Madhu Khanna, Alvin H. Baum Family Chair and Director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), has been named a 2025 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the highest honors awarded to U.S. scientists.
Khanna, an environmental economist, is among three University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors recognized this year by AAAS, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. Fellows are elected annually by the AAAS Council for exceptional achievements across disciplines – from research, teaching, and technology to administration and communicating science to the public.
“I’m incredibly honored to be selected as an AAAS Fellow,” Khanna said. “It’s gratifying to be recognized by your peers and to see environmental social science research elevated through this prestigious award.”
The new AAAS Fellows will be honored at a forum in Washington, D.C., on May 29, 2026.
Khanna, who first joined the U. of I. Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics in 1995, is the ACES Distinguished Professor in Environmental Economics in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES).
In her ground-breaking research, Khanna explores what motivates agricultural producers to participate in conservation programs or adopt innovative approaches to meet demands for food and fuel, such as precision farming and biofuels. Her work informs stakeholders and policy makers about the cost-effectiveness of various policies to improve environmental quality and their implications for farm profitability, land use, and food and fuel production. Her pioneering analysis of voluntary approaches to environmental protection demonstrated that firms can be effectively motivated to reduce their pollution voluntarily because it may preempt future regulation, while also improving a firm’s reputation with investors and consumers.
Khanna also leads her field in developing models to understand the impact of biofuels and renewable energy policies on food and fuel prices, as well as land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water quality. Her interdisciplinary research provides insights from the farm level to the economy as a whole.
Khanna was named iSEE Director in July 2022 but has been a leader at the Institute since its inception in December 2013, first as Associate Director for Education & Outreach, then as Associate Director for Research, and as Interim Director in 2020. The institute addresses the world’s pressing sustainability, energy, and environmental needs by bringing together faculty, students, and staff from across campus to focus on research solutions, campus sustainability, and academics and engagement — all through an interdisciplinary lens.
Under Khanna’s leadership, iSEE has expanded its multimillion-dollar research portfolio with major projects focusing on agrivoltaics, circular bioeconomy systems, sustainable transportation, and smart and sustainable agriculture – including the I-FARM “Farm of the Future,” the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center, and the Levenick Center for a Climate-Smart Circular Bioeconomy. She is Director of iSEE’s SCAPES Agrivoltaics Project, which integrates solar arrays with crops and recently opened a new custom research installation at the Illinois Energy Farm.
The institute also successfully launched an Environmental Leadership Program, which is training the next generation of sustainability leaders, and a new EcoReps sustainability ambassadors program. Additionally, iSEE has continued to lead the development of the Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP), support expansion of on-campus solar and geothermal energy projects, and partner with other academic units on innovative learning opportunities for students.
At Illinois, Khanna holds appointments with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences; the Center for Digital Agriculture at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology; and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. She is also a Co-PI at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), a Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center, and a University of Illinois Scholar. She was President of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and is a Fellow of AAEA and the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.