In March, SFI External Professor Aaron Clauset (University of Colorado Boulder) received two notable honors: he was elected a 2025 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and named 2026 Distinguished Alumni by the University of New Mexico School of Engineering.
AAAS recognized Clauset “for distinguished contributions to the fields of network science and computational social science.”
Clauset’s research uses data and computation to identify principles of organization in complex social and biological systems, including how smaller-scale interactions give rise to larger-scale patterns. His work has made foundational contributions to network science, including the study of real-world network structure and rare events in complex systems.
“Science offers the best way to find order and meaning in the complex and often chaotic world we live in,” Clauset said in a CU Boulder news release. “My research shows how powerful computational tools can reveal the hidden structures of complex systems, and helps us use that understanding for the public good.”
First awarded in 1874, AAAS Fellowship honors members whose work has made distinguished contributions to the advancement of science or its applications. Clauset will be formally inducted at the Fellows Forum in Washington, D.C., in May.
The University of New Mexico School of Engineering also honored Clauset as the Distinguished Alumni Award recipient for the Department of Computer Science. The annual awards celebrate outstanding graduates from across the school’s departments and programs. In remarks at the ceremony, Clauset described UNM as “the place that first taught me how to think like a scientist,” and credited the university with giving him an interdisciplinary foundation for his research.
“The lesson of interdisciplinary research — which I learned here at UNM — is that science and society are stronger together, fueled by a pluralism of ideas and people,” Clauset said.
Clauset is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has been involved with SFI since 2003, became an Omidyar Fellow in 2009, and has been a member of SFI’s external faculty since 2012.
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- Read the full announcement from AAAS, recognizing the 449 researchers elected to AAAS fellowship this year. https://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-welcomes-449-scientists-and-engineers-honorary-fellows
- Read the UNM announcement. https://news.unm.edu/news/school-of-engineering-to-celebrate-distinguished-alumni-award-winners-on-march-27