Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturers, 2026–2027

Potential hosts should contact lecturers directly to book events. In making arrangements, hosts should be specific about dates, lecture topic, scope of the lecturer's visit and any special accommodations that may be called for.

Each lecturer has designated his or her topic(s) for three different types of audiences. Where more than one level is shown, the lecture can be adjusted to the needs of the audience:

• P (Public)
  Aimed at presenting scientific issues of general concern to a public audience.

• G (General)
  Intended for a typical Sigma Xi audience of both scientists and other scholars representing a broad range of disciplines.

• S (Specialized)
  Aimed at scientists and students in fields that are closely related to that of the lecturer.

Matthew Baum

Harvard Univesity
Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy

Email
Website

1. Misinformation: How big a problem and what can be done? (P, G, S)
2. Soft News, Satire and the Blending of Politics and Entertainment: Why it Matters (P, G, S)
3. Media Bias: Perceptions, Reality, Consequences (G, S)

Matthew A. Baum (Ph.D., UC San Diego, 2000) is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Department of Government. His research focuses on the domestic political influences on international conflict and cooperation in general and American foreign policy in particular, as well as on the role of the mass media and public opinion in contemporary American politics. Additional research interests include the interaction of media and electoral institutions, fake news and misinformation, the relationship between partisan media and polarization and the relationship between politics and public health. His research has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics and Science. His books include Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (2003, Princeton University Press), War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War (2009, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Tim Groeling), and War and Democratic Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy (2015, Princeton University Press, co-authored with Phil Potter). He has contributed op-ed articles to a variety of newspapers, magazines, and blog sites in the United States and abroad. He is also co-founder, principal investigator and co-editor of the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, co-founder of the Combatting Fake News Group, and co-founder and principal investigator of the COVID States Project (now known as the Civic Health and Institutions Project, or CHIP50), a bimonthly state-level survey of all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Before coming to Harvard, Baum was an associate professor of political science and communication studies at UCLA.

Joseph J. Biernacki 

1. What do artificial intelligence, synthetic life-chemistry and nuclear fusion have to do with portland cement? (P, G, S)
2. The Looming Housing Crisis and Hope on the Horizon (P, G, S)
3. Who’s the biggest maker of them all? (P, G)

Joseph S. Broz

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Vice President, IBM Quantum U.S. Government Business Development
Email
Website

1. A Current Overview of Quantum Computing (P, G)
2. A Current Overview of Global Quantum Policies (P, G)
3. A Brief Survey of Quantum Information Science (P, G, S)

Dr. Broz has responsibility for leading IBM Quantum’s USG Business Development and is responsible for government quantum initiatives. Joe joined IBM Quantum in March 2021 after serving as the founding Executive Director of the federally chartered Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) under the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act. Prior to the QED-C, he served as Vice President of Applied Sciences at SRI, where he led six laboratories in applied science, government business development, technical and business strategy. His work has supported DOE, DOD, Air Force, Army, Navy, DHS, NIH, NIAID, DOJ, and other departments through research contracts and advisory boards. In the 1990’s he was VP of Business Development and Research at Titanium Metals, and Laboratory Director of Tenneco, Inc., where he was responsible for metallurgy, product development, manufacturing operations, quality, technology, and environmental management across corporate divisions worldwide. He has served as a White House Fellow for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the administration of George H.W. Bush. He was a British American Fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a Senior Fellow for National Security and Energy for NORC at the University of Chicago. Broz has a B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute (ETH) in Zurich.
•Member of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT), National Institute of Standards, US Department of Commerce (2025 – 2028)
•Founding Executive Director and Current Steering Committee Member of the US Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C, NIST, US Dept. of Commerce)
•Former White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the Presidential Science Advisor (Bush, ’41)
•Former British American Fellow and National Security Fellow, SAIS
•Former Senior Fellow, National Security and Energy, NORC University of Chicago

James N. Druckman

University of Rochester
Martin Brewer Anderson Professor
Email
Website

1. Partisan Hostility and American Democracy (P, G, S)
2. (Dis)trust in America (P, G, S)
3. The Polarization and Politicization of Trust in Scientists (P, G, S)

James N. Druckman is the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. He previously was the Payson S. Wild Professor and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. He is also an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. Druckman has published approximately 200 articles and book chapters in political science, communication, economics, science, and psychology journals. He has authored, co-authored, or co-edited seven books. His recent books include Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divides (University of Chicago Press, 2024), Equality Unfulfilled: How Title IX's Policy Design Undermines Change to College Sports (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

