-
The 43-year-old director of advocacy and legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California is being recognized for his efforts to help expand immigrant detainees’ access to legal representation. The MacArthur Foundation cites in particular his work on the class action suit
Franco-Gonzalez v Holder, launched in 2010, in which Arulanantham led a group of lawyers and advocates in securing the right to appointed counsel for immigrants with mental disabilities.
-
The 53-year-old professor of poetry at Yale University uses verse and prose to mine the emotional tensions that have dominated a post-9/11 world and the racial tensions that complicate issues like affirmative action. Her works include
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004) and
Citizen (2014).
-
The 43-year-old School of Critical Studies faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts is being celebrated for her five book-length works of nonfiction that combine feminist and queer theory, cultural and art criticism, philosophy and psychology to make sense of her own personal experiences. According to the MacArthur Foundation, Nelson is responsible for substantially “broadening the scope of nonfiction writing.”
-
The 38-year-old professor of computer science at New York University is working to answer one broad but complex computational question: Can every problem whose solution can be quickly verified by a computer also be quickly solved by a computer? In other words, Khot’s research attempts to define the limitations of modern computing. You can read about his
Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) here.
-
The 36-year-old bioengineering professor from Stanford University uses soft-matter physics to explain phenomena in the physical world and invent solutions to problems across the global health, science education, and ecological sectors. One of his projects involves a low-cost, sticker-like microfluidic chip capable of collecting thousands of nanoliter-volume droplets of saliva from mosquito bites, which can then be screened for pathogens.
-
The 53-year-old director of the Myaamia Center in Oxford, Ohio, is being honored for his work reviving the linguistic, cultural, and intellectual heritage of the
Miami (Myaamia) nation. Baldwin is also a leader for other indigenous groups attempting language reclamation efforts through the
National Breath of Life workshops, which facilitate access to archival materials in D.C.-based archives and libraries.
-
The 51-year-old theater professor from the University of Wisconsin is using storytelling and performance to help improve the lives of elders struggling with cognitive impairment. Her work, including an improvisational theater project called “TimeSlips” that has since morphed into a formal therapy protocol, underscores the importance of sustained emotional connections later in life.
-
The 44-year-old environmental science professor from the California Institute of Technology specializes in microorganisms living in deep-sea beds. According to the MacArthur Foundation, Orphan’s work identifying and understanding the symbiotic relationships between methane-oxidizing single-celled organisms and deep-sea bacteria has been vital to understanding our planet’s climate dynamics today.
-
The 31-year-old playwright from New York City is known for works like “Appropriate” (2012), “An Octoroon” (2014), and “Gloria” (2015). Jacobs-Jenkins is being recognized for his ability to satirize and comment on modern culture, specifically the ways individuals come to terms with race and class — privately and publicly.
-
The 47-year-old sculptor from San Francisco, Calif., creates colorful papier-mâché and cardboard creations that, as the artist describes in a video on the MacArthur Foundation’s website, cannot be fully experienced by simply gazing upon them through a flat computer screen. “He takes a slow and contemplative approach to his craft,” the MacArthur Foundation writes online, “giving careful consideration to how sculptural elements — mass and volume, solid and void, color and texture — fuse to establish surprising configurations that compel the viewer to deepen and prolong one’s engagement with the object.”
-
The 45-year-old founder and CEO of Mission Asset Fund in San Francisco, Calif., is addressing the fact that a disproportionate number of minority, immigrant, and low-income households lack a bank account or credit history — and therefore often cannot apply for loans or rent property. In order to connect these individuals with financial support, Quinonez is borrowing from traditional cultural practices in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
-
The 37-year-old video artist from Olivebridge, N.Y., channels the aesthetic of early animation and low-tech film to critically explore the idea that women have achieved gender equity in society. The MacArthur Foundation describes her art as “a hybrid form of video that is like nothing else being produced today…”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.