University of Notre Dame faculty members Margot Fassler, Sherif Girgis, Brad Gregory and Prashant Kamat have been inducted into the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
The honor for the four Notre Dame professors comes in recognition of their outstanding scholarly achievement.
Fassler, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor Emerita of Music History and Liturgy; Girgis, a professor of law; Gregory, a professor of history; and Kamat, the Rev. John A. Zahm Professor of Science; were recognized during an investiture ceremony Nov. 12 at the Decatur House in Washington, D.C.
They join a list of AASL members including Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Haidt, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Steven Pinker, Akhil Reed Amar and Nobel laureate scientists Arieh Warshel, Jennifer Doudna and David W.C. MacMillan.
Fassler is known for her work at the intersection of musicology, liturgical studies and theology and is a specialist in sacred music. She is a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy, a former president of the Medieval Academy of America, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary member of the American Musicological Society.
Girgis, who teaches constitutional law, is the author of “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination,” among other works. His work in constitutional law and theory has appeared in multiple publications. Prior to his academic career, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
A historian of Western Europe in the Reformation era, Gregory has analyzed the effects of early modern religious disagreement and religiopolitical conflict in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as in the long-term shaping of Western modernity up to the present. His books have been awarded numerous prizes.
Kamat’s research aims to elucidate the mechanistic and kinetic details of charge transfer processes in nanostructured assemblies with an objective to improve energy conversion efficiencies. He is a fellow of numerous societies. Kamat recently won the Richard E. Smalley Award of The Electrochemical Society and the Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry of the American Chemical Society.
The American Academy of Sciences and Letters promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences and learned professions. It supports learning by encouraging the exchange of ideas within academia and in society at large. The Academy sponsors occasions for scholarly interaction and provides platforms for the presentation and dissemination of scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
