Susan Wessler, Distinguished Professor and Geneticist in the UC Riverside Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, has been elected to a four-year term as Vice President at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Professor Wessler assumed her duties as Vice President last month.

The position, which also chairs the NAS Council Committee on Scientific Programs, oversees a number of activities, including the Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia, bilateral scientific forums with the UK and Israel, several in-person and virtual communication and outreach programs, and the scientific program of the NAS annual meeting.

In addition to serving on the Council, which meets five times during the year, Professor Wessler will serve as a member of the Council Executive Committee, which meets virtually between Council meetings, and the NRC Governing Board, which meets three times each year.

The NAS is a U.S. nonprofit, non-governmental organization and is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Professor Wessler joined the organization in1998, and previously served as Home Secretary in charge of membership of the organization from 2011-2021. Under her stewardship, which ended last year, the NAS diversified its membership while doubling and sometimes quintupling the membership roster.

“We achieved a lot of change," she says. "My time as Home Secretary and the accomplishments with the staff there are probably the thing in my career that I am most proud of.”

Regarding her new position as Vice President, Professor Wessler says she’s honored that the organization thought well enough of her to elect her Vice President. “I figured when you retire, you have these open spaces in your life that you never had before,” she says. “Serving will give me a chance to know a different part of the NAS. It will be more interacting with the public and other scientists from around the country and around the world.”

As she looks forward to serving as Vice President, Professor Wessler is ripping out a page from her past playbook.

“It’s what you do with the job that counts,” she says, “just like when I served as Home Secretary and we effected change. I had been elected to the NAS when I was 44, and the average member age was 62, What’s more, I hailed from a southern state, Georgia, and was a plant biologist...not a cancer researcher from Harvard. I experienced firsthand how much the organization impacted my life and career.”