He has served as editor of the journals Political Psychology and Public Opinion Quarterly as well as the University of Chicago Press series in American Politics. He currently is the co-Principal Investigator of Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS), the editor of the Cambridge Elements Series on Experimental Political Science, and a co-Principal Investigator of the Civic Health and Institutions (CHIP50) Project. He sits on the Board of Trustees for the Russell Sage Foundation and the American National Election Studies Board of Advisors, and is a Vice President of the American Political Science Association.
Druckman has received grant support from such entities as the National Science Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Phi Beta Kappa. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Eduardo Fernandez-Duque

Yale University
Professor 
Email
Website

1. Fatherhood: From Molecules to Society (P, G)
2. The evolution of pair-bonds and monogamy (P, G)
3. Cause and Effect in Biological Anthropology (G, S)

Eduardo Fernandez-Duque, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology and the School of the Environment at Yale University.

He is a cofounder of Fundación ECO, a not-for-profit organization promoting education in northern Argentina, a corresponding member of the Argentine Council for Science and Technology (CONICET), a National Geographic Explorer and an Invited Professor of the Universidad Nacional de Formosa of Argentina and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito of Ecuador.

Born in Argentina, Dr. Fernandez-Duque completed his first degree in biology at the University of Buenos Aires before receiving his PhD in animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Zoological Society of San Diego and a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania.

His research program, which bridges the fields of evolutionary anthropology, psychology and primatology, focuses on examining the behavioral, physiological, and ecological correlates of male-female relationships, pair-bonding, and parental care. Dr. Fernandez-Duque studies monogamous primates (titis, sakis and owl monkeys) at field sites in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon, the Argentinean Chaco, and National Primate Centers in the US.

He has published over 170 articles and chapters, an edited volume on owl monkeys and has contributed to the training of more than 400 students from 15 different countries.

Dr. Fernandez-Duque is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Kavli Foundation. He has been awarded The John P. McGovern Award Lecture in the Behavioral Sciences from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2021) and the “Premio Raíces,” (2017) by the Argentine National Ministry of Science and Technology to recognize his contributions to the development of science and technology through international cooperation.

Efi Foufoula-Georgiou (American Meteorological Society)

University of California Irvine
Distinguished Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering
Email
Website

1. Precipitation in the Earth System: Global estimation, precipitation extremes and climate change (P, G, S) 
2. A Life in Science: A few lessons learned and my professional journey (P, G)
3. The challenge of rainfall estimation and prediction across scales: Learning from patterns (P, G, S)

EFI FOUFOULA-GEORGIOU (NAE) is a Distinguished Professor and the Samueli Endowed Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and in Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. From 1989-2016 she was a McKnight Distinguished Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, and Director of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED). Foufoula-Georgiou studies hydrology and geomorphology with an emphasis on understanding the space-time organization and multiscale structure of precipitation and landforms for improving modeling and prediction. She has served the community in several capacities, including member of the NAS Water Science and Technology Board, NSF Advisory Council for Geosciences, NASA Earth Sciences Subcommittee, and Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Her elected positions include chair of the Board of Directors of CUAHSI, Trustee of UCAR, President of the Hydrology Section of AGU, and AMS Councilor. Foufoula-Georgiou has been the recipient of several awards including the EGU John Dalton Medal, AGU Hydrologic Sciences Award, AMS Hydrologic Sciences Medal, and AGU Robert Horton Medal. She received a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and an M.S. and Ph.D. (1985) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. She is a fellow of AGU, AMS, AAAS and an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the American Society of Arts and Sciences.

Gregory Gbur

University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Professor of Physics and Optical Science

Email   
Website   

1. Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics (P, G, S)
2. Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not To Be Seen (P, G, S)
3. Booms, Beer, and Blood: The History of Conservation Energy (P, G, S)

Greg Gbur is a Professor of Physics and Optical Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, specializing in theoretical optics. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and is the author of five books, three textbooks and two popular science books, Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics and Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not To Be Seen. Professor Gbur has been a blogger and science communicator since 2007 and blogs at "Skulls in the Stars" about physics, optics, the history of science, and weird fiction.

