Mei-Po Kwan, Professor of Business Administration at Gies College of Business, has been elected as a Fellow of the U.K. Academy of Social Sciences. Kwan is the only U.S. scholar to receive the award this year. The Academy of Social Sciences is the national academy of academics and practitioners in the social sciences in the U.K. The Academy recently conferred the award of Fellow on 43 

leading social scientists from around the world. Fellows are elected after a thorough process of peer review for the excellence and impact of their work in the social sciences for public benefit.

"I am truly honored to be elected Fellow of the U.K. Academy,” said Kwan. “As a professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science and Business Administration, it means that my work on data analytics of human behavior has a significant beneficial impact on society as a whole and has considerable policy relevance specifically.”

To be elected a Fellow, one must have contributed to social science more broadly than the normal demands of their job. This contribution can be in the areas of thought leadership, practical application, or policy development. Kwan has made significant contributions to theory, methods, and practice in urban, GI science, mobility, and health research.

Kwan is both a Professor of Business Administration and a Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her PhD in Geography from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1994, and has served as an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2009. She is currently editor of Annals of the American Association of Geographers and the book series entitled SAGE Advances in Geographic Information Science and Technology.

About the Academy of Social Sciences The Academy of Social Sciences is the national academy of academics, learned societies and practitioners in the social sciences. Its mission is to promote social science in the United Kingdom for public benefit. The Academy is composed of 1313 individual Fellows, 44 Learned Societies, and a number of affiliates, together representing nearly 90,000 social scientists. Fellows are distinguished scholars and practitioners from academia and the public and private sectors. Most learned societies in the social sciences in the UK are represented within the Academy. The Academy also sponsors the Campaign for Social Science.