AAAS Honors three CCNY researchers as Lifetime Fellows

Three City College of New York faculty members -- Kevin H. Gardner, David J. Lohman and Vinod M. Menon -- have been elected 2025 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among the nearly 500 scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements by one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals.

A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor, and all Fellows are expected to meet the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity. Distinguished past honorees include W.E.B. DuBois, Ellen Ochoa, Steven Chu, Grace Hopper, Alan Alda, Mae Jemison and Ayanna Howard. 

“This year’s AAAS Fellows have demonstrated research excellence, made notable contributions to advance science, and delivered important services to their communities, said Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. ”These Fellows and their accomplishments validate the importance of investing in science and technology for the benefit of all."

“I couldn’t be happier at the recognition of the excellence of these three scientists that this Fellowship represents,” said City College Provost Tony M. Liss. “The AAAS Fellowship is a true honor that is not lightly bestowed. It is both a recognition of the work they have already done, as well as an expectation of impact from the work they are yet to do.”

Following are brief bios of CCNY’s latest AAAS Fellows: 

Kevin H. Gardner
An international leader in the field of structural biology, Gardner has earned his AAAS Fellowship for “outstanding research to connect basic and applied biological and medical research and to generate novel cancer treatments.” He is a CUNY Distinguished Professor and the Einstein Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at CCNY. His research thrust has entailed using combined structural biology methods to probe how proteins perceive and react to changes in their environment. In addition to providing insights into fundamental biological processes, these discoveries laid the foundations for two companies which developed a new targeted cancer therapy and novel biotechnology tools. Gardner has received over $40M in funding for his work and holds six patents. In addition to his faculty position at CCNY, he’s the founding director of the Structural Biology Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, located on the City College campus. Read more.

David Lohman 
AAAS cites Lohman’s “distinguished contributions to the study of the evolution and biogeography of butterflies, in particular the phenomenon of mimicry in the fauna of Southeast Asia” for his election as a Fellow. A renowned entomologist, he studies the ecology, evolution, and biogeography of insects in the Old World tropics. Lohman is a National Geographic Explorer and the recipient of three Fulbright Research Scholar Awards to conduct fieldwork in the Asia-Pacific region. He uses a combination of field ecology and molecular phylogenetic methods to investigate how interactions between insects and other organisms affect evolution and community structure. Lohman’s pioneering research has earned him wide recognition in science, including the naming of three species after him. Themira lohmanus, a fly like no other, was first discovered in Manhattan’s Central Park where it subsists on duck droppings. In Thailand, Chimaeragathis lohmani, a wasp, was found; while a new orchid species first documented on the Philippine island of Mindanao, was named Bulbophyllum davidlohmanii. Lohman is chair of the Department of Biology in CCNY’s Division of Science. Read more.

Vinod Menon
A pioneering physicist, Menon’s Fellowship is for his “distinguished contributions to the field of strong light-matter interaction and its control in atomically thin materials using engineered photonic media.” His research in light-matter interaction in atomically thin materials has advanced the field of photonics. His research thrust includes the development of nanoscale structures where the quantum nature of light is exploited for potential applications in computing, communication, sensing and energy harvesting. Menon’s Laboratory for Nano and Micro Photonics (LaNMP) has made several key contributions to the fields of photonics and the interface between condensed matter physics and optics. This includes controlling magnetism via light in ultrathin magnets, use of metamaterials to control light-matter interaction, development of on-demand single photon emitters, and discovering half-light half-matter quasiparticles in 2D materials. The lab has also demonstrated a new class of artificial optical media called photonic hypercrystals that could lead to such benefits as ultrafast LEDs for Li-Fi (a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication). He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America). Read more.

The CCNY trio and the other new Fellows will be recognized at the annual Fellows Forum in Washington, D.C., on May 29. 

About the American Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science as well as Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling (a digital, open-access journal), Science Advances, Science Immunology and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals.