List: The 25 recipients of the 2022 MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ grant
The MacArthur Foundation on Wednesday announced its 2022 MacArthur Fellows, 25 people who will each receive an $800,000 no-strings-attached grant.
The program’s stated mission is “to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual and professional inclinations.” The only restrictions are that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the United States and must not be a government official. Click here for more information on the program.
This year’s recipients:
Jennifer Carlson, 40, Tucson, Ariz.; sociologist, University of Arizona. Uncovering the motivations, assumptions and social forces that drive gun ownership and shape gun culture in the United States.
Paul Chan, 49, New York, N.Y.; artist. Testing the capacity of art to make human experience available for critical reflection and to effect social change.
Yejin Choi, 45, Seattle, Wash.; computer scientist, University of Washington. Using natural language processing to develop artificial intelligence systems that can understand language and make inferences about the world.
P. Gabrielle Foreman, 58, University Park, Pa.; literary historian and digital humanist, Pennsylvania State University. Catalyzing inquiry into historic 19th-century collective Black organizing efforts through initiatives such as the Colored Conventions Project.
Danna Freedman, 41, Cambridge, Mass.; synthetic inorganic chemist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Creating novel molecular materials with unique properties directly relevant to quantum information technologies.
Martha Gonzalez, 50, Claremont, Calif.; musician, scholar, artist/activist, Scripps College. Strengthening cross-border ties and advancing participatory methods of artistic knowledge production in the service of social justice.
Sky Hopinka, 38, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; artist and filmmaker, Bard College. Combining imagery and language in films and videos that offer new strategies of representation for the expression of Indigenous worldviews.
June Huh, 39, Princeton, N.J.; mathematician, Princeton University. Discovering underlying connections between disparate areas of mathematics and proving long-standing mathematical conjectures.
Moriba Jah, 51, Austin, Texas; astrodynamicist, University of Texas, Austin. Envisioning transparent and collaborative solutions for creating a circular space economy that improves oversight of Earth’s orbital spheres.
Jenna Jambeck, 48, Athens, Ga.; environmental engineer, University of Georgia. Investigating the scale and pathways of plastic pollution and galvanizing efforts to address plastic waste.
Monica Kim, 44, Madison, Wisc.; historian, University of Wisconsin. Examining the interplay between U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, processes of decolonization and individual rights in regional settings around the globe.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, 69, Syracuse, N.Y.; plant ecologist, educator and writer, State University of New York. Articulating an alternative vision of environmental stewardship informed by traditional ecological knowledge.
Priti Krishtel, 44, Oakland, Calif.; health justice lawyer, Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge. Exposing the inequities in the patent system to increase access to affordable, life-saving medications on a global scale.
Joseph Drew Lanham, 57, Clemson, S.C.; ornithologist, naturalist and writer, Clemson University. Creating a new model of conservation that combines conservation science with personal, historical and cultural narratives of nature.
Kiese Laymon, 48, Houston, Texas; writer, Rice University. Bearing witness to the myriad forms of violence that mark the Black experience in formally inventive fiction and nonfiction.
Reuben Jonathan Miller, 46, Chicago; sociologist, criminologist and social worker, University of Chicago. Tracing the long-term consequences that incarceration and re-entry systems have on the lives of individuals and their families.
Ikue Mori, 68, New York, N.Y.; electronic music composer and performer. Transforming the use of percussion in improvisation and expanding the boundaries of machine-based music.
Steven Prohira, 35, Lawrence, Kans.; physicist, University of Kansas. Challenging conventional theories and engineering new tools to detect ultra-high energy sub-atomic particles that could hold clues to long-held mysteries of our universe.
Tomeka Reid, 44, Chicago; jazz cellist and composer. Forging a unique jazz sound that draws from a range of musical traditions and expanding the expressive possibilities of the cello in improvised music.
Loretta J. Ross, 69, Northampton, Mass; reproductive justice and human rights advocate, Smith College. Shaping a visionary paradigm linking social justice, human rights and reproductive justice.
Steven Ruggles, 67, Minneapolis, Minn.; historical demographer, University of Minnesota. Setting new standards in quantitative historical research by building the world’s largest publicly available database of population statistics.
Tavares Strachan, 42, New York, N.Y., and Nassau, the Bahamas; interdisciplinary conceptual artist. Expanding the possibilities for what art can be and illuminating overlooked contributions of marginalized figures throughout history.
Emily Wang, 47, New Haven, Conn.; primary care physician and researcher, Yale University. Partnering with people recently released from prison to address their needs and the ways that incarceration influences chronic health conditions.
Amanda Williams, 48, Chicago; artist and architect. Reimagining public space to expose the complex ways that value, both cultural and economic, intersects with race in the built environment.
Melanie Matchett Wood, 41, Cambridge, Mass.; mathematician, Harvard University. Addressing foundational questions in number theory from the perspective of arithmetic statistics.