Two Penn Engineers Named AAAS Fellows

Two Penn Engineering faculty have been elected 2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows. They are among nearly 500 researchers being honored this year across 24 scientific disciplines.

AAAS, a society with a mission to “advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all,” has named a class of Fellows since 1874. This year’s honorees will be celebrated at a forum in Washington, D.C., in June.

Penn’s newest AAAS Fellows include:

Cherie R. Kagan is the Stephen J. Angello Professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering with secondary appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn Engineering and the Department of Chemistry in Penn Arts & Sciences. She is widely recognized for her pioneering research on nanostructured materials and their use in advanced devices for electronics, photonics, and sensing. Kagan directs the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Engineering Research Center for the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture. Since joining Penn in 2007, her lab has explored how to design and integrate materials with unique optical, electrical, and mechanical properties into functional technologies. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and several major scientific societies and has received numerous honors, including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award and the Heilmeier Award.

George Pappas is the UPS Foundation Professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at Penn Engineering. He also holds secondary appointments in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. He currently serves as the associate dean for research and innovation in Penn Engineering and as the director of the Raj and Neera Singh Program in Artificial Intelligence. Pappas’ research focuses on control systems, robotics, autonomous systems, formal methods, and machine learning for safe and secure cyber-physical systems. He has received numerous awards, including the NSF PECASE, Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize, George S. Axelby Award, O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, and George H. Heilmeier Faculty Excellence Award. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the International Federation of Automatic Control, and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024.

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