May 2025 Awards and Accolades

Qiang Chen

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SOLS professor, Qiang Chen, was named to the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) as a Senior Member. 

Founded in 2010, NAI is an international organization that encourages inventors to share their creations, mentor and educate students, as well as celebrates academic inventions and technology and their role in advancing society. Its over 4,600 members are drawn from more than 260 institutions from all over the world, spanning universities, governmental and nonprofit research institutes.

ASU founded its NAI chapter in 2017 to promote invention and recognize innovative work across the university. ASU grew to become one of NAI’s 16 sustaining member institutions, and its chapter membership has swelled to 15 fellows, 22 senior members and more than 100 members to date.

Chen was recognized for his work developing novel human therapeutics and vaccines. Specifically, Chen develops macromolecule drugs, a new category of drugs that can only be produced through a biological system. Typically, developers of macromolecule drugs use mammalian cells to create the drug. Chen takes a different approach. Chen is working to develop macromolecule drugs through the cells of tobacco plants, whose genomes are easy to manipulate. Using plant systems could make drug development quicker and cheaper and reduce the risk of infection via other human pathogens while producing the same quantity of drugs at the same level of efficacy.

Risa Schnebly

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Risa Schnebly, PhD student and SOLS graduate science writer on the MarComm team was selected as a 2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Fellow, and will be reporting for the Cascadia Daily News in Washington state.

Seventeen early-career scientists will translate complex research into compelling stories for the public as 2025 AAAS Mass Media Fellows this summer. Fellows are placed at media outlets across the country and Puerto Rico including NPR, The Los Angeles Times, The Idaho Statesman and STAT.

Mass Media Fellows consist of accomplished current and recent graduate collegiate-level early-career scientists who are seeking experience relaying science to a general audience. Fellows are embedded in local, national and specialty news outlets as part of this immersive fellowship.

The program enhances science journalism in critical ways: opening doors to long-term careers in science communication, building science journalism skills through hands-on experience and mentorship, granting access to an expansive network of MMF fellows and alumni, and successfully placing Fellows where they can make meaningful contributions to science journalism.