Marilyn Fogel, Wilbur W. Mayhew Endowed Professor of Geoecology and Director of the EDGE Institute at UC Riverside and member of the Alternative Earths team of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

From UC Riverside:

Pioneering UC Riverside geoecologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences

Marilyn Fogel, a University of California, Riverside endowed geoecology professor, received one of the highest honors in science this week with her election to the National Academy of Sciences, or NAS.

Membership in the NAS is rare. According to the Congressional Research Service, there are 6.9 million scientists in the U.S. However, there are only 2,347 active NAS members and 487 foreign associates.

“I’m thrilled to be inducted,” Fogel said when she learned the good news. “There aren’t many days like this in a person’s career. It was also a shock to be elected – I’m very interdisciplinary and have always considered myself an iconoclast.”

Fogel’s fieldwork has taken her to the deserts of Australia, the Bermuda Triangle’s Sargasso Sea, and other desolate locations to help her answer questions about Earth’s past and its possible future. She collects fossils that offer clues into the way extinctions happened and how climate changes over time.

Click here to read the full article from UC Riverside.