The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced on Tuesday the 23 recipients of its 2004 MacArthur Fellowships.
The fellowships, commonly dubbed the “genius awards,” recognize people who demonstrate exceptional creativity in their fields. Each fellow receives $500,000 over five years, and the funds come with “no strings attached,” allowing the fellows to use the money as they see fit.
There is no application process for the fellowship program, and the foundation does not conduct interviews of potential fellows. Instead, the foundation invites individuals from wide-ranging fields to serve as nominators. An anonymous selection committee then forwards its recommendations to the foundation’s Board of Directors.
The foundation, which is located in Chicago, named the first MacArthur Fellows in 1981. Since then, 682 people, including this year’s cadre, have received the award.
Following are the 2004 fellows, along with a summary of how the foundation describes their accomplishments:
- Angela Belcher, 37, associate professor of materials science and engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her nanotechnology research has opened new possibilities for controlling inorganic chemical reactions.
- Gretchen Berland, 40, assistant professor of internal medicine, Yale University School of Medicine. She is a physician who uses her experience in journalism and documentary filmmaking to draw attention to critical health-care issues.
- James Carpenter, 55, president, James Carpenter Design Associates, New York. He is a designer, engineer, and sculptor of glass whose architectural work incorporates new fabrication technologies that take into account environmental and energy concerns.
- Joseph DeRisi, 35, associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics, University of California at San Francisco. His research uses discoveries in molecular genetics to better understand how cells function and to advance the diagnosis and treatment of diseases and new viral strains like severe acute respiratory syndrome.
- Katherine Gottlieb, 52, president and chief executive officer, Southcentral Foundation, Anchorage. Her nonprofit group provides innovative preventive and treatment services to Native Alaskans, demonstrating that high-quality care can be offered in regions that are very poor and geographically remote.
- David Green, 48, executive director, Project Impact, Berkeley, Calif. His nonprofit organization helps manufacture and distribute high-quality health-care products -- including intraocular lenses that restore sight to patients with cataracts and other eye diseases -- at low cost to patients in developing countries.
- Aleksandar Hemon, 40, short-story writer, Chicago. Mr. Hemon was born in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his fiction deals with the issues of exile and ethnic conflict.
- Heather Hurst, 29, archaeological illustrator, New Haven, Conn. She reconstructs drawings and paintings of pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, including the reproduction of murals from the Maya city of Bonampak, Mexico.
- Edward P. Jones, 53, author, Arlington, Va. His fiction includes The Known World, a historical novel set in antebellum Virginia that examines the lives of free blacks who owned black slaves.
- John Kamm, 53, executive director, Dui Hua Foundation, San Francisco. His organization works to improve human rights and the treatment of political prisoners in China through discussions with Chinese officials on Chinese jurisprudence and the link between human rights, business, and trade negotiations.
- Daphne Koller, 36, associate professor of computer science, Stanford University. Her work in the field of artificial intelligence combines efforts to develop an explicit representation of knowledge in areas such as medical diagnosis and efforts to categorize data based on statistical properties, such as optical character recognition. Her research findings are being applied in areas such as commerce, security, and biomedical research.
- Naomi Ehrich Leonard, 40, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Princeton University. She is an engineer who develops underwater vehicles that can operate on their own and that can be used for oceanographic, military, and other purposes.
- Tommie Lindsey, 53, coach of the speech and debate team, James Logan High School, Union City, Calif. He teaches public speaking, presentation, and debate at a high school where many students come from needy families; his students have won many national forensics championships, and more than 90 percent go on to attend college.
- Rueben Martínez, 64, founder and owner, Librería Martínez Books and Art Gallery, Santa Ana, Calif. He is a bookseller who regularly organizes cultural events and community activities that encourage Hispanic-Americans and Spanish-speaking immigrants to value literacy and literature.
- Maria Mavroudi, 37, assistant professor of history, University of California at Berkeley. Her scholarship has led to a new understanding of cultural and linguistic exchanges between Byzantium and its Islamic neighbors in the Middle East.
- Vamsi Mootha, 33, assistant professor of systems biology, Harvard Medical School. He is a clinician and physician whose research on the subcellular structures responsible for energy metabolism holds promise for people with metabolic diseases.
- Judy Pfaff, 58, professor of art, Bard College. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores how to make painting more three-dimensional while making sculptures more like paintings.
- Aminah Robinson, 64, folk artist, Columbus, Ohio. She uses charcoal, clay, fabric, found objects, ink, needlepoint, and paint to create works that focus on ancestry, family, and the beauty of simple objects and everyday tasks.
- Reginald R. Robinson, 31, pianist and composer, Chicago. He is a self-taught musician who works to preserve the traditions of classical ragtime music while advancing the genre in his own compositions.
- Cheryl Rogowski, 43, farmer, Pine Island, N.Y. She helps revitalize American family farms by serving as a mentor to immigrants seeking to establish farms and advocating community-supported agricultural programs, such as farmers’ markets and urban clubs that buy organic produce.
- Amy Smith, 41, instructor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a mechanical engineer who invents simple but effective technologies, including water-purification devices and hammer mills for grinding grain, for use in poor countries.
- Julie Theriot, 36, assistant professor of biochemistry and of microbiology and immunology, Stanford University. Her research on bacterial infection sheds light on the biophysical processes that affect the movement of cells and the pathogens that invade them.
- C.D. Wright, 55, professor of English, Brown University. She is a poet who experiments with structure and often writes on social issues, including one volume based on her conversations with prisoners in Louisiana.
