# 5 ASU faculty members named AAAS Fellows

### Honor recognizes their contributions to science policy, population genetics, STEM education, ethnogeology and energy

By Joe Caspermeyer, ASU News
March 26, 2026

Five faculty from Arizona State University have been elected 2025 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS Fellow honor is a recognition of the societal impacts of their outstanding career contributions.

Mahmud Farooque, Jeffrey Jensen, Kenro Kusumi, Martin “Mike” Pasqualetti and Steve Semken are among the nearly 500 scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized within this class of AAAS Fellows. AAAS is one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals.

“This year’s AAAS Fellows have demonstrated research excellence, made notable
contributions to advance science and delivered important services to their communities,”
said Sudip Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the
Science family of journals.

Election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers, with each awardee honored for contributions to a specific field.

The latest cohort is now among the nearly 200 faculty who have been elected AAAS Fellows from ASU. The new class will be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science magazine in April. Fellows also have been invited to the annual Fellows Forum, which will be held in Washington, D.C., on May 29.

#### Meet the new AAAS Fellows from ASU

Mahmud Farooque is honored for distinguished contributions to developing the tools, methods and best practices necessary to bring public views and values into the science and technology policymaking process.

Farooque is associate director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and a clinical professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

He is an expert scholar in participatory technology assessment (pTA), a reflexive, adaptable and scalable method for engaging communities, stakeholders and public entities in social appraisal of science and technology. His expertise draws from science and technology studies, the science of science, public administration, public engagement and deliberative democracy.

Farooque leads the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology, a distributed network dedicated to research and applications of pTA. Since 2010, with support from public agencies and philanthropic organizations, he has overseen pTA processes on issues such as biodiversity, planetary defense, solar geoengineering, autonomous vehicles, human gene editing, nuclear waste management and carbon dioxide removal.

Read more: ASU center committed to advancing New American University’s model for science funding in US

Jeffrey Jensen is honored for his distinguished contributions to the field of population genetics, particularly for rigorous analyses to infer and distinguish the effects of selection and demography on genomic variation.

Jensen is a population geneticist and professor in the School of Life Sciences, the Center for Evolution and Medicine and the Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution.

The Jensen lab develops theory and statistical methods for describing and quantifying evolutionary processes. His research focuses on the inference of population history and natural selection from population-level DNA sequencing data, with applications of these methodologies and approaches ranging from viruses to nonhuman primates.

The Jensen lab has trained over 25 postdoctoral scholars to date, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the European Research Council. The lab is funded by an NIH Established-Investigator MIRA award.

Read more: Mutational meltdown: Can we push SARS CoV-2 off an evolutionary cliff?

Kenro Kusumi is honored for deploying genomics to explore the origins of spinal disease and the evolution of reptile adaptations, and for leadership in promoting increased access to STEM education.

Kusumi is the senior vice provost and dean of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor in the School of Life Sciences. He has served several roles throughout his ASU career, including director of the School of Life Sciences and dean of natural sciences in The College.

Kusumi is a genome biologist and uses research to help conserve and study the functional adaptations of reptiles. More than half of the living turtle species are threatened with extinction, and Kusumi has sequenced the genomes of the threatened Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), Sonoran desert tortoise (G. morafkai) and Texas tortoise (G. berlandieri) as tools for conservation efforts.

The colorful anole lizards have been described as the “Darwin’s finches” of reptiles, and Kusumi has led genome-scale analyses of accelerated evolution associated with their functional adaptations. His group has also uncovered sets of genes that are critical in the ability of anole lizards to adapt and regenerate parts of their bodies.

Read more: Study reveals genetic insight into desert survival

Martin “Mike” Pasqualetti is an expert on energy and social components of energy development who is being honored for distinguished contributions to the understanding of landscapes created by our need for continuing sources of energy.

“More than a personal honor, being elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science recognizes the importance that our young people learn how the endless weave of energy supply with geographic knowledge can help elevate our chances for living in harmony on our beautiful blue marble,” Pasqualetti said.

For more than 50 years, Pasqualetti, a professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and a senior global futures scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, has conducted and published innovative yet practical research concerned with energy education, the nexus of energy and society, energy security, the social acceptance of renewable energy, and the recognition and remediation of energy landscapes.

His current work concentrates on the social acceptance of renewable energy landscapes and recycling of energy landscapes. Pasqualetti teaches a variety of energy and society classes and has published books on wind power and nuclear power plant decommissioning, among other topics. He also has published more than 100 articles and book chapters on energy and environment topics.

Read more: ASU professor honored for work on energy

Geography professor named 2025 AAAS Fellow

Steve Semken is an expert in ethnogeology, which combines geology, geography and ethnography. He is being recognized for distinguished contributions to the development of discipline-based geoscience education, including place-based geoscience education, informal geoscience education and the design of effective virtual field experiences to teach geoscience and environmental science.

He is a President’s Professor of geology and education in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and a senior global futures scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. As an ethnogeologist and geoscience-education researcher, Semken’s work encompasses research on geological heritage, virtual field geology education and the geological evolution of southwestern North America.

Semken’s research informs his teaching, and vice versa; he uses place-based, culturally bridging methods to foster student interest in geoscience and catalyze active learning. He teaches ASU courses in the regional geology of Arizona and the Southwest, in Earth-system history, in field geology and in evidence-based teaching methods for Earth and space science.

Semken regularly offers talks and field trips for public outreach in national and state parks in Arizona and the Southwest. He is a co-creator of the award-winning Trail of Time at Grand Canyon.

Read more: The Earth’s terrain through the eyes of Native people

This story originally appeared on ASU News.