Two UCSD professors have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences alongside leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts.
Cliff Kubiak, a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSD, has served as the faculty athletics representative for the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics since 2007. He serves as a liaison between the school and the athletics department and as a representative of the institution in National Collegiate Athletics Association affairs. Kubiak is also chairman of the Faculty Athletic Board of Advisors.
“This prestigious recognition really underscores the esteem in which Cliff is held by his peers,” said Earl Edwards, UCSD director of athletics. “Very few collegiate athletic departments are fortunate to have an academician the caliber of Cliff as their faculty athletics representative. He has been an integral part of our program, and we all congratulate him on this honor.”
In 2013, Kubiak received the department’s Meritorious Service Award.
Kubiak, who holds the Harold C. Urey Endowed Chair in Chemistry, received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University and his PhD from the University of Rochester. He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and a professor of chemistry at Purdue University from 1982 to 1998, when he joined the faculty at UCSD.
Also elected from UCSD is Christopher K. Glass, M.D., a professor of medicine and of cellular and molecular medicine.
The election of Kubiak and Glass brings UCSD’s current membership in the academy to 112.
The professors will be inducted into the academy at a ceremony on October 11 at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leaders from each generation, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Meade and Martin Luther King, Jr. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.