PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Four Brown University faculty members have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honor societies.

This year’s new members from Brown are Michael Littman, a professor of computer science and associate provost for artificial intelligence; Saul Olyan, a professor of Judaic studies and religious studies; Leela Prasad, a professor of religious studies; and Joseph Silverman, a professor of mathematics.

They are among a class of over 250 new members, who include leading thinkers in science, public affairs, business, arts and the humanities. Members are selected through a competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society.

“The induction of these four distinguished faculty members into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences underscores both the depth and breadth of scholarship that is currently flourishing at Brown,” Provost Francis J. Doyle III said. “In a world increasingly defined by rapid technological changes and complex global interdependencies, their work embodies the intellectual creativity required to educate our students and push frontiers of knowledge through innovative and collaborative approaches.”

Founded in 1780, the academy is one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers. The new members join a distinguished group of individuals elected to the academy before them, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Mead and Martin Luther King Jr. This year’s class includes actor and filmmaker Jody Foster, author Barbara Kingsolver and entertainer Rita Moreno.

“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence – this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” said Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the expansion of the public good.”

Michael Littman

Littman’s research focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning and decision-making under uncertainty. From 2022-25, he served as division director for information and intelligent systems at the National Science Foundation, where he oversaw an annual budget of $200 million in research funding in AI-related areas. In 2021, he chaired the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, a twice-per-decade study on the state of AI development. He was the recipient of the 2024 AAAI/EAAI Patrick Henry Winston Outstanding Educator Award for pioneering approaches to teaching AI and machine learning, as well as numerous awards for research excellence from academic conferences and societies. As Brown’s first associate provost for AI, Littman works to responsibly advance Brown’s engagement with AI across its academic missions.

Saul Olyan

Olyan’s current research focuses on animals and the law, biblical ritual, biblical classification schemas and the representation of social relationships in biblical texts. He is the author of 10 books, the editor or co-editor of 14 collections of essays and the author of more than 90 articles and essays. Olyan has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures and the Anchor Yale Bible. He was president of the New England and Eastern Canada region of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2016 and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, among other institutions.

Leela Prasad

Prasad is dedicated to putting early Indic literary and religious thought into conversation with contemporary practices of everyday life. Her research focuses on the anthropology of ethics, human rights and social justice, gender, diasporic life, storytelling and performance, colonialism and decoloniality, and Mahatma Gandhi. She was president of the American Academy of Religion in 2024-25, has authored two books and edited several others and is the co-director of a forthcoming feature film on an Indian schoolteacher’s encounter with Mahatma Gandhi in 1944. She curated the first exhibition on Indian-American life at the Balch Institute in Philadelphia in 1999. She teaches in U.S. prisons about Gandhi and is finishing a book on how individuals who have experienced incarceration in India have been inspired by their engagement with Gandhian practice. Her forthcoming project is an ethnography of rescued elephants in India. She has held Fulbright-Nehru senior fellowships, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and American Philosophical Society. She received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2023.

Joseph Silverman

Silverman’s research interests include number theory, elliptic curves, arithmetic geometry and cryptography. He is the author of eight textbooks and research monographs and more than 100 research articles. With Brown colleagues Jeff Hoffstein and Jill Pipher, Silverman developed a cryptographic system called NTRU, which was a finalist in the National Institute for Standards and Technology’s search for quantum-safe data encryption. Silverman was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012 and served on its board of trustees from 2015 to 2025. He is the recipient of the Lester Ford Award from the Mathematics Association of America and has been awarded fellowships by the Sloan Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2022, he was invited to present his work at the highly prestigious International Congress of Mathematicians. Earlier this year, Silverman was elected president of the American Mathematical Association, a role he’ll assume in February 2027.

With the addition of the Academy’s newest members, a total of 40 current Brown faculty members have been elected to the academy. Others include University President Christina H. Paxson, Provost Francis J. Doyle III, Nobel Laureate Michael Kosterlitz and 2026 Queen Elizabeth Prize Winner John Donoghue.

Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2026.