Karl van Bibber and Shafi Goldwasser elected to the American Academy of Sciences and Letters

UC Berkeley professors Karl van Bibber and Shafi Goldwasser (M.S.’81, Ph.D.’84 CS) have been inducted into the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL), a society renowned for “promoting excellence in scholarship and intellectual courage in the arts, sciences and learned professions.”

Van Bibber and Goldwasser were among 60 “distinguished academics” nationwide honored this year by AASL for their outstanding scholarship.

Karl van Bibber is a professor of nuclear engineering. His research focuses on basic and applied nuclear science, particle astrophysics, and accelerator science and technology. He has served as associate dean of research and executive associate dean for Berkeley Engineering, as well as chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Among his many honors, he is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the U.S. Department of Energy Deputy Secretary Award and the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award.

Shafi Goldwasser (M.S.’81, Ph.D.’84 CS), director of UC Berkeley’s Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing from 2018–24, is one of only three women to have won the A.M. Turing Award, considered the Nobel Prize of computing. A professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, Goldwasser has made major contributions to cryptography, computational complexity, computational number theory and probabilistic algorithms. She helped create the theoretical foundations for zero-knowledge proofs, which are finding applications in new privacy-oriented digital technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Van Bibber and Goldwasser have joined the ranks of more than 140 AASL members, a group that includes Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows and recipients of other top academic honors.