Professor Cherie Kagan elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Apr 29, 2025

IMOD faculty member honored for excellence, innovation, and leadership

Cherie Kagan has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an honorary society and independent research center established in 1780 by founders including John Adams.

Kagan is the Stephen J. Angello Professor of Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), with additional appointments in Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering, and a faculty member of the Center for Integration of Modern Optoelectronic Materials on Demand (IMOD), a National Science Foundation Science & Technology Center.

Within IMOD, Kagan leads the Heterointegration Research Thrust (RT-2), which focuses on using sophisticated equipment and techniques to place and pattern new optoelectronic materials with exquisite levels of precision, enabling the building of new device architectures. Members of the RT-2 team also investigate how these new materials interact with their surroundings, exploring the behavior of the excitons, spins, and charges within and across the interfaces of these new materials.

Kagan is one of nearly 250 new members honored by the Academy in 2025 for their excellence, innovation, leadership, and broad array of accomplishments. She is widely recognized for her pioneering research on nanostructured materials and their use in advanced devices for electronics, photonics, and sensing, and is a fellow of several major professional societies in science and innovation, including her recent election as a 2025 Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

The Academy convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together, as expressed in its charter, “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Their work has helped set the direction of research and analysis in science and technology policy, global security and international affairs, social policy, education, the humanities, and the arts.

Adapted in part from an article published by Penn Today at the University of Pennsylvania.