MacArthur Grants

The MacArthur Foundation named 23 fellows, recipients of the so-called “genius” grant.  The full list of winners is available here.  The fellows receive the fellows will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.  Some people whose work piqued my interest:

• Drew Berry is a biomedical animator whose scientifically accurate and aesthetically rich visualizations are elucidating cellular and molecular processes for a wide range of audiences.
• Carlos D. Bustamante mines DNA sequence data for insights into the dynamics and migration of populations and the mechanisms of evolution and natural selection.
• John Dabiri is a biophysicist studying fluid dynamics in jellyfish. The results of these studies can be applied to better understand from blood flow in the human heart.
• Carol Padden, a UCSD alum, focuses her research on the unique structure and evolution of sign languages—how they differ from spoken language and from each other—and on the specific social implications of signed communication.
• Emmanuel Saez is the only economist on this list. His work examines how taxation affects income and savings.
• David Simon is the screenwriter/producer for the best television series of all-time.

Yesterday, the winners of the prestigious MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowships were unveiled.  Twenty winners received $500,000 of funding over 5 years with no strings attached.  Some of the winers include:

• Esther Duflo is a development economist exploring the social and economic forces perpetuating the cycle of poverty for the poorest peoples in South Asia and Africa..  She is the co-founder of the  Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT.
• Rebecca Onie founded Project HEALTH which works to overcome the barriers for low-income families to good health outcomes that are often the result of apparently unrelated constraints, such as child care, transportation, housing, food, education, and legal advocacy.  She also works with clinics to help train providers to work on identifying patients socio-economic needs.
• Jill Seaman is a physician committed to delivering and improving treatment for infectious diseases endemic to Southern Sudan, one of the most remote, impoverished, and war-torn regions of the world. She first began treating the Nuer tribespeople of Sudan’s Western Upper Nile province in 1989, as an epidemic of visceral leishmaniasis — a deadly, parasite-borne infection — devastated the already conflict-ravaged and malnourished population. In the midst of a civil war, she worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) to set up makeshift clinics and offer the only treatment option for an area with no health care infrastructure, electricity, or running water.