The MacArthur Foundation announced Thursday (September 22) the recipients of its prestigious “Genius” fellowships, each awarded with a $625,000 grant. The foundation named 23 fellows drawn from disparate fields, whose pursuits are “breaking new ground in areas of public concern, in the arts, and in the sciences, often in unexpected ways,” explained MacArthur President Julia Stasch in the announcement.
Among the activists, thinkers, and educators receiving these grants are a number of life scientists. Dianne Newman is a Caltech microbiologist whose research on bacterial metabolism spans disciplines. One vein of her work characterizes the arsenic- and iron-dependent metabolic pathways performed by the ancient bacteria that shaped early Earth. Another investigates the anaerobic metabolism of a pathogen that forms biofilms in the lungs, which restrict oxygen ...
