interactions for program management, policy development, and scholarly purposes by enabling efficient, effective, and secure access to sensitive data about society and the economy. 

She also holds an appointment as a professor of statistics and data science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. Among other honors and awards, Kreuter is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and received the 2020 Warren Mitofsky Innovators Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research. 

“Professor Kreuter’s interdisciplinary, collaborative work sheds light on a wide range of significant issues, from human behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic to how we can most responsibly gather, use and leverage social data,” said Susan Rivera, dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. “She partners with a broad range of worldwide collaborators, inside and outside of academia, making her work all the more innovative and relevant. It is truly fitting that Professor Kreuter is being recognized with this well-deserved honor.”

Lawrence Sita was recognized for groundbreaking research to develop next-generation materials to combat the world’s plastic pollution problem. 

Sita works on a class of chemicals called polyolefins, which make up about half of all plastics produced globally, including commonly used ones such as polyethylene and polypropylene. Each year, humans produce 200 million tons of polyolefins, and the demand is increasing.

“What we need is the next generation of polyolefins that can help remediate this plastic waste issue—that we can recycle to start regenerating extended life instead of a single use,” he said.

Sita has spent 25 years developing a new way to produce polyolefins called multistate living coordination polymerization. This method can yield a wider spectrum of products with a greater range of physical properties than conventional technologies.

The new polyolefins Sita and his group design and produce can potentially upcycle waste from legacy plastics to create new materials. Normally, recycling is challenging because certain types of plastics, like polystyrene and polyethylene, can’t be mixed. But with one new kind of polyolefin called a block copolymer, “you can make a new hybrid material,” Sita explained. “You can extend life.”

Since Sita joined UMD as an associate professor in 1999, his work has led to more than 25 patents. In 2008, he founded Precision Polyolefins, which produces polyolefins at scale using his innovations. He is now expanding beyond plastics. In 2024, he founded Vernix Health, which produces beneficial nutrients found in human milk and in cow and sheep meat called branched-chain fatty acids (BCFAs). There are no natural sources for harvesting BCFAs in large quantities, and synthesizing them is prohibitively expensive, Sita said. Vernix Health aims to produce them at a lower price point using a process called living telomerization—a novel analog of the method Sita developed to link together the building blocks of polyolefins.

“Professor Sita's continued scientific excellence and entrepreneurship are an inspiration to all of us, and it gives me great pleasure to see his contributions acknowledged at the highest level by AAAS,” Varshney said.

Ian Spielman, who is also a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) fellow, was recognized by AAAS for his research that uses ultracold atoms to study a broad range of topics. 

“It was a complete surprise,” he said. “I'm super honored to have been selected.”

Spielman, a senior investigator at the National Science Foundation Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation, leads a research group that studies many-body physics, which describes the complex results of hundreds or more quantum particles interacting. In particular, the group studies gases of atoms at ultracold temperatures—cooling them to just fractions of a degree above absolute zero. Spielman and his colleagues use their experiments with ultracold atoms to simulate and study questions ranging from from the quantum properties of materials to waves stretching in an expanding one-dimensional universe.

Early in his career, Spielman used lasers to create synthetic magnetic fields and mimic spin-orbit coupling. Building on these experiments allowed him to investigate additional topics that can be difficult to study in natural settings. For instance, he used ultracold atoms to investigate topological band structures, which govern electron behavior in certain materials and underpin quantum computing error-correction proposals. Spielman also recreated conditions to observe zitterbewegung, a theorized rapid jittering of energetic particles never directly detected in fundamental particles. Additionally, working with colleagues including physicist Gretchen Campbell, now UMD associate vice president for quantum research and education, he simulated cosmological phenomena by expanding and contracting rings of ultracold atoms.

Among his honors and achievements, Spielman is a recipient of the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, was named a 2012 fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and received the 2015 APS Rabi Award.

“Ian has done pioneering research at the intersection of condensed matter and atomic physics, in showing how many-body systems can be realized using ultracold atoms,” said Kartik Srinivasan, the NIST co-director of JQI. “His election is richly deserved.”