Nahla Gomaa

1. Measuring What Matters: Quality, and Innovation in Higher Education: Why focusing on the right metrics can change how we build fairness and excellence in education worldwide (P, G, S)
2. Medicine & Science in Crisis:  Preparing Global Physicians and Scientists for a Rapidly Changing World. What pandemic response, climate shocks, and global mobility teach us about the future of medical training (G, S)
3. When science and clinical practice meets learning; Think forward, Brainstorm backward (P, G, S)

Jeffrey Lazo (American Meteorological Society)

Jeffrey K Lazo Consulting LLC
Economist
Email   
Website

1. What is a Weather Forecast Worth? (P)
2. Sources, Perceptions, Uses, and Values of Weather Forecasts (G)
3. The US Public's Value for Current and Improved Weather Information (S)

Jeffrey K. Lazo is an independent consultant focusing on the communication, use, and value of weather information and the economic impact of severe weather events including developing economic metrics for evaluation of the benefits of improved forecasting for solar energy, developing expert elicitation approaches for benefit estimates of improved hydrometeorological services in developing countries, and benefit cost analysis of programs to enhance weather forecasting. He was Director of the Societal Impacts Program (SIP) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado from 2004 to 2017. Working with The World Bank, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and USAID, Jeff is a co-author for a comprehensive guidance document on benefit cost analysis for national hydrometeorological services. Jeff led the benefit-cost analysis of national hydrometeorological services in Mozambique, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nicaragua, and Honduras. He is former editor of the American Meteorological Society journal Weather, Society, and Climate. Prior to NCAR, Jeff worked in environmental economics at Stratus Consulting in Boulder, Colorado and was Assistant Professor of Mineral Economics at The Penn State University. He received his PhD in Environmental Economics from the University of Colorado and BA in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Denver.

June Pilcher

Clemson University
Alumni Distinguished Professor
Email   
Website

1. Science behind Mindfulness Practices and Meta-Awareness (P, G, S)
2. Lifestyle Matters: Impact of Sleep and Physical Activity (P, G, S)
3. Diving into Difficult Discourse (G, S)

Eric Norman

University of California Berkeley
Department of Nuclear Engineering
Emeritus Professor
Email    
Website                

1. Oppenheimer and Friends - From Berkeley to Trinity via Manhattan (P, G)
2. The Truth is Out There - We Really Are Star Stuff ! (P, G)
3. Recent Developments in Neutrino Science - A Whole Lot About Almost Nothing (P, G, S)

Eric Norman is currently an Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.  He did his  undergraduate studies at Cornell University and earned an A. B. degree in Physics in 1972.  After a "gap" year due to the U. S. Army Reserves, he began graduate work at the University of Chicago, earning an S. M. degree in 1974 and a Ph. D. in 1978 in a combination of theoretical and experimental nuclear astrophysics. He then moved to the University of Washington's Nuclear Physics Laboratory as a post-doc and then as a Research Assistant Professor from 1978 - 1983.  Seattle University hired him and he spent a year there teaching undergraduate physics courses.  In 1984, Eric moved to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a Divisional Fellow in the Nuclear Science Division. There he formed a research group conducting measurements of cross sections and radioactive decays of isotopes of astrophysical interest.  He was promoted to Senior Staff Scientist in 1989. Eric  became interested in the solar neutrino problem, and in 1989 his group joined the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory collaboration.  With the discovery of neutrino oscillations and the implication that neutrinos are not massless, his curiosity about these particles grew.  In 1997 he joined the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) to search for neutrino-less double beta decay of Te-130 which can only occur if neutrinos are their own antiparticles.  After 9/11/2001, Eric began working on experiments related to homeland security and in 2004 moved to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  In 2008 Eric became a  Professor in the Nuclear Engineering Department at U. C. Berkeley and taught both undergraduate and graduate courses there.  Over his career, Eric supervised the M. S. and Ph.D. thesis research of 20 students.  He officially retired in 2014, but continues doing research in neutrino physics  and teaching undergraduate courses.  Eric has published more than 225 articles in refereed journals and has received 5 U. S. patents.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1999) and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2012), and is a Co-Recipient of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016).

