Chandran is among 24 recipients of the award.
By Raif Karerat
Dr. Kartik Chandran, an environmental engineer and associate professor at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, is among the 24 individuals named as 2015 MacArthur Fellows.
Recognized as exceptionally creative individuals with a track record of achievement and the potential for significant contributions in the future, the Foundation Fellows will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000, allowing recipients maximum freedom to follow their own creative visions.
Chandran is integrating microbial ecology, molecular biology, and engineering to transform wastewater from a troublesome pollutant to a valuable resource.
Chandran approaches wastewater treatment with the goal of producing useful resources such as fertilizers, chemicals, and energy sources, in addition to clean water, in a way that takes into account the climate, energy, and nutrient challenges currently bearing down on us.
Chandran, 41, received a B.S. in 1995 from the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee — formerly the University of Roorkee — and a Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of Connecticut. He was a senior technical specialist from 2001 to 2004 with private engineering firm Metcalf and Eddy of New York, Inc., before returning to academia as a research associate from 2004 to 2005 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
The 23 other MacArthur Fellows are:
Patrick Awuah
- Founder and president
- Ashesi University College (Accra, Ghana)
- 50-years-old
- Ashesi University, which Awuah founded in 2002, is a four-year private institution that offers a core curriculum grounded in liberal arts, ethical principles, and skills for contemporary African needs and opportunities. A native of Ghana, Awuah was educated at American universities and embarked on a successful career as an engineer for Microsoft, but returned home to aid with Ghana’s higher education system. Patrick Awuah received B.S. and B.A. degrees (1989) from Swarthmore College and an M.B.A. in 1999 from the University of California at Berkeley.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Journalist
- The Atlantic (Washington, D.C.)
- 39-years-old
- Coates is a “journalist, blogger, and memoirist who brings personal reflection and historical scholarship to bear on America’s most contested issues,” according to the MacArthur Foundation.
- By subtly embedding the present — in the form of anecdotes about himself or others — into historical analysis, Coates addresses complex and challenging issues such as racial identity, systemic racial bias, and urban policing. He attended Howard University and his articles have appeared in a plethora local and national publications, including the Village Voice, the Washington City Paper, the Washington Post, the New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, where he is currently a national correspondent.
Gary Cohen
- Cohen is a social entrepreneur and activist spurring environmental responsibility in health care both in the United States and abroad. In 1996, he co-founded Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), initially a grassroots cooperative, both to bring attention to the problem and to propose practical, economically viable solutions. He has also founded or co-founded other organizations, including the Healthy Hospitals Initiative, a data-driven platform that guides hospitals in purchasing safer chemicals and healthy food and implementing energy efficient technologies, and Practice Greenhealth, a U.S.-based membership organization for hospital systems to share best practices. Cohen received a B.A. in 1978 from Clark University and studied at the University of California at Berkeley from 1983-1984.
Matthew Desmond
- Associate professor of Sociology and Social Studies, Department of Sociology
- Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.)
- 35-years-old
- Desmond is a social scientist and ethnographer revealing the impact of eviction on the lives of the urban poor and its role in perpetuating racial and economic inequality. He created the Milwaukee Area Renters Study, examined court records, and conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork to construct a vivid picture of the astoundingly high rates of eviction and the ways in which it disrupts the lives of low-income African Americans, in particular. Desmond received two B.S. degrees from Arizona State University in 2002 and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2002 and 2004, respectivelty. He was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University from 2010 to 2013) before joining the faculty of Harvard’s Department of Sociology and Committee on Degrees in Social Studies in 2012.
William Dichtel
- Associate professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
- Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.)
- 37-years-old
- Dichtel is a chemist whose innovations in synthetic and supramolecular chemistry hold promise for bringing a new class of nanostructured materials out of the lab and into daily use. Dichtel’s breadth of expertise, ranging from small molecule organic chemistry to materials and device fabrication, and his “pioneering demonstration of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with unprecedented functionality and improved stability have made him a leading figure in chemistry.” Dichtel received a B.S.in 2000 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of California at Berkeley. He had a joint appointment as a research associate from 2005 to 2008 at the University of California at Los Angeles and the California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty of Cornell.
Michelle Dorrance
- Tap dancer, choreographer, founder, artistic director
- Dorrance Dance/New York (New York, N.Y.)
- 36-years-old
- Michelle Dorrance received a B.A.in 2001 from the Gallatin School at New York University. A member of the faculty of the Broadway Dance Center since 2002, Dorrance has performed with preeminent tap companies and has taught and choreographed for institutions and groups across the United States and abroad. She toured with the Off-Broadway production of STOMP from 2007 from 2011 before founding Dorrance Dance/New York. The outfit has performed Dorrance’s choreographic works at such venues as Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Joyce Theatre, and Danspace Project, as well as at numerous festivals throughout North America and Europe.
