Garruto, Michael named Science Fellows

Two science faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ralph M. Garruto, research professor of anthropology, and Sandra D. Michael, professor and former chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, will receive the honor in February at the association’s annual meeting in Boston. To earn the honor the pair were selected by screening committees within their disciplinse and then approved by the association’s council. The association, which includes 275 affiliated societies, publishes the peer-reviewed journal Science.

Garruto, who joined the University in 1997, was named by the anthropology section of the association, “for contributions to the interface between anthropology and the biology of infectious diseases and to the advancement of an interdisciplinary, anthropologically informed field of human biology.”

He earned his BS, MA and doctoral degrees from Pennsylvania State University. He worked with the National Institutes of Health for 25 years prior to coming to BU. Garruto was elected president of the International Association of Human Biologists in 1999 and will serve through 2002. He was named a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences in 1997.

Sandra Michael was named by the biological sciences section of the association, “for early recognition of and fundamental studies in the important interactions between the endocrine and immune systems throughout various stages of female reproduction, particularly reproductive development.”

Michael has been at the University since 1974. She was named professor in 1988 and was chair of the Biological Sciences Department from 1992 to 2000. She is also an adjunct professor in the obstetrics and gynecology department at the Upstate Medical Center of Syracuse.

Michael earned her BA from California State College-Sonoma and her PhD from the University of California-Davis. She was an assistant research geneticist at UC-Davis prior to joining BU’s faculty. In 1994 she studied in the Czech Republic under a Fulbright grant.