Mattia Pistone

University of Georgia
Associate Professor
Email 
Website              

1. Mission to Moho: the ultimate frontier of direct exploration of the Earth's interior (P, G, S) 
2. Flow or Blow? Understanding volcanic eruptions and their impact on societies (P, G, S)
3. Go West: The Western Aleutians as the Key Site to Study the Formation of Continental Crust (P, G, S)

Mattia Pistone was awarded BSc in Geological Sciences at Università G. D’Annunzio in Chieti and MSc in Geodynamics, Geophysics, and Volcanology at University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy). He obtained a PhD in Earth Science at ETH-Zurich (Switzerland) after completing the research project on “Physical Properties of Bubble- and Crystal-bearing Magmas”. He conducted postdoctoral research projects on magma transport and chemical evolution in the crustal domain at the University of Bristol (United Kingdom) and the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC, USA). He was a Maître Assistant (lecturer) at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) where he explored the fluid transport in the deep crustal realm of the Western Alps. He is currently Assistant Professor in Petrology and Volcanology at the University of Georgia (USA). He is director of the MAGMA MIA Laboratory, one of the seven PIs leading the ICDP DIVE (Drilling the Ivrea-Verbano zonE) project, and an enthusiastic researcher investigating the mechanics of multiphase magmas, eruption dynamics, and volatile cycles in the Earth’s interior using a combination of experimental, analytical, and field-based approaches. He has 14-year research experience, has published 32 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, and has been the recipient of a total of $4,519,006 in awarded grants from Schengen Area and US.

Dustin Rubenstein

Columbia University
Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology
Email   
Website    

1. Inequality: The Biology of Animal Societies (P, G)
2. Uncertainty: Environmental Change and Sociality (P, G)
3. Complexity: Linking Genome Evolution and Social Evolution (G, S)

Dustin Rubenstein is the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society, and has been recognized by the National Academy of Sciences as both a Kavli Fellow for his research accomplishments and as an Education Fellow in the Sciences for his innovation in STEM teaching. In recognition of his research accomplishments, Rubenstein has received awards from the Animal Behavior Society, the American Ornithologists’ Union, the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, and the University of Michigan. He has been acknowledged for his teaching, scholarship, and mentoring by Columbia University with a Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award and as a Provost’s Senior Faculty Teaching Scholar, as well as by the Society of Columbia Graduates with a Great Teacher Award. Rubenstein’s research takes an integrative approach to understand why complex animal societies form and how organisms cope with environmental change through studies that combine behavior, ecology, and evolution with those of the underlying molecular, neural, and neuroendocrine mechanisms. He has studied a variety of animals, including reptiles, mammals, birds, crustaceans, and insects on every continent except Antarctica. He is the author of nearly 150 publications and the market-leading textbook Animal Behavior. Rubenstein currently serves as the Specialty Chief Editor for the Evolutionary Ecology of Social Behavior Section of Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, as well as an Associate Editor for Science Advances and Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. He was previously on the editorial boards of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Behavioral Ecology, PLOS ONE, and F1000Research, and has been a guest editor for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Behavioral Processes, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Soma Sengupta

Tufts University Medical Center
Chair of Neurology
Email   
Website    

1. Plants and Medicine (P)
2. AI in Oncology (P)
3. Neurotransmitter Receptors in Cancer (G)

Dr. Soma Sengupta, MD, MBA, Ph.D., FRCP, FANA, FAAN, will be joining Tufts Medical Center as Chair of Neurology from September 2025. She is currently the Vice Chair of Research, Neurosurgery, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Sengupta is a board-certified neurologist and neuro-oncologist, and is fellowship-trained in integrative medicine. She is a physician-scientist, clinical trialist specializing in brain tumor treatment and research with almost 100 peer-reviewed publications. She is the first Mayfield Foundation Scholar.

During her medical training, Dr. Sengupta went out of her way to stay actively engaged in research and pursue diverse training opportunities, which included immunology research at the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research, research at Johns Hopkins, and pediatric brain tumor research at Boston Children’s Hospital. All these experiences focused on how a cell senses and communicates with the “outside world” through the transport of ions and metabolites of various sorts.

Dr. Sengupta’s primary area of lab-based research looks to improve patient outcomes for brain tumor patients. This includes individuals with primary brain tumors as well as metastatic brain tumors. Since her time in Boston, she has explored how to target a specific ion channel and discovered a new class of drugs to do so. Dr. Sengupta’s research also includes advancing technologies with AI that have the potential to impact patient care.

Dr. Sengupta is a recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award presented by the Arnold P Gold Foundation and the Unsung Hero Award presented by Cancer Family Care.