Nicole Eisenman
- Painter
- New York, New York
- 50-years-old
- Eisenman “is an artist who is expanding the critical and expressive capacity of the Western figurative tradition through works that engage contemporary social issues and phenomena.” Nicole Eisenman received a B.F.A. in 1987 from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been displayed in solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Kunsthalle Zürich, and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.
LaToya Ruby Frazier
- Assistant professor, Department of Photography
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.)
- 33-years-old
- LaToya Ruby Frazier is a photographer and video artist who uses visual autobiographies to “capture social inequality and historical change in the postindustrial age.” received a B.F.A. in 2004 from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and an M.F.A. in 2007 from Syracuse University. She held artist residencies at the Lower Manhattan Culture Councilfrom 2009 to 2010 and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program frm 2010 to 2011 and was the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin from 2013–2014 before assuming her current position as assistant professor in the Department of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ben Lerner
- Professor, Department of English
- City University of New York, Brooklyn College (New York, N.Y.)
- 36-years-old
- Lerner is a novelist, poet, and critic exploring the relevance of art and the artist to modern culture. He began his writing career as a poet and essayist focused on contemporary literature and art. Lerner received a B.A.in 2001 and an M.F.A. in 2003 from Brown University. Since 2010, he has been affiliated with Brooklyn College of the City College of New York, where he is currently a professor in the Department of English.
Mimi Len
- Set designer
- New York, New York
- 39-years-old
- Lien is a set designer for the theater, opera, and dance world. According to the MacArthur Foundation, she “is revitalizing the visual language of theater and enhancing the performance experience for theater-makers and viewers alike.” Lien received a B.A.in 1997 from Yale University and an M.F.A. in 2003 from New York University.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
- Playwright, composer, and performer
- (New York, N.Y.)
- 35-years-old
- Miranda is a composer, lyricist, and performer reimagining American musical theater in works that fuse traditional storytelling with contemporary musical styles and voices. In “Hamilton,” he uses an urban soundscape to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton’s rise from an orphaned West Indian immigrant to America’s first Treasury Secretary. Lin-Manuel Miranda received a B.A. (2002) from Wesleyan University.
Dimitri Nakassis
- Classicist
- Associate professor, Department of Classics
- University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)
- 40-years-old
- Nakassis is a classicist transforming our understanding of prehistoric Greek societies, according to MacArthur.
- Dimitri Nakassis received a B.A. in 1997 from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in 2000 and Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Texas at Austin. He joined the faculty of the University of Toronto in 2008, where he is currently an associate professor in the Department of Classics, and he has been a visiting professor at the University of Colorado Boulder (2014–2015), the Florida State University (2007–2008), and Trinity University (2006–2007).
John Novembre
- Computational biologist
- Associate professor, Department of Human Genetics
- University of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.)
- 37-years-old
- Novembre is a computational biologist whose work sheds new light on human evolutionary history, population structure and migration, and the etiology of genetic diseases. John Novembre received a B.A.in 2000 from Colorado College and a Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Chicago he was affiliated with the University of California at Los Angeles (2008–2013) and was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in bioinformatics at the University of Chicago (2006–2008).
Christopher Ré
- Assistant professor, Department of Computer Science
- Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.)
- 36-years-old
- Christopher Ré is a computer scientist “democratizing big data analytics through theoretical advances in statistics and logic and groundbreaking data-processing applications for solving practical problems.” Ré has created an inference engine, DeepDive, that can analyze data of a kind and at a scale that is beyond the current capabilities of traditional databases. received a B.S. in 2001 from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in 2009 from the University of Washington at Seattle. He was an assistant professor from 2009 to 2013 at the University of Wisconsin at Madison before joining the faculty of Stanford University, where he is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science.
Marina Rustow
- Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies and Department of History
- Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.)
- 46-years-old
- Marina Rustow is a historian using the Cairo Geniza texts to shed new light on Jewish life and on the broader society of the medieval Middle East. ” Rustow’s current work addresses Geniza documents in Arabic script from the Fatimid caliphate. Using a bidirectional lens—that is, interpreting the material from the point of view of both the Islamic and Jewish communities—Rustow is mining these documents for what they can tell us about how the caliphal state ruled and how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim subjects related to it.” Rustow received a B.A. in 1990 from Yale University and two master’s degrees in 1998, an M.Phil. in 1999, and a Ph.D. in 2004 from Columbia University. She taught at Emory University from 2003 to 2010) and Johns Hopkins University from 2010to 2015) before joining the faculty of Princeton University.
