Chancellor, two honored professors are elected to membership

Irvine, Calif., April 30, 2007 - UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake and professors Peter Li and Yvonne Rainer have been named 2007 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The UCI faculty members are among 203 new fellows and 24 new foreign honorary members elected this year to AAAS. This year's new fellows also include Sandra Day O'Connor, Robert Redford and UC Irvine benefactor Donald Bren.

The 227-year-old academy is composed of scholars, scientists, academics and business people. Fellows and foreign honorary members are nominated and elected to the academy by current members.

* Michael V. Drake, M.D., has led UC Irvine to a host of achievements in research, education and public service since becoming chancellor in 2005. These accomplishments include breakthrough stem cell and global warming research, enrollment of a record freshman class and development of a new hospital and law school. Before coming to UCI, Drake served as the UC vice president for health affairs, overseeing the health sciences schools in the 10-campus system. Prior to that, he was the Steven P. Shearing Professor of Ophthalmology and the senior associate dean for admissions and extramural academic programs at UC San Francisco, his alma mater. Drake has been recognized for his commitment to higher education with the Herbert W. Nickens Award from the American Association of Medical Colleges in 2004, presidency of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, and election to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine.

* Peter Wai-Kwong Li, Chancellor's Professor of Mathematics, studies differential geometry and partial differential equations. The goal of his research is to understand the structure of geometric objects such as soap bubbles and wormholes. He has received many honors, including John Simon Guggenheim and Alfred P. Sloan fellowships. In 2002, he was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing. Also that year, Li was named a Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information. Li has published more than 70 research papers. He serves as an editor of the Asian Journal of Mathematics and Communications in Analysis and Geometry. Li also is involved with the American Mathematical Society, having served on its council and several committees.

* Yvonne Rainer, Distinguished Professor in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, is a choreographer-turned-filmmaker whose work incorporates experimental cinema, choreography and movement, feminism, politics, writing and visual art. She is known as a pioneer of postmodern dance and author of the seminal No Manifesto that outlined her minimalist dance aesthetic and signaled a revolution in modern dance in the 1960s. As a filmmaker, her seven features include two prize winners: "Privilege" and "MURDER and murder." Rainer also has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" in 1990, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Wexner Prize, seven National Endowment for the Arts awards and three Rockefeller Fellowships. Her four books include the memoir, Feelings Are Facts: A Life.

With this year's announcement, along with Chancellor Emeritus Ralph J. Cicerone there are 35 AAAS members from UCI. Current and emeritus UCI faculty members previously elected include: John Avise, Francisco Ayala, Albert Bennett, Roy Britten, Thomas J. Carew, Michael Clegg, William Daughaday, Igor Dzyaloshinskii, David Easton, Barbara Finlayson-Pitts, Walter Fitch, Bernard Grofman, Elizabeth Loftus, R. Duncan Luce, Penelope Maddy, David Malament, James McGaugh, Ricardo Miledi, J. Hillis Miller, Masayasu Nomura, Larry Overman, J.W. Peltason, Kenneth L. Pomeranz, A. Kimball Romney, F. Sherwood Rowland, Donald Saari, Henry Samueli, Brian Skyrms, Colin Slim, George Sperling and Douglas Wallace.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,800 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.7 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

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