Four professors elected as 2018 American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellows

Four Duke faculty were elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nathaniel Mackey, Fred Nijhout, Richard Powell and Guillermo Sapiro will be among the cohort of 213 members named to the Academy’s 238th class. Founded in 1780, the Academy is one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers. It comprises intellectual leaders in the fields of mathematics, physical and biological sciences, medicine, social sciences and humanities, business, government, public affairs and the arts. 

Nathaniel Mackey is the Reynolds Price professor of creative writing and works in the areas of modern and postmodern literature in the United States and the Caribbean. His collection of poems "Splay Anthem" won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006. 

Mackey also served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone and co-editor of the anthology "Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose."

Fred Nijhout, John Franklin Crowell professor of biology, has focused on regulatory processes in the development of insects. His work has broadly analyzed how complex traits arise through and are affected by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors. 

In 2016, Nijhout won the A.O. Kowalevsky Medal, which is awarded for achievements in evolutionary developmental biology and comparative zoology.

Richard Powell is the John Spencer Bassett professor of art and art history and has taught at Duke since 1989. His courses have focused on American art, arts of the African diaspora and contemporary visual studies. Powell's research explores topics ranging from primitivism to postmodernism. 

Guillermo Sapiro is the Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. School professor of electrical and computer engineering and works on theory and applications in computer vision, computer graphics, medical imaging, image analysis and machine learning. He has authored and co-authored more than 300 papers in these areas.