Date:  Feb. 14, 2007
Contact:  Maureen O'Leary, Director of Public Information
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ELECTS HOME SECRETARY AND COUNCILORS

WASHINGTON -- The National Academy of Sciences has elected a home secretary and four members to the Academy's governing council.

JOHN I. BRAUMAN, J.G. Jackson-C.J. Wood Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., has been elected to a second term as the Academy's home secretary.  During his four-year term beginning July 1, 2007, he will continue to be responsible for the membership activities of the Academy. 

Councilors elected to three-year terms beginning July 1, 2007, are VICKI L. CHANDLER, director, BIO5 Institute, and Weiler Chair and Regents’ Professor, departments of plant sciences and molecular and cellular biology, University of Arizona, Tucson; MARGARET G. KIVELSON, Distinguished Professor of Space Physics, department of earth and space sciences, University of California, Los Angeles; SHARON R. LONG, Steere-Pfizer Professor in Biological Sciences and dean, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University; and STANLEY B. PRUSINER, director, Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and professor of neurology and biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco.

The Academy is governed by a 17-member council, which includes five officers (president, vice president, home secretary, foreign secretary, and treasurer) and 12 councilors elected from among the Academy membership. 

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science advice under a congressional charter.  The Academy membership is comprised of approximately 2,000 members and 350 foreign associates, of whom more than 200 have won Nobel Prizes.  Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.