Meet the 2012 MacArthur Fellows
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Natalia Almada
Altamura Films
Mexico City, Mexico
Age: 37
Documentary Filmmakercapturing complex and nuanced views of Mexican history, politics, and culture in insightful and poetic works that affirm the potency of documentary film as both an art form and a tool for social change.
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Uta Barth
Los Angeles, CA
Age: 54
Conceptual Photographerexploring the nature of vision and the difference between how we see reality and how a camera records it in evocative, abstract compositions that focus attention on the act of looking and the process of perception.
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Claire Chase
International Contemporary Ensemble
Brooklyn, NY
Age: 34
Arts Entrepreneurforging a new model for the commissioning, recording, and live performance of classical music and opening new avenues of artistic expression for the twenty-first-century musician.
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Raj Chetty
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Age: 33
Public Economistelucidating key policy issues of our time in theoretical and empirical studies that refine our understanding of the impact of public finance on economic activity.
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Maria Chudnovsky
Columbia University
New York, NY
Age: 35
Mathematicianinvestigating the fundamental principles of graph theory and laying the conceptual foundations for deepening connections between graph theory and other major branches of mathematics, such as linear programming and geometry.
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Eric Coleman
University of Colorado School of Medicine
Denver, CO
Age: 47
Geriatricianaddressing system-wide deficiencies in patient transitions from hospitals to homes and other sites of care and improving the health outcomes of millions of older adults suffering from chronic illness.
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Junot Díaz
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
Age: 43
Fiction Writerusing raw, vernacular dialogue and spare, unsentimental prose to draw readers into the various and distinct worlds that immigrants must straddle.
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David Finkel
Washington Post
Washington, DC
Age: 56
Journalistpushing beyond the constraints and conventions of traditional news writing to craft sustained narratives that heighten the reality of military service and sacrifice in the public consciousness.
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Olivier Guyon
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
Age: 36
Optical Physicist and Astronomerdesigning telescopes and other astronomical instrumentation that play a critical role in the search for Earth-like planets outside our solar system.
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Elissa Hallem
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
Age: 34
Neurobiologistexploring the physiology and behavioral consequences of odor detection and chemoreception in invertebrates and identifying interventions that may eventually reduce the scourge of parasitic infections in humans.
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An-My Lê
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Age: 52
Photographerapproaching the subjects of war and landscape from new perspectives to create images that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction and are rich with layers of meaning.
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Sarkis Mazmanian
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
Age: 39
Medical Microbiologistilluminating the complex interplay between microbes and the host immune system and the role certain bacteria may play in the development, or mitigation, of a broad range of human diseases.
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Dinaw Mengestu
Washington, DC
Age: 34
Writerenriching understanding of the little-explored world of the African diaspora in America in tales distilled from the experience of immigrants whose memories are seared by escape from violence in their homelands.
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Maurice Lim Miller
Family Independence Initiative
Oakland, CA
Age: 66
Social Services Innovatordesigning programs of mutual support and self-sufficiency that break the cycle of economic dependency for low-income families and build more resilient communities from the ground up.
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Dylan C. Penningroth
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Age: 41
Historianunearthing evidence from widely scattered archives to shed light on shifting concepts of property ownership and kinship among African American slaves and their descendents following emancipation.
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Terry Plank
Columbia University
New York, NY
Age: 48
Geochemistprobing the usually invisible but remarkably powerful thermal and chemical forces deep below the Earth’s crust that drive the motion of tectonic plate collisions.
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Laura Poitras
Praxis Films
New York, NY
Age: 48
Documentary Filmmakerrevealing the consequences of military conflict abroad in illuminating documentaries that portray the lives and intimate experiences of families and communities largely inaccessible to the American media.
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Nancy Rabalais
Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium
Chauvin, LA
Age: 62
Marine Ecologistdocumenting the environmental and economic consequences of hypoxic zones in the Gulf of Mexico and informing strategies for restoring the degraded waters of the Gulf and the Mississippi River basin.
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Benoît Rolland
Benoît Rolland Studio
Boston, MA
Age: 58
Stringed-Instrument Bow Makerexperimenting with new designs and materials to create violin, viola, and cello bows that rival the quality of prized nineteenth-century bows and meet the artistic demands of today’s musicians.
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Daniel Spielman
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Age: 42
Computer Scientistconnecting theoretical and applied computing to resolve issues in code optimization theory with implications for how we measure, predict, and regulate our environment and behavior.
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Melody Swartz
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland
Age: 43
BioengineerBioengineer enhancing understanding of the dynamic processes of tissue vascularization and immune responses to tumor invasion using a large toolbox of concepts and methods from biophysics, cell culture, molecular genetics, engineering, and immunology.
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Chris Thile
New York, NY
Age: 31
Mandolinist and Composercreating a new musical aesthetic and a distinctly American canon for the mandolin through a lyrical fusion of traditional bluegrass orchestrations with a range of styles and genres.
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Benjamin Warf
Boston Children's Hospital
Boston, MA
Age: 54
Pediatric Neurosurgeonrevolutionizing treatment of hydrocephalus and other intra-cranial diseases in very young children and advancing standards of and access to health care in both the developed and poorest regions of the world.
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