Melissa S. Anderson, Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development, has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society. The honor is for “seminal contributions to the science of research integrity and to the study of scientists and higher education, and for excellence in fostering responsible conduct.” 

Professor Anderson has worked in the area of research integrity for over 30 years. She chaired the AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility for four years as it developed the AAAS Statement on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. She also co-chaired the World Conference on Research Integrity for five years. Professor Anderson was a member of the research team that first derived estimates of the prevalence of scientific misconduct, whose publication in Nature was named one of the top 100 events in science worldwide in 2005. She was on the drafting teams of the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity (used worldwide as the foundation for codes of research integrity), the Code of Ethics of the American Educational Research Association, and the Principles of Ethical Conduct of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She is also an instructor in the Epigeum online courses used globally to support the responsible conduct of research, including at the University of Minnesota.