LSU professor named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Meredith Blackwell, Boyd Professor of biological sciences at LSU, joins the ranks of some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts with her election to 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. Historical members include Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Jonas Salk, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Updike and many more distinguished scientists, statesmen and literary figures. But a fellow member that particularly sticks out to Blackwell is Clint Eastwood. “Imagine me in the same club as Dirty Harry!” Blackwell says in a release from LSU. “I still remember when Professor C. J. Alexopoulos, my major professor at the University of Texas, received word that he had been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He was thrilled, and I am just as thrilled in 2012.” Blackwell will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 6 at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. Blackwell’s current research project, nicknamed “beetle belly yeasts,” involves isolating yeasts and other microbes from the gut of insects, especially wood-feeding beetles. Blackwell has many collaborators on this project, and her work has taken her to Panama, Guatemala and Thailand. Read more about Blackwell and the work for which she is being honored in the full story at LSU System website here.