Joe Halpern was named a 2015 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which honors "the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists and civic, business and philanthropic leaders.”
Halpern was cited for having "Introduced reasoning about knowledge to the study of computing. He thinks about computing processes as actors that know facts. This novel perspective he introduced became a standard framework for establishing
the correctness of complex distributed systems. He showed that there are forms of knowledge that all participants in a system may possess at the outset that can never become common knowledge. He developed fundamental tools for reasoning about a range of notions, including awareness, belief, causality, uncertainty, and imperfect recall. His work shaped the area of multi-agent systems, and the interface between computer science and economics."
Others 2015 fellows include Terry Gross, host and Executive Producer of NPR's Fresh Air; concert pianist, composer, and conductor Murray Perahia; astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and novelist Tom Wolfe.