Alumnus Thomas Siebel among 2013 AAAS Fellows

Computer science alumnus Thomas Siebel joins U of I Chancellor Phyllis M. Wise, and Frederick E. Hoxie, a Swanlund Professor of History at Illinois, as newly elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications and to studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, and the humanities, arts and education.

“Election to the academy honors individual accomplishment and calls upon members to serve the public good,” academy President Leslie C. Berlowitz said Wednesday. “We look forward to drawing on the knowledge and expertise of these distinguished men and women to advance solutions to the pressing policy challenges of the day.”

“This is a very significant and well-deserved recognition for Chancellor Wise, professor Hoxie and Tom Siebel,” said Bob Easter, the president of the university. “Their honors reflect the dedication to excellence and positive impact on society that are among the core values of the University of Illinois.”

Siebel, the chairman and chief executive officer of C3 Energy, a software company that helps reduce an organization’s carbon footprint, is recognized as one of the world’s top philanthropists, having created The Siebel Foundation and The Meth Project Foundation to improve education, scholarship, community life and the prevention of teen drug use. He continues to generously support the university, where he established the Siebel Center for Computer Science and endowed two professorships. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in history in 1975, a master of business administration in 1983, a master of science in computer science in 1985 and an honorary doctorate of engineering in 2006, all at Illinois.

A frequent industry spokesman, Siebel is the author of three books: Taking Care of eBusiness, Cyber Rules, and Virtual Selling. He serves on the board of advisors of the University of Illinois College of Engineering, the Stanford University College of Engineering, and the University of California at Berkeley College of Engineering. He is a director of the University of Illinois Foundation and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2010, Siebel was elected to the College of Engineering Hall of Fame at the University of Illinois.

Wise, who also is a vice president of the U. of I., has served in senior leadership roles at three major public research universities. Prior to coming to Illinois in October 2011, she had been at the University of Washington and served as interim president during the 2010-11 academic year. From 2002-2005, she was the dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California at Davis. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and a doctorate from the University of Michigan.

She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among her many honors and awards.
Wise holds a tenured faculty position in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, as well as in molecular and integrative physiology, in obstetrics and gynecology, and in animal sciences. She is the author of more than 200 scientific publications with more than 30 continuous years of grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

She was a recipient of the Excellence in Science Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and of the Women in Endocrinology Mentor Award.

Hoxie is a Center for Advanced Study professor of history and holds appointments in the College of Law and in the university’s American Indian Studies Program. He earned his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his doctorate from Brandeis University. He has taught at Antioch College and Northwestern University and held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

He has published more than a dozen books on U.S. Indian policy, the history of Native American communities and the meaning of indigenous history in modern society. He is also the editor of the Encyclopedia of North American Indians and a co-author of The People: A History of Native America. His most recent book is This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made (Penguin, 2012).

A winner of the Western History Association’s lifetime achievement award in American Indian history, Hoxie has served as a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and of Amherst College, and has been a member of the executive council of the Organization of American Historians and the president of the American Society of Ethnohistory.

Since its founding in 1780, the AAAS has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Members of the 2013 class include winners of the Nobel Prize; the National Medal of Science; the Lasker Award; the Pulitzer and the Shaw prizes; the Fields Medal; MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships; the Kennedy Center Honors; and Grammy, Emmy, Academy and Tony awards.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 12 at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.
_________________________

Writer: Jeff Unger, NewsBureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/333-1085

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.