3 regional researchers among recipients
Prestigious $625,000 MacArthur gift offers freedom to pursue ideas
A biologist who studies human conception, a physicist who studies the behavior of quantum physics and a sociologist who challenges assumptions about the urban poverty and violence are the Bay Area recipients of this year’s MacArthur Foundation genius grants.
The awards, announced Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, were given to 21 recipients, including three faculty members at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. The $625,000 gift gives each recipient unfettered freedom to pursue creative ideas.
“In the midst of civil unrest, a global pandemic, natural disasters and conflagrations, this group of 21 exceptionally creative individuals offers a moment for celebration,”
said Cecilia Conrad, managing director of the MacArthur Fellowship. “They are asking critical questions, developing innovative technologies and public policies, enriching our understanding of the human condition and producing works of art that provoke and inspire us.”
Even for extraordinarily creative researchers, conventional funding tends to support research with a practical outcome. Funding agencies are reluctant to support provocative, experimental or high-risk work that might lead to a dead end — or a breakthrough.
“In the past several years, I have submitted numerous grant applications because our lab was in this challenging budgetary situation, and when they called initially and told me I had been awarded a MacArthur fellowship, my first reaction was, ‘ Well, that is a mistake; I haven’t applied,’ ” said recipient Polina Lishko, a UC Berkeley cellular and developmental biologist. “Of course, you do not apply; somebody nominates you.”
This year’s MacArthur recipients are a mix of the little-known and world-renowned, representing a broad cross section of the arts, economics and science. They range in age from 31 to 68 and work in settings as different as Montgomery, Alabama, and Manhattan.
The Bay Area always claims a disproportionate share of grants.
This year’s Bay Area fellows are:
• Polina V. Lishko, 46, whose work at UC Berkeley already has led to the development of promising new non-hormonal contraceptives for women and could lead to male or unisex contraceptives.
Lishko, grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, the child of two chemists. She conducted her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, served as an instructor at UC San Francisco and joined the faculty of the UC Berkeley in 2012, where she is currently an associate professor in the department of molecular and cell biology.
Her work investigates the molecular mechanisms that guide mammalian fertilization, with a focus on the cellular processes that regulate the movement of sperm through the female reproductive tract.
• Monika Schleier-Smith, 37, whose Stanford University research with lasercooled atoms pushes the frontier of quantum technologies.
Ever since learning of the strange and counterintuitive laws of quantum physics, she yearned to watch them in action. The extreme information density — just 40 quantum mechanical particles contain more information than the world’s largest supercomputer — can enable new approaches to computation, timekeeping, navigation and secure telecommunications.
She traces her fascination with quantum mechanics with chemistry classes in high school and college. Born and raised in Fairfax County, Virginia, she earned a B.A. in chemistry and physics, with a secondary major in math, at Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2013, Schleier-Smith joined the faculty at Stanford, where she is currently an associate professor in the physics department.
• Forrest Stuart, 38, a Stanford sociologist and urban ethnographer who uses fieldwork, archives, and other methods to investigate the causes and consequences of urban poverty.
His prize-winning first book, “Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row,” explores the impact of “zerotolerance” policing. His latest book, “Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy,” examines how digital social media transforms the social organization of gangs and urban culture.
Raised in San Bernardino by a single mother who was an English teacher, he witnessed friends, family members and peers cycle through prison.
As an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, Stuart studied under the philosopher and political activist Angela
Davis, which led him to help people reenter society after jail or prison. He earned a Ph.D. at UCLA and is currently an associate professor in the sociology department and director of the Stanford Ethnography Lab at Stanford University.