Mary Beckerle, Huntsman Cancer Institute executive director, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies and independent policy research centers. Beckerle is also a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Utah.

Drawn from the sciences, the arts and humanities, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector, the 190 new Fellows and 22 Foreign Honorary Members are leaders in their fields.

She holds the Ralph E. and Willa T. Main Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at the U. Last year, she earned the U.'s Rosenblatt Prize. She's also an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and received a Senior Research Award from the American Cancer Society. In 2001, she received the Utah Governor's Award for Science and Technology. She is an active participant in national scientific affairs and served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology, an international research organization. In 2008, she was appointed to the Scientific Review Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Board of the Coalition for Life Sciences, and to the National Institutes of Health Advisory Committee to the Director.

The 2008 Class of Fellows come from 20 states and 15 countries. They range in age from 37 to 86. Represented among this year's newly elected members are more than 50 universities and more than a dozen corporations, as well as museums, national laboratories and private research institutes, media outlets and foundations.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 11 at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

Founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the academy has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 19th, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the 20th. The current membership includes some 200 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

A list of all newly elected Fellows and Honorary Foreign Members with their affiliations may be viewed at www.amacad.org.