Our state is home to three of the 25 newly minted MacArthur Fellows and a fourth labors from afar for one of our premier museums. Yes, California and New York have more of this year’s recipients of so-called genius grants — of $500,000 over five years, no strings attached — but we think our geniuses can take theirs.
Meet our team: a clinician researching molecular genetics of breast cancer in women of African ancestry; a theoretical chemist working with molecular and electronic nanostructures; an economist uncovering forces shaping wage inequality, addiction and other social phenomena; and a conservation biologist protecting Madagascar’s plants and animals.
Chicago’s John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which began this program in 1981, said the fellowships are for people of all ages and from all fields “who show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.” MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton said a call from out of the blue by his foundation “can be life-changing,” offering fellows “the gift of time and unfettered opportunity to explore, create and contribute.”
Or take a long, long vacation.
A champion for genetic research
Dr. Olufunmilayo Olopade of the University of Chicago Hospitals met MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton at a meeting in New York not long ago. They spoke, among other things, of the foundation’s work to improve higher education in her native Nigeria, and they exchanged cards.
Last week, Fanton’s foundation dropped another calling card on Olopade, phoning to say she had won a “genius” grant. Her reaction, she said, was, “Oh, my God. How? Why me?”
Olopade, 48, is a hematology oncologist and founding director of the Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics at the U. of C., where she has been on the faculty since 1991. She has found new prominence for her research on the susceptibility of women of African ancestry to a virulent form of breast cancer.
“People in Africa have been understudied, and even African-Americans in this country have been under-studied,” she said. “And since we are on the South Side of Chicago, we have the opportunity to make a difference in understanding what causes health disparities, whether it is genetic, whether it is environment.”
She has championed screening for breast cancer — by advanced scanning technologies or genetic tests — for at-risk women as young as in their 20s.
“If they have genetic testing and we can identify them as being high risk, we don’t have to wait until they are 40 or until they get cancer before we do an intervention,” she said.
Dr. Suzanne Conzen, a U. of C. breast cancer biologist and a colleague of Olopade’s, said the woman friends call “Funmi” is “an extraordinarily positive, high-energy person who can think outside the box.” She said Olopade can take into account molecular biology, genetics and social-psychological realities in tackling difficult problems.
Olopade received her medical degree in Nigeria and did an internship and residency at the old Cook County Hospital. A year after her arrival here, a military coup in Nigeria blocked her return home, so she settled here. She later did postdoctoral work at U. of C.
She is married to Dr. Christopher “Sola” Olopade, a specialist in asthma and sleep disorders at the University of Illinois at Chicago. They live in the Kenwood community and have three children.
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Outside of work, she is kept busy by her children’s activities and those at her church. For leisure, she and her husband bike along the lakefront.
As for her new wealth, Olopade said she and her husband “are just going to continue doing what we were doing, which is advocating for the vulnerable.”
— Charles Storch
Theoretical chemist
Todd Martinez is a theoretical chemist whose work deals with molecules at excited states. His molecules were doing handsprings when he learned that he was a MacArthur Fellow.
“My reaction was complete astonishment and disbelief,” said the 37-year-old professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But many in the world of chemistry, physics and nanotechnology would not be so surprised at Martinez being certified a “genius.”
“He’s young, but he has already become one of the premier people,” said William Goddard III, professor of chemistry, materials science and applied physics at California Institute of Technology. “He’s a real star. I expect a lot of great things from him.”
In basic terms, shorn of all quantum mechanics terminology, Martinez’s work involves converting “the energy from light into mechanical motion and different forms of energy at the size scale of molecules, which is many orders of magnitude smaller than a grain of sand.” A model is how molecules in the eye absorb light, undergo a mechanical motion sensed by the optic nerve and provide sight.
Martinez said the intent is to design molecules that could be powered and guided by light, especially lasers. Such molecules might be used for ultrafast signaling or switching devices. A possible biomedical application could be using controlled lasers to release drugs at specific sites in the body and at set times.
Some of the MacArthur money will be used to build more computing power for his research, he said. As for the rest? “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still trying to process the fact that I was given the award.”
He was born in New York but grew up in Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, stops in his father’s missionary work. He returned to the U.S. to enroll at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
He earned his doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, then did postdoctoral work in Jerusalem and back at UCLA. He joined Illinois’ chemistry department in 1996. He also works at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology there.
He and his wife, U. of I. law professor Cynthea Geerdes, have three children and live in Champaign. Martinez’s work and family occupy most of his time, but he enjoys reading philosophy and watching B sci-fi movies.
— Charles Storch
Economics professor
Kevin Murphy set out on a family vacation after learning he was to receive an unrestricted $500,000 stipend from the MacArthur Foundation.
Destination: Las Vegas.
“Not much danger of me losing any money there,” promised the economist. “I think I understand those laws of probability very well.”
Still, the University of Chicago professor sounded excited enough to make the flight without an airplane.
Time is money, and the MacArthur fellowship means he can spend more on the kind of research that helped him win the recognition. “Some colleagues argue you spend more time looking for funds than working on projects themselves,” he said. “This should free me of a lot of that.”
But Murphy, a member of both the Graduate School of Business and Department of Economics, is not a researcher hiding away on campus, working on arcane topics only colleagues grasp. He is an award-winning instructor with a full load of classes, some of which he team-teaches with Nobel laureate Gary Becker and Edward Snyder, GSB dean.
Furthermore, his research interests have important public policy implications and seemingly come right from the day’s headlines. These include how wage inequality reflects changes in labor demands, development of a “rational addiction” model in which consumers anticipate consequences of their actions, and a study — co-authored with three others — on the economics of crack cocaine.
Murphy has ongoing projects on the economics of the value of medical research. The MacArthur money, to be spread over five years, will allow him to pursue them.
“I’ve never really had much interest in economics for its own sake as opposed to economics as a way to understand the world,” said the 47-year-old professor, who earned a doctorate at the university. “I try to impress my students that every day, when they read the newspaper, they should think about what they learned in economics helping them understand what’s in the paper.”
— Mike Conklin
Conservation biologist
Earlier this year, some scientists named a species of mouse lemur newly discovered in Madagascar after conservation biologist Steven Goodman. It was in recognition, they said, of Goodman’s contribution “to the description and preservation of Madagascar’s lemurs and other animals.”
Now, the MacArthur Foundation has identified Goodman as a member of a species of inquisitive bipeds known as MacArthur Fellows.
Goodman, 48, a staff member of Chicago’s Field Museum, has worked for some 18 years in Madagascar, an island country east of Africa whose remarkable biota is endangered by deforestation and popular growth. He is known as a tireless researcher and mentor to students, spending only two months a year away from the island, in Chicago.
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“Steve is the quintessential field biologist,” said Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at the Field. “He is only starting to show evidence of sleeping and living what most people consider a minimal existence. He used to work all the time.”
In an e-mail exchange from his office in Antananarivo, the country’s capital, Goodman said his time off is for his family and travel.
Heaney said Goodman also is an expert on reptiles, amphibians and mummified birds of Egypt, as well as Baluchistan plants used for medicinal purposes.
The Detroit native studied at the University of Michigan, University of Homburg and Universite Paris-Sud XI, Orsay. He lives in Antananarivo with his wife, a former Malagasy fashion model and clothes designer who formed an organization to benefit local artisans, and their 3-year-old son.
Goodman also works with the World Wide Fund for Nature and University of Antananarivo. He is involved in starting a non-governmental organization in Madagascar for the advancement of science. He said the majority of his genius grant will go toward that effort.
— Charles Storch
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For a full list of winners, go to chicagotribune.com