Twenty-two people received the MacArthur grant this year. They include various artists and scientists, a nuclear weapons specialist, and a harm reduction advocate.
Representing the Bay Area are Oakland-based author Tommy Orange, Berkeley-based neurobiologist and optometrist Teresa Puthussery, [tear-ee-sah poot-a-sare-ee] and Stanford-based chemical engineer William Tarpeh [tar-pay]
Orange is a fiction writer whose novels There, There and Wandering Stars weave together the stories of contemporary, urban Native Americans, and their ancestors.
Puthussery runs a lab at UC Berkeley. Her research has helped create a more complete understanding of human vision, bringing us closer to treating debilitating eye diseases like glaucoma and macular degeneration.
Tarpeh runs a lab at Stanford. He’s working to develop sustainable methods to recover and recycle chemicals like nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus from wastewater.
Grant recipients will receive 800,000 dollars of unrestricted funds over the next five years.
