News
Professors named fellows of national science association
Archived article from Nov 7, 2005
By Carl Blesch
James K. Mitchell, professor of geography, Faculty of Arts and Sciences-New Brunswick, and James F. White, professor of plant biology and pathology at Cook College, are among 376 scientists named 2005 Fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The pre-eminent U.S. scientific organization each year selects fellows based on their efforts in advancing science or fostering applications considered scientifically or socially distinguished. It cited Mitchell “for distinguished contributions to the understanding and management of environmental hazards and global environmental change” and White “for research excellence on microbial endophytes, especially ecological and physiological studies on the clavicipitalean fungi.”
Mitchell and White will be honored Feb. 18, 2006, at the association’s annual meeting in St. Louis. The association, known as AAAS, is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the prestigious journal Science.
Mitchell, who has been on the Rutgers faculty since 1970, is an expert in the human aspects of environmental hazards and disasters. He has studied events such as the 1976 earthquake in Tanghsan, China, regarded as the 20th century’s most deadly natural disaster, and the 1999 flooding from Tropical Storm Floyd, which caused damage of historic proportions in New Jersey’s Raritan River basin. He also has written about the widening gap between scientific knowledge of hazards and public policy responses as reflected in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the December 2004 tsunami in South Asia and Hurricane Katrina.
White, a member of the Cook College faculty since 1995, is an expert on beneficial fungi in plants, including turf grasses. His studies have yielded new understanding of the role these organisms play in causing toxic syndromes among grass-eating animals, as well as making plants resistant to insects, fungal disease and extreme environmental conditions.
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