David Shiffman

David Shiffman Scientific and Environmental Consulting
CEO
Email   
Website    

1. Why Sharks Matter: The Science and Policy of Saving Sharks, and Why we Should (P, G) 
2. Why is everything you know about shark conservation wrong? An interdisciplinary assessment of knowledge transfer along the science-policy interface (G, S)
3. How lessons learned from shark research, conservation, and education can advance public science engagement (G, S)

Dr. David Shiffman as an interdisciplinary marine conservation biologist whose work looks at the ecology and conservation of threatened marine life, with a focus on sharks. His more than 70 peer reviewed scientific journal publications have been cited over 3,000 times, and have influenced ocean policy at the state, national, and international level, and his public-facing writing has appeared in National Geographic, Scientific American, Sigma Xi's American Scientist, the Washington Post, and nationally-syndicated op-eds. He is the author of "Why Sharks Matter," published by Johns Hopkins University Press, which was the basis of a 70+ city international book tour in which he spoke to thousands of people about marine biology, ocean conservation, and his story. An award-winning public science educator and speaker, Dr. Shiffman can give public-facing or scientific talks. He is also one of the most-followed scientists in the world on social media and invites you to follow him @ WhySharksMatter

Scott Solomon

Rice University
Teaching Professor of Biosciences
Email   
Website    

1. Becoming Martian: How living in space will change our bodies and minds (P, G, S)
2. Wisdom of Ants: What lessons can humans learn from social insects? (P, G)
3. Sharing Science: Practical advice for science communication and public engagement (G, S)

Scott Solomon is a biologist, professor, and science communicator. He teaches ecology, evolutionary biology, and scientific communication as a Teaching Professor at Rice University in Houston and is a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. He has a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from the University of Texas at Austin. His research examines the ecology and evolution of insects, microbes, and humans. He has conducted field research in Central and South America and on Pacific Islands and has taught field courses at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado, in the rainforests and reefs of Belize, and the savannas of Tanzania. He developed a series of online introductory biology courses through Coursera as well as two complete digital series with The Great Courses called Why Insects Matter: Earth’s Most Essential Species and What Darwin Didn’t Know: The Modern Science of Evolution. Dr. Solomon often speaks and writes about science at schools, museums, churches, science cafés, TEDx events and other venues. He is the creator and host of the podcast Wild World with Scott Solomon. He has appeared on numerous television and streaming series and his writing and photography have appeared in publications such as National Geographic, Slate, Aeon, Nautilus, MIT Technology Review, NBC News, and Wired. He is the author of Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution (Yale University Press) and Becoming Martian: Our Future Beyond Earth (MIT Press). He co-wrote and co-produced a three-part docu-series for CuriosityStream called Becoming Martian. Dr. Solomon is a Fellow of The Explorers Club, a Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society Distinguished Lecturer, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for the Study of Evolution.

Richard Spontak

North Carolina State University
Distinguished Professor
Email   
Website    

1. A Soft Materials Approach to Addressing Growing Global Challenges (P)
2. Improving Carbon Capture: Insights from Nanostructured to Nanoengineered Membranes (G)
3. The Potential for Self-Networking Thermoplastic Elastomers in the 21st Century (S)

Dr. Richard Spontak, a Distinguished Professor at NC State University, received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from Penn State and UC Berkeley, respectively. He pursued post-doctoral research at Cambridge University and later joined Procter and Gamble before accepting a faculty position at NC State. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal papers and delivered over 400 invited lectures around the world. His research focuses on nanostructured polymers, polymer nanocomposites and coatings, and stimuli-responsive soft materials, as well as advanced electron microscopy. In recognition of his research at NC State, he was awarded the Alexander Holladay Medal for Excellence (the highest NC State faculty award), the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award (the highest engineering faculty award), the Alcoa Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award, and the Alumni Outstanding Research Award. In addition, he has received the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) International Award, the ACS (Rubber Division) Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers Award, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) Colwyn Medal and Medal for Excellence, the Institute of Chemical Engineers Underwood Medal and Global Award, the American Chemical Society (ACS) (PMSE Division) Roy Tess Award in Coatings and Cooperative Research Award, the Society of Polymer Science (Japan) International Award, the Acta Materialia Hollomon Award for Materials and Society, and the German Society for Electron Microscopy Ernst Ruska Prize. An elected fellow of the American Physical Society, the IOM3, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the ACS (PMSE Division), and the SPE, Dr. Spontak was named the Lars Onsager Professor at, and received an honorary doctorate (doctor honoris causa) from, the Norwegian University of Science & Technology, and is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences. He is an award-winning instructor, having received the Board of Governors' Award for Excellence in Teaching (the highest NC State teaching award).

Karen Strier 

1. Saving the World’s Most Peaceful Primate (P, G) 
2. Primates and Conservation in a Rapidly Changing World (P, G, S)
3. Primate Behavioral Flexibility and the Limits of Resilience (P, G, S)