4 UCLA professors elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Four UCLA faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Eva Baker, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork, Ursula Heise and Angela Riley are among the 252 leaders in academia, the arts, science industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy and research chosen for membership this year.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and other early American scholars and scientists, the academy serves as an independent research center that convenes leaders from across disciplines, professions and perspectives, with the aim of producing independent and pragmatic studies that inform national and global policy and benefit the public.

Notable individuals from each generation have been elected to the academy, from George Washington and Albert Einstein to UCLA's Nobel Prize winner Andrea Ghez, Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond and Chancellor Julio Frenk.

"We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence - this is a fitting commemoration of the nation's 250th anniversary," said Laurie Patton, the academy's president. "The founding of the nation and the academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge and the expansion of the public good."

The new members will be inducted in October at the academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Eva Baker
Distinguished research professor
UCLA School of Education & Information Studies

Baker has spent decades exploring the question of what people know and how that knowledge can be measured in ways that truly improve learning. As the founding director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, Baker has helped shape modern approaches to educational assessment by linking instruction with measurement. Her work moves beyond traditional testing, focusing on how to evaluate complex human performance using sophisticated, technology-driven systems deployed at scale - from classrooms to large national and even military settings. She has authored hundreds of influential studies, advised national education policy and helped set the standards that guide how learning is measured across the country while pushing the field toward assessments that are not just rigorous but genuinely useful.

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Elizabeth Ligon Bjork
Professor emerita of psychology
UCLA College

Forgetting, struggle and even mistakes can be some of the most powerful tools for learning, according to Bjork, a leader in the study of human memory and a principal investigator at the UCLA Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab. Her work has explored how brain processes like "goal-directed forgetting" - the mind's ability to let go of information that is no longer useful - can help to make memory more flexible, efficient and useful. Her research has also illuminated how learning works best when it's a little harder than we expect. By incorporating "desirable difficulties" - spacing out study sessions, mixing study topics, and even introducing small challenges or interruptions - we force our brains to work harder to retrieve and process information, with that extra effort strengthening memory and improving understanding. Bridging laboratory discoveries with real-world classroom settings, Bjork's work has reshaped how educators think about teaching and how everyone can learn more effectively.

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Ursula Heise
Distinguished professor of English
UCLA College and UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Heise, a pioneer in the field of environmental humanities, examines important ecological topics like extinction, species endangerment and wildlife conservation through the lens of culture and media. As co-founder and director of UCLA's Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, she focuses on cross-disciplinary research that explores how storytelling - through literature, films, journalism, video games and other platforms - can influence not just what we know about the environment but how we act on it. Importantly, Heise puts those ideas into practice, collaborating with students and scholars to tell the story of our planet through inventive projects like "Urban Ark Los Angeles," a documentary exploring the world of endangered red-crowned parrots in a city setting, and "Grand Theft Eco," a series of animated films that turned a well-known video game into a vehicle for environmental awareness.

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Angela R. Riley
Professor of law and American Indian studies
UCLA School of Law and UCLA College

Riley, an advisor to the UCLA chancellor on Native American and Indigenous Affairs and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, focuses her research on Indigenous peoples' rights and studies the ways in which the legal system can advance tribal sovereignty and self-determination. She has played an influential role in shaping debates over Native American mascots and cultural and intellectual property. Since 2010, she has served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and is an appellate judge on the courts of appeal for both the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. Riley also served as co-chair of the United Nations Indigenous Peoples' Partnership Policy Board, whose mission is to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At UCLA Law, where she holds the Carole Goldberg Chair in Native American Law, she directs the Native Nations Law and Policy Center and the joint degree program in law and American Indian studies. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Philosophical Society.