The American Academy of Arts & Sciences has announced the election of its new members for 2023, which includes two faculty members from The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences: Kendra McSweeney, professor and distinguished scholar in the Department of Geography, and Claudia Turro, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, founded in 1780, is both an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members and an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines, professions and perspectives to address significant challenges.

McSweeney’s research focuses on the relationship between people and forests and on how that relationship is shaped by external factors such as climate change and global drug policies. Her projects draw attention to how rural families use forests to bolster their climate resilience, the surprising ways in which indigenous peoples’ population growth can support efforts to defend their ancestral territories, and how the drug war accelerates the destruction of those territories.

“For the past 10 years, I’ve been doing my research in the context of a loose-knit, interdisciplinary team, including colleagues in Central America,” McSweeney said. “I, therefore, share this recognition with the many scholars who have been a part of the team, and with the indigenous and campesino folk across Central America who have helped us to better understand the changes they are facing and the ways that we, from our positions of privilege in the U.S., can best support their efforts to forge sustainable and autonomous livelihoods in place.”

Turro’s research focuses on using light to trigger chemical reactions that aren’t possible without that additional energy input, with applications in fields ranging from medicine to sustainable energy. She is currently working on the development of non-toxic compounds for photo-chemotherapy and has discovered single-molecule catalysts that transform the energy of light into hydrogen, a clean fuel.

“I’m very honored to have received this recognition,” Turro said. “It is the hard work of my graduate students and postdocs over the time I have been at Ohio State that really made this possible. The membership in the American Academy is really for all of us!”

McSweeney and Turro join nearly 270 new members drawn from academia, the arts, industry, policy, research and science. Other notable additions include climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, television executive Shonda Rhimes and poet Ilya Kaminsky.

When announcing this year’s new members, Academy President David W. Oxtoby said, “With the election of these members, the Academy is honoring excellence, innovation and leadership and recognizing a broad array of stellar accomplishments. We hope every new member celebrates this achievement and joins our work advancing the common good.”