Carnegie Mellon University's Kathryn Roeder has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

She and CMU's Krzysztof Matyjaszewski are among 100 new members and 25 foreign associates elected to the academy in 2019. NAS membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors a scientist can receive. CMU has been home to 20 NAS members.

Roeder, the UPMC Professor of Statistics and Life Sciences,serves as CMU's vice provost for faculty in addition to her faculty appointments in the Statistics & Data Science and Computational Biology departments. Her research focuses on developing statistical tools for finding associations between patterns of genetic variation and complex disease. Roeder's research group uses modern statistical methods such as high dimensional statistics, statistical machine learning, nonparametric methods and networks to solve biologically relevant problems.

An elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Roeder has received the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies' Presidents' Award and George W. Snedecor Award. The University of Alabama at Birmingham also presented her with the Janet L. Norwood Award for outstanding achievement by a woman in statistical sciences.

Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner University Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Mellon College of Science's Department of Chemistry, is world renowned for his discovery of atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), one of the most effective and widely used methods of controlled radical polymerization. ATRP has allowed for the creation of a wide range of materials with highly specific, tailored functionalities, including "smart" materials.

NAS is a private, nonprofit institution established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine — provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.