Fourteen Women “Geniuses” Win MacArthur Fellowships

The Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation has announced the selection of 25 individuals in this year’s class of MacArthur Fellows. The honors, frequently referred to as the “Genius Awards,” include a $625,000 stipend over the next five years which the individuals can use as they see fit.

Fellows are chosen for their “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” The goal of the awards is to “encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations” without the burden of having to worry about their financial situation.

This year, 14 of the 25 MacArthur Fellows are women. Most of the women have current academic affiliations. Brief biographies of the 14 women can be viewed below.

Julie Ault, Natalie Diaz and Livia Eberlin

Julie Ault is an artist and curator activating and preserving art’s capacity to effect social change. She was a co-founder of the art collective Group Material and has been a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, Portland State University, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Cooper Union, and the California College of the Arts. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. from the Malmo Art Academy of Lund University in Sweden.

Natalie Diaz is a poet blending personal, political, and cultural references in works that challenge the systems belief underlying contemporary American culture. She is an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Currently, she serves as an associate professor in the department of English at Arizona State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree and a master of fine arts degree from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Livia Eberlin is an analytical chemist developing innovative mass spectrometry technologies for more efficient and accurate clinical diagnosis and surgical treatment of cancer. She currently serves as an assistant professor in the department of chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. She first joined the university’s faculty in 2016 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University from 2012 to 2015. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Deborah Estrin, Amy Finkelstein and Becca Heller

Deborah Estrin is a computer scientist creating open-source applications and platforms that leverage mobile computing devices and network services to address socio-technological challenges. She is a professor of in the department of computer science and associate dean at Cornell Tech. She has previously held faculty positions at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Amy Finkelstein is an economist investigating the ways in which health care policy affects health, health care, and well-being. She is the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been a faculty member since 2005. She also serves as the co-founder and co-scientific director of J-PAL North America, as founding editor of American Economic Review: Insights, and as co-director of the Public Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master of philosophy from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Becca Heller is a human rights lawyer mobilizing the resources of law schools and law firms to defend the rights of refugees and improve protection outcomes for many of the world’s most at-risk populations. She has served as co-founder and director of the International Refugee Assistance Project since 2008 and was a visiting clinical lecturer at Yale Law School from 2010 to 2018. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and a juris doctorate from Yale Law School.

Kelly Link, Dominique Morisseau and Okwui Okpokwasili

Kelly Link is a short story writer pushing the boundaries of literary fiction in works that draw on genres such as fantasy, science fiction, and horror while also engaging fully with the concerns and emotional realism of contemporary life. Many of the stories in her collection, Get in Trouble (Random House, 2014), take place in social landscapes marked by deep social and economic inequality. With her husband, Gavin Grant, Link directs the Small Bear Press, which publishes unique voices in fantasy and literary fiction that do not appeal to commercial publishers. Link holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a master of fine arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Dominique Morisseau is a playwright whose works portray the lives of individuals and communities grappling with economic and social changes, both current and historical. She has a background as an actor and spoken-word artist. Currently, she serves as a Residency Five Playwright at the Signature Theatre in New York City. She holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan.

Okwui Okpokwasili is a performer, choreographer, and writer creating multidisciplinary performance pieces that draw viewers into the interior lives of women of color, particularly those of African and African American women. The child of immigrants from Nigeria, Okpokwasili was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and the histories of these places and the girls and women who inhabit them feature prominently in much of her work. Currently, she serves as a Hodder Fellow at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University.

Kristina Olson, Lisa Parks and Rebecca Sandefur

Kristina Olson is a psychologist shedding light on the social and cognitive development of transgender and gender-nonconforming youth. Currently, she serves as an associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Washington. Previously, she was an assistant professor at Yale University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both from Harvard University.

Lisa Parks is a media scholar exploring the global reach of information technology infrastructures, such as satellites, internet cables, power poles, and drones, and their cultural, political, and humanitarian implications. Currently, she serves as a professor of comparative media studies and director of the Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1998 to 2016 before joining the MIT faculty in 2017. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rebecca Sandefur is a sociologist whose research on how legal services are delivered and consumed is informing emerging models for more equal access to civil justice. She is an associate professor in the department of sociology and the College of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Additionally, she is as a Faculty Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both from the University of Chicago.

Sarah T. Stewart and Doris Tsao

Sarah T. Stewart is a planetary scientist shedding light on planet formation and evolution. Her research investigates the effects of high-energy impacts on planets and planet-like bodies through a combination of shock physics experiments on natural materials, theoretical models, and computational simulations. She currently serves as professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

Doris Tsao is a neuroscientist who uses brain imaging technology, electrical recording techniques, and mathematical modeling. Her most notable research has focused on uncovering the fundamental neural principles that underlie one of the brain’s most highly specialized and socially important tasks: recognizing a face. Currently she serves as a professor of biology, the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Center for Systems Neuroscience Leadership Chair, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the California Institute of Technology. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Caltech and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Photos © John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – used with permission.