March 26, 2026
Four UMass Amherst Researchers Honored with Election to American Association for the Advancement of Science
Anthropologist, chemist, computer scientist, agriculture biotechnologist all receive the prestigious scientific honor for their exceptional contribution
AMHERST, Mass. — The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the preeminent scientific institution in the United States, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals, has elected four researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst to its class of 2025 Fellows — a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community.
This year’s honorees include and Om Parkash Dhankher , professor of molecular biology and phytoremediation in UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture, Jason Kamilar , professor of anthropology, Dhandapani (DV) Venkataraman , professor of chemistry and Beverly Park Woolf , research professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences. The scholars have been recognized for their distinguished contributions to agricultural biotechnology, primatology, materials chemistry and educational technology, respectively.
“I congratulate our four newly elected AAAS fellows whose distinguished contributions to science and technology have far-reaching implications, improving our understanding of the world and our ability to deliver on our mission of advancing the common good for future generations,” says Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs at UMass Amherst, who himself is also a AAAS fellow. “They are superb exemplars of the intellectual excellence that thrives throughout the UMass Amherst faculty, and I encourage everyone to take this opportunity to learn more about their groundbreaking work.”
Om Parkash Dhankher: Cultivating a more resilient, cleaner world
“I was one of eight children growing up on a farm in a small village in India,” recalls Dhankher, whose distinguished contributions to agricultural biotechnology, metabolic engineering and nanotechnology has advanced crop tolerance to abiotic stresses, enabled the development of arsenic-free rice, and contributed to the phytoremediation and phytomining of toxic metals. “Every day after school, I went back to the fields and worked. Those early experiences shaped my interest in agricultural and plant sciences, as I witnessed firsthand how devastating crop loss could be for farming communities.”
Dhankher’s winding career took him first to a nearby local college, then on to a master’s degree in botany, an extremely prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue Ph.D. studies at Durham University in the UK, a postdoctoral position at the University of Georgia and finally, in 2004, to the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass Amherst. Throughout, he has been driven to understand how plants can make our world better.
Just one example is his recent work with the plant Camelina sativa , which he has engineered to clean the soil of nickel — a toxic heavy metal that is also a critical mineral crucial for the green transition to an electrical world. The seeds of the Camelina sativ a are also a rich source of biofuel, meaning that Dhankher has discovered how one plant can clean a heavy metal from serpentine soils, rendering it fit for agriculture, use that metal for renewable power and then use the seeds oil to replace fossil fuel.
Reflecting on his journey, Dhankher states “Coming from a very humble background with limited means and resources, I am excited and honored to be elected as a fellow to the AAAS. I am deeply grateful to my research team, past and present, as well as my mentors, family and all those who have supported and encouraged my work, which aims to deliver practical solutions for farmers and for the global population reliant on what farmers grow.”
Jason Kamilar: Exploring how ecology and evolution shape primate diversity
From a childhood spent exploring New York’s museums and zoos to a career studying primates across continents and timescales, Kamilar’s scholarship has been defined by curiosity and breadth.
Kamilar was elected for “distinguished contributions to the field of primatology, particularly to primate behavior, ecology and evolution.”
His interest in primates traces back to formative experiences at the Bronx Zoo and the American Museum of Natural History, and later, an unusual stint living at a zoo during college.
“Just, like, a 30-second walk, there were monkeys, and gibbons and lemurs,” Kamilar recalls.
Today, his work spans an atypically wide range of topics, from primate coloration and biogeography to microbiome diversity. Rather than specializing in a single species, Kamilar uses a comparative approach to study many.
“I don’t really focus on one species,” he explains. “I’m more focused on a particular question and thinking about what species are good to look at to answer that question.”
That approach carries through to Kamilar’s Comparative Primatology Lab at UMass Amherst, where he collaborates closely with students on interdisciplinary research using tools such as geographic information systems, ecological modeling and molecular analysis. He describes the lab as a team effort, with students playing a central role in fieldwork and publications.
Much of Kamilar’s research integrates information about natural and human-modified environments and their impacts on primate biology, including their behavioral variation and biogeographic distributions. The same perspective informs his more recent work on microbiomes, exploring how factors such as social behavior, interactions among species and human habitat disturbance influence the microbes primates carry.
“Just having that recognition from your colleagues is really meaningful,” Kamilar says of the AAAS honor.
DV Venkataraman: Discovering the chemistry for tomorrow’s semiconductors and solar cells
Sometimes the problem you’re working on can be solved with careful application of state-of-the-art knowledge. And sometimes you’ve got to create that knowledge yourself. Such is the case with Venkataraman, who became interested in polymers that can conduct an electrical charge back during his days as an undergraduate in the late 1980s at the University of Madras.
“I’ve always wanted to study organic semiconductors,” he says, “and when I started at UMass Amherst in 1999, I assumed that standard synthetic chemistry would work for the compounds I wanted to make. But it didn’t, and so I went on a years-long detour to figure out the chemistry that would let me make organic semiconductors and organize them.”
The great advantage that organic semiconductors have over typical silicon-based ones is that they’re flexible and make a wide range of futuristic electronics possible, such as a flexible solar cell. They can be printed on anything and can be incredibly thin. But we don’t understand how to make them transport charges very well, and currently the process we use introduces complexities that negatively affect the ability of the semiconductor to conduct electronic and ionic charges.
It turns out that a similar chemical problem afflicts solar panels made of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. Ideally, these next-generation panels have efficiencies over 20% in converting sunlight to electricity. However, perovskite panels also have the unfortunate tendency of breaking down in sunlight. “They’re like a fish that’s allergic to water,” says Venkataraman, who is being honored for his contributions to the field of materials chemistry, particularly in advancing understanding of charge and ion transport in organic and hybrid semiconductors.
“This is a great honor,” he says, “not just for me, but for my students who have worked on this research with me. I interact with my students on a daily basis, and though I guide them, I also learn from them every day. We work together and learn together—that’s the fun part. And I can’t forget my collaborators among the faculty and staff. I’ve been very fortunate at UMass to have so many of these collaborations. It has been a great learning atmosphere for everyone.”
Beverly Park Woolf: Creating intelligent tutoring systems
Woolf is a research professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences and an expert in educational computer science research, production of intelligent tutoring systems and development of multimedia systems. The former Director of the Center for Knowledge Communication, she has been recognized for her distinguished contributions to the creation of individualized intelligent tutors for all students in multiple disciplines.
These intelligent tutoring systems use intelligent interfaces, inferencing mechanisms, cognitive models and modifiable software to improve a computer’s communicative abilities. These systems have been tested with learners, trainers and other client bases, deployed in education and industry and demonstrated in more than 50 American industrial, military and academic sites and 15 foreign countries.
She is author of the 2009 book “Building Intelligent Interactive Tutors” and is coauthor of over 150 technical papers. She has delivered tutorial training programs and keynote addresses and served on panels in more than 20 countries.
Woolf was appointed a Presidential Innovation Fellow in 2013 and was on loan to the U.S. National Science Foundation. She is also a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
Contacts: Aaron Kupec, akupec@umass.edu
Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu
About the University of Massachusetts Amherst
The flagship of the commonwealth, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public land-grant research university that seeks to expand educational access, fuel innovation and creativity and share and use its knowledge for the common good. Founded in 1863, UMass Amherst sits on nearly 1,450-acres in scenic Western Massachusetts and boasts state-of-the-art facilities for teaching, research, scholarship and creative activity. The institution advances a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where everyone feels connected and valued—and thrives, and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees across 10 schools and colleges and 100 undergraduate majors.