Meet This Year's MacArthur 'Geniuses'

A specialist in plastic waste management, artists, musicians, computer scientists, and a poet-ornithologist who advocates for Black people in nature are among this year’s 25 winners of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s prestigious fellowships. The so-called "genius grants" honor discipline-bending and society-changing people whose work offers inspiration and insight. The Chicago-based foundation announced Wednesday that it increased the "no strings attached" award amount each receive from $625,000 to $800,000 over five years, the AP reports. The 2022 fellows include:

• Jennifer Carlson, 40, Tucson, Arizona, a sociologist whose research traces the evolution of gun culture in the US.
• Yejin Choi, 45, Seattle, a computer scientist who developed new ways to train computers to understand language and assess the intent of different kinds of communication.

• Danna Freedman, 41, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a synthetic inorganic chemist designing molecules that have great storage and processing computing capacity.
• Sky Hopinka, 38, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, an artist and filmmaker whose abstract and documentary films feature Indigenous languages and perspectives.
• Moriba Jah, 51, Austin, Texas, an astrodynamicist who uses statistical analysis to study data to better estimate the locations and paths of objects in the earth's orbit.
• Jenna Jambeck, 48, Athens, Georgia, an environmental engineer whose study of plastics in the environment facilitates the participation of communities in managing their waste
• Monica Kim, 44, Madison, Wisconsin, a historian of US foreign policy whose archival research in multiple languages and original interviews reveal unstated motivations and policy goals.
• Priti Krishtel, 44, Oakland, California, a health justice lawyer advocating for reforms of the patent system to make access to treatments more equitable.
• J. Drew Lanham, 57, Clemson, South Carolina, an ornithologist, naturalist, and writer who advocates for Black people in nature and encourages connection with and exploration of the natural world.

• Reuben Jonathan Miller, 46, Chicago, a sociologist, criminologist, and social worker who examines the consequences of incarceration, incorporating his personal experiences as a chaplain and relative of imprisoned people.
• Ikue Mori, 68, New York, an electronic music composer and performer whose work expands the bounds of electronic music making by incorporating live and prerecorded sequences.
• Steven Ruggles, 67, Minneapolis, a historical demographer who built and maintains the most extensive database of population statistics in the world.
• Emily Wang, 47, New Haven, Connecticut, a primary care physician and researcher who founded a network of clinics staffed by community health workers and physicians to treat people released from jail.

(View the full list here.)