The list of 2012 MacArthur Fellows is out, and includes
writer Junot Diaz and mandolin player Chris Thile of the band Nickel Creek.
Twenty-three people were selected as MacArthur Fellows —
otherwise known as the “genius” grants. Recipients will receive $500,000 in
quarterly payments over the next five years to use however they please,
"no strings attached."
"The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage
people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and
professional inclinations," the Foundation’s website notes. "In
keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals
rather than through institutions."
Fellows from New York include Maria Chundnovsky, a
mathematician form Columbia University who works on graph theory, An-My-Le ,a
photographer at Bard College known for her landscapes and war scenes, Terry
Plank, a geochemist at Columbia University who focuses on the movement of
tectonic plate collisions, and Claire Chase, a flutist from Brooklyn who is
also the founder the 33-piece International Contemporary Ensemble and known for
her advocacy for new-music.
Last year’s recipients included Radiolab host and producer
Jad Abumrad.
Here's the full list of this year's MacArthur Felllowship
recipients:
-Natalia Almada, 37, Mexico City. Documentary filmmaker who
captures complex and nuanced views of Mexican history, politics and culture.
-Uta Barth, 54, Los Angeles, Calif. Conceptual photographer
who explores the nature of vision and the difference between seen reality and
how a camera records it.
-Claire Chase, 34, Brooklyn, N.Y. Arts entrepreneur who
engages audiences in the appreciation of contemporary classical music and opens
new avenues of artistic expression through her International Contemporary
Ensemble.
-Raj Chetty, 33, Cambridge, Mass. Economist at Harvard
University who studies how policy decisions affect real-world behavior.
-Maria Chudnovsky, 35, New York. Mathematician at Columbia
University whose work is deepening the connections between graph theory and
other major branches of mathematics, such as linear programming and geometry.
-Eric Coleman, 47, Denver, Colo. Geriatrician at University
of Colorado School of Medicine who is improving health care by focusing on
patient transitions from hospitals to homes and care facilities.
-Junot Diaz, 43, Cambridge, Mass. Fiction writer at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who uses raw, vernacular dialogue and
spare, unsentimental prose to draw readers into the various and distinct worlds
that immigrants must straddle.
-David Finkel, 56, Washington, D.C. Washington Post
journalist whose long-form newswriting has transformed readers' understanding
of military service and sacrifice.
-Olivier Guyon, 36, Tucson, Ariz. Optical physicist and
astronomer at University of Arizona who designs telescopes and other
astronomical instrumentation that play a critical role in the search for
Earth-like planets outside this solar system.
-Elissa Hallem, 34, Los Angeles. Neurobiologist at
University of California, Los Angeles, who explores the physiology and
behavioral consequences of odor detection in invertebrates and identifies interventions
that may eventually reduce the scourge of parasitic infections in humans.
-An-My Le, 52, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Photographer at
Bard College who approaches the subjects of war and landscape from new
perspectives to create images rich with layers of meaning.
-Sarkis Mazmanian, 39, Pasadena, Calif. Medical
microbiologist at the California Institute of Technology who studies the role
intestinal bacteria may play in a broad range of human diseases.
-Dinaw Mengestu, 34, Washington, D.C. Writer whose novels
and nonfiction pieces enrich understanding of the little-explored world of the
African diaspora in America.
-Maurice Lim Miller, 66, Oakland, Calif. Social services
innovator who designs projects that reward and track self-sufficiency among
residents of low-income neighborhoods in Oakland, San Francisco and Boston.
-Dylan C. Penningroth, 41, Evanston, Ill. Historian at
Northwestern University who is unearthing evidence from scattered archives to
shed light on shifting concepts of property ownership and kinship among African
American slaves and their descendants.
-Terry Plank, 48, New York. Geochemist at Columbia
University who probes the usually invisible but remarkably powerful thermal and
chemical forces deep below the Earth's crust that drive the motion of tectonic
plate collisions.
-Laura Poitras, 48, New York. Documentary filmmaker
revealing the consequences of military conflict abroad in documentaries that
portray the lives and intimate experiences of families and communities largely
inaccessible to the American media.
-Nancy Rabalais, 62, Chauvin, La. Marine ecologist at the
Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium who documents the environmental and
economic consequences of dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
-Benoit Rolland, 58, Boston. Stringed-instrument bow maker
who experiments with new designs and materials to create violin, viola and
cello bows that rival prized 19th century bows and meet the artistic demands of
today's musicians.
-Daniel Spielman, 42, New Haven, Conn. Computer scientist at
Yale University who connects theoretical and applied computing to resolve issues
in code optimization theory with real-world implications.
-Melody Swartz, 43, Lausanne, Switzerland. Bioengineer who
enhances understanding of the dynamic processes of tissue vascularization and
immune responses to tumor invasion using concepts and methods from biophysics,
cell culture, molecular genetics, engineering and immunology.
-Chris Thile, 31, New York. Mandolinist and composer who is
creating a new musical aesthetic and a distinctly American canon for the
mandolin through a lyrical fusion of traditional bluegrass orchestrations with
a range of styles and genres.
-Benjamin Warf, 54, Boston. Pediatric neurosurgeon at
Children's Hospital of Boston who is revolutionizing treatment of hydrocephalus
and other intra-cranial diseases in young children and advancing standards of
and access to health care in both the developed and poorest regions of the
world.
http://www.wnyc.org
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