American-Israeli linguistics professor Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa was inducted into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sandler, who earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas-Austin in 1987, has most recently focused her work on the emergence of new sign languages, developing models of sign-language phonology (speech sounds) and prosody (patterns and rhythms of sound), according to The Jerusalem Post.

She is founding director of the Northern Israeli Institution’s sign language research lab, and has also authored or co-authored three books.