Gallery: The 10 New MacArthur Genius Scientists Are All Connected
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation01Williams
Heidi Williams of the MIT Department of Economics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation02Kartik Chandran
Kartik Chandran is an environmental engineer at Columbia University who uses microbes to convert wastewater into things like fertilizer, useful chemicals, and biofuels.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation03Gary Cohen
Hospitals save lives, but they also pollute like crazy. Gary Cohen is co-founder and president of Health Care Without Harm. Based in Reston, Va, he teaches hospitals to remove chemicals from their medical devices, stop using toxic cleaning agents, and wean themselves off fossil fuels.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation04Peidong Yang
Photosynthesis is nature's amazing energy-conversion engine that humans have yet to replicate. But some are coming close. Peidong Yang is using nanowires and synthetic bacteria to create "leaves" that can convert carbon dioxide and water into a bunch of different carbon-based gases.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation05Desmond-2015-hi-res-download-1
Matthew Desmond of Harvard University is an economist who uses field work, data, and court research to show how housing policies contribute to racial inequality.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation06William Ditchtel
William Dichtel is a chemist at Cornell University who thinks very, very small. His research on nanomaterials called covalent organic frameworks could lead to better solar panels able to convert more energy, batteries that can store more electricity, and filters that can clean water better.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation07Novembre-2015-hi-res-download-2
Humans began in Africa, but evolved all over the planet. John Novembre is a computational biologist at the University of Chicago who uses data visualization and digital maps to make links between geography and changes in the human genome.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation08Christopher Re
You've heard of metadata, but get ready for dark data—hard-to-read bits found in every type of file and program that are typically impossible to process. Stanford University's Christopher Re wrote DeepDive to trawl through dark data and form otherwise impossible connections. Scientists have used it to discover new drug possibilities, and law enforcement used it to uncover human trafficking on the web.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation09Stevens
Beth Stevens, a neurologist at Boston Children's Hospital, discovered that your brain prunes away underused synapses using specialized immunological cells called microglia.
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation10Lorenz Studer
Parkinson's disease is incurable. But that could change. Lorenz Studer, of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, has engineered dopamine-producing stem cells that reduce neurodegenerative symptoms in lab animals.
