Clark University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Davis Baird has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

This year, 503 members have been awarded this honor, which is bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers in recognition of distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New Fellows will receive their official honors at a ceremony during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. on February 19.

Baird became Clark University Provost in August 2010. He oversees all undergraduate and graduate academic programs, as well as student affairs, University research, and University libraries.

Baird’s research interest is the philosophy of science and technology, and he serves on the faculty of the Philosophy Department at Clark. In the area of nanotechnology, as Principal Investigator, he has received more than $3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation. He is the author and editor of numerous articles and books, including “Thing Knowledge: A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments” (University of California Press, 2004) and “Nanotechnology Challenges: Implications for Philosophy, Ethics and Society” (World Scientific Publishers, 2006). He is co-founder and president-elect of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies.

Before coming to Clark, Baird was Dean of the South Carolina Honors College and Louise Fry Scudder Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Stanford University, holds a master’s degree in Philosophy of Science from Stanford and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Brandeis University.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million.