Efimov Invested as American Academy of Sciences and Letters Member

Northwestern Engineering’s Igor Efimov has been invested as a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL).

With his Nov. 12 investiture in Washington, DC, Efimov, professor of biomedical engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and professor of medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, joined a list of esteemed academy members. Other honorees have included Sir Salman Rushdie, Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides, Nicholas Christakis, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, Akhil Reed Amar, and Nobel-laureate scientists Arieh Warshel, Jennifer Doudna, and Sir David W.C. MacMillan.

“I am proud to have been elected a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, because this 21st-century republic of letters is dedicated to fostering free thought in an increasingly polarized society,” Efimov said.

Efimov’s Cardiovascular Engineering Laboratory investigates the physiological mechanisms underlying cardiovascular disease and develops new therapies for heart rhythm disorders and heart failure. The group pursues two engineering strategies: creating advanced implantable, interventional, and wearable bioelectronic devices for real-time diagnostics and therapy, and using bioinformatics and machine learning to detect early disease and inform novel treatments.

The AASL promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. It supports learning by encouraging the exchange of ideas within academia and in society at large, and by sponsoring occasions for scholarly interaction and providing platforms for the presentation and dissemination of scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.