Juan Salgado
- Community leader, president and CEO
- Instituto del Progreso Latino (Chicago, Ill.)
- 46-years-old
- Salgado is a community leader helping immigrants overcome barriers to success in the workplace. Through the Instituto del Progreso Latino, which he has led since 2001, Salgado works with members of the low-income, Latino immigrant communities on Chicago’s southwest side. Most adults in these communities work in menial jobs and face formidable barriers to upward mobility; few have high school diplomas, and many lack the English-language skills needed for a GED or vocational training program. Salgado received an A.A. in 1989 from Moraine Valley Community College, a B.A. in 1991 from Illinois Wesleyan University, and an M.U.P. in 1993 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was programs director of The Resurrection Project, a community development organization in Chicago, prior to becoming CEO of the Instituto del Progreso Latino in 2001.
Beth Stevens
- Assistant Professor of Neurology, F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children’s Hospital
- Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School (Boston, Mass.)
- 45-years-old
- Stevens is a neuroscientist whose research on microglial cells is prompting a significant shift in thinking about neuron communication in the healthy brain and the origins of adult neurological diseases. She received B.S. in 1993 from Northeastern University and a Ph.D. in 2003 from the University of Maryland. She was a postdoctoral fellow from 2005 to 2008 at Stanford University and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is also an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Lorenz Studer
- Director, Center for Stem Cell Biology
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, N.Y.)
- 49-years-old
- Lorenz Studer is a stem cell biologist pioneering the large-scale generation of dopaminergic neurons for transplantation, a breakthrough that could provide treatment for Parkinson’s disease and, eventually, other neurodegenerative diseases, according to MacArthur. He received a Candidate Medical degree in 1987 from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, as well as an M.D. in 1991 and a graduate degree in 1994 from the University of Bern, Switzerland. He held several research positions (1994–1999) at both the University of Bern and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke within the National Institutes of Health before joining the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Alex Truesdell
Alex Truesdell
- Executive director and founder
- Adaptive Design Association, Inc. (New York, N.Y.)
- 59-years-old
- Alex Truesdell is a visionary social entrepreneur who creates low-tech, affordable tools and furniture that enable children with disabilities to participate actively in their homes, schools, and communities. Alex Truesdell received a B.S. in 1979 and M.Ed. in 1998 from Lesley University as well as an M.Ed. in 1982 from Boston College. From 1981 1998 she was affiliated with the Perkins School for the Blind, where she was founder and coordinator of the Assistive Device Center, prior to founding Adaptive Design Association, Inc., in 2001.
Basil Twist
- Puppetry artist and director
- New York, N.Y.
- 46-years-old
- “Basil Twist is a puppeteer and theater artist whose experiments with the materials and techniques of puppetry explore the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, the abstract and the figurative.” Twist received a D.M.A. in 1993 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette. In addition to his best known work, “Symphonique Fantastique” (1998), his other works include “Master Peter’s Puppet Show” (2002), “Hansel and Gretel” (2006), “Dogugaeshi” (2004), and “Arias with a Twist” (2008).
Ellen Bryant Voigt
- Poet
- Cabot, Vt.
- 72-years-old
- Ellen Bryant Voigt is a poet “whose eight published collections meditate on will and fate and the life cycles of the natural world while exploring the expressive potential of both lyric and narrative elements.” In addition to her writing, Voigt is a dedicated and influential teacher. She received a B.A. in 1964 from Converse College and an M.F.A. in 1966 from the University of Iowa.
Heidi Williams
- Class of 1957 Career Development assistant professor, Department of Economics
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.)
- 34-years-old
- Williams is an economist unraveling the causes and consequences of innovation in health care. More recently, Williams and colleagues have investigated institutional factors affecting cancer drug development. Most recently, Williams and colleagues have investigated institutional factors affecting cancer drug development. received an B.A. in 2003 from Dartmouth College, an M.Sc. in 2004 from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.Din 2010 from Harvard University. She has been affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2011.
Peidong Yang
- S. K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Professor of Energy, Department of Chemistry
- University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.)
- 44-years-old
- Yang is an inorganic chemist “transforming the field of semiconductor nanowires and nanowire photonics and enabling wide-ranging practical applications.” received a B.A. in 1993 from the University of Science and Technology in China and a Ph.D. in 1997 from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral fellow from 1997 to 1999 at the University of California at Santa Barbara before joining the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley.