Many 2026 ‘Genius’ Fellows Have Ties to Higher Ed

The MacArthur Foundation on Tuesday announced 20 winners of this year’s “genius” fellowships, more than half of whom have ties to a college or university. Each receives a no-strings-attached award of $800,000, paid out in quarterly installments over five years.

“For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress,” Kristen Mack, the foundation’s vice president of communications, fellows and partnerships, said in a statement. “The 2026 Fellows continue that creative tradition—they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research. They show us new ways to understand the world.”

The awardees affiliated with a higher ed institution include:

• Sociologist and energy policy researcher Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo, for “investigating the social, ethical, and political dimensions of climate and energy policies and emerging technologies.”
• Philosopher and cognitive scientist Felipe De Brigard of Duke University, for “reshaping our understanding of the nature and function of memory and its relationship to imagination.”
• Labor economist and economic historian Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton University, for “uncovering the roots and ongoing drivers of racial disparities in wealth and income mobility in the United States.”

• Historian Elizabeth Ellis of Princeton University, for “investigating politics, diplomacy, and conceptions of sovereignty among small Indigenous nations in early North America.”
• Environmental scientist Kaiyu Guan of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, for “integrating Earth observations, process models, and machine learning to improve agricultural ecosystems’ productivity, resilience, and sustainability.”
• Organic chemist Song Lin of Stanford University, for “designing electrochemical methods for more efficient and sustainable construction of complex organic molecules.”

• Poet Layli Long Soldier of the Institute of American Indian Arts, for “exploring ways to articulate Native American histories and celebrate enduring kinship, strength, and creativity.”
• Artist Rodney McMillan of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of the Arts and Architecture, for “exploring how history and socioeconomic conditions determine experience and belonging in the United States.”
• Fiction writer Maaza Mengiste of Wesleyan University, for “revealing the human costs of political violence through a compelling blend of history, memory, and imagination.”

• Historian Ariel Ron of Southern Methodist University, for “uncovering the role of Northern agriculture in economic growth and the expansion of federal power in nineteenth-century America.”
• Forensic anthropologist Kate Spradley of Texas State University, for “enabling identification and repatriation of the remains of migrants who have perished along the Texas-Mexico border.”
• Physicist Vincenzo Vitelli of the University of Chicago, for “building theoretical frameworks to describe the behavior of metamaterials, soft materials, active matter, and biological systems.”
• Saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins of New York University, for “blending traditional jazz motifs with modern textures in works that reflect on the ongoing reverberations of historical events.”
• Chemical engineer and bioengineer Liangfang Zhang of the University of California, San Diego, for “creating novel nanotechnologies for targeted drug delivery, vaccines, and other biomedical applications.”