Many of the 2025 “genius” fellows are affiliated with universities

The class of 2025 MacArthur Foundation Fellows announced Wednesday includes a number of scholars. This year, the foundation selected 22 “extremely creative individuals” to receive the Genius Award. Each winner will receive $800,000 (no strings attached) over the next five years to “foster and enable innovative, imaginative and breakthrough ideas, thinking and strategies.”

Since the scholarship’s inception in 1981, recipients have included writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers and entrepreneurs. While no institutional affiliation is required, the award is awarded to the following 2025 Fellows with a college or university affiliation:

• Atmospheric scientist Ángel F. Adames Corraliza, an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies the mechanisms underlying tropical weather patterns.

• Epidemiologist Nabarun Dasgupta, director of the Opioid Data Laboratory at the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center, advocates for harm reduction and developing practical plans to mitigate harm from drug use, particularly opioid overdose deaths.
• Archaeologist Kristina Douglass, associate professor of climate at Columbia University, studies how human societies and the environment co-evolve and adapt to climate change.
• Astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry, assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech, uses astronomical data sets and theoretical models to study binary star systems, black holes, neutron stars and other objects.

• Political scientist Hahrie Han, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, uses a range of ethnographic, sociological, experimental, and quantitative methods to study organizational structures and strategies that encourage individuals to interact across differences and work together for change in the public sphere.
• Ieva Jusionyte, a cultural anthropologist and Watson Family Professor of International Security and Anthropology at Brown University, explores the political and moral ambiguities of border regions where national policies have regulated the distinction between legal and illegal conduct historically.
• Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, Research Chair and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, sheds light on the evolutionary mechanisms of cooperation between species and the role of plant-microbe mutualisms in ecosystem health.

• Structural biologist Jason McLellan, professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences and Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, studies viral fusion proteins and develops new interventions to prevent infectious diseases.
• Fiction writer Tommy Orange, a mentor in the Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, captures a variety of Native American experiences and lives in novels that span time, space, and narrative perspectives.
• Nuclear safety expert Sébastien Philippe, assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reveals the past hazards and potential future risks of creating, testing, and stockpiling launchable nuclear weapons.

• Interdisciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim, who serves as visiting critic of sculpture at Yale School of Art, proposes new ways to illustrate the layered meaning and function of cultural artefacts in museums and institutional collections.
• Neurobiologist and optometrist Teresa Puthussery, associate professor in the Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Visual Sciences at UC Berkeley, explores how retinal neural circuits encode visual information in the primate brain.
• Chemical engineer William Tarpeh, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University, develops sustainable and practical methods to recover valuable chemical resources from wastewater.
• Mathematician Lauren K. Williams, the Dwight Parker Robinson Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, illustrates unexpected connections between algebraic combinatorics and concepts from other areas of mathematics and physics.