Five from Penn elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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Five faculty at the University of Pennsylvania have been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an honorary society and independent research center founded in 1780. They are: Mark G. Allen of the School of Engineering and Applied Science; Sara Cherry of the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM); Provost John L. Jackson, Jr., a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) and the School of Arts & Sciences (SAS); Michael E. Mann of SAS with a secondary appointment in ASC; and PIK Professor Duncan Watts, who has appointments in SEAS, ASC, and the Wharton School. They are among the 252 new members elected in 2026 to be recognized for their excellence, innovation, leadership, and broad array of accomplishments in their fields.

“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence—this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” says Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the expansion of the public good.”

Chartered in 1780, the Academy was established to recognize accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic. The first members elected to the Academy include George Washington, who said—in his first annual message to Congress in 1790—“Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” Another early recipient was Penn’s founder Benajmin Franklin, who was elected in 1781.

Mark G. Allen is the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering. His research interests are in the development and the application of new micro- and nanofabrication technologies, as well as microelectromechanical systems. Allen has published more than 120 journal articles, holds more than 40 patents, and has also co-founded multiple companies, including Cardiomems, Axion Biosystems, and Enachip. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Sara Cherry is the John W. Eckman Professor of Medical Science in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine. She serves as the director of the High-Throughput Institute for Discovery (HIT-ID) the scientific director of the High-throughput Screening Core at PSOM, and group leader of the RNA Therapeutics Group at the Institute for RNA Innovation. Her research focuses on emerging RNA viruses exploring viral-host interactions and innate immune signaling. Her lab integrates genetic and chemical screening approaches to identify host factors and small molecules that impact infection and immunity. Mechanistic studies uncover how RNA viruses hijack cellular machinery and evade immune detection despite their limited coding capacity, discovering new therapeutic targets and informing the development antivirals.

John L. Jackson, Jr. is Penn Provost, the Richard Perry University Professor, and a PIK professor with appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts & Sciences. A pioneering scholar of urban ethnography, visual culture, media studies, and the anthropology of race and religion, he is the only professor in Penn’s history to serve as dean of two Penn schools: ASC, from 2019 to 2023, and the School of Social Policy & Practice, from 2014 to 2018. Jackson helped found the Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts (CAMRA) and the Center for Experimental Ethnography, and was inducted as a fellow of the International Communication Association in 2020. His influential work includes four major scholarly books and two co-written books, and he has produced or directed 10 films that have been screened at dozens of international film festivals.

Michael E. Mann is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media. He’s received numerous honors and awards, including the Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. In 2020 he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and in 2024, to the Royal Society. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2024. He’s authored more than 300 publications and seven books, including “Science Under Siege” with Peter Hotez.

Duncan Watts is the Stevens University Professor and the 23rd PIK Professor at Penn. He holds faculty appointments in the Department of Computer and Information Science in Penn Engineering, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the Department of Operations, Information and Decisions in the Wharton School, where he is the inaugural Rowan Fellow. He also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Sociology in the School of Arts & Sciences. Watts is a computational social scientist interested in social and organizational networks, collective dynamics of human systems, web-based experiments, and analysis of large-scale digital data, including the production, consumption, and absorption of news. He was named an inaugural fellow of the Network Science Society in 2018, a Carnegie Fellow in 2020, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.