U of T prof one of 24 who win US ‘Genius Grant’

Dorrance, who grew up in Chapel Hill, is one of 24 new fellows of the MacArthur Foundation – good for a $625,000 grant over the next five years. He said he initially missed the MacArthur phone call, as he tends to ignore numbers he doesn’t recognize, assuming they are telemarketers.

The 46-year-old president and CEO of Instituto del Progreso Latina in Chicago is praised for his work helping low-income immigrants succeed in the workplace and participate in education programs that equip workers with the skills they need for higher-paying employment. He sees building a more talented workforce as the key to the city’s economic future. His new book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City will come out next year.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, 33, Chicago: A photographer, video artist and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Frazier’s work explores social inequality in the post-industrial age. Her subjects: People she says have been left behind after America’s industrial economy has moved on.

Mimi Lien, the first set designer ever to receive a MacArthur, staged a Tsarist Russian salon for “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812” (2013), among other innovative works that help build the world of a show. She was cited for “bold, immersive designs (that) shape and extend a dramatic text’s narrative and emotional dynamics”. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the Tony-winning “In the Heights” (2007) along with the wildly popular “Hamilton“, in which he also stars. A computational biologist at the University of Chicago, Novembre’s work has shed new light on the study of human evolution, migration and the cause of the genetic diseases.

The study was based on 2008 and 2009 data.

Marina Rustow, 46, Princeton, N.J.: “Historian mining textual materials from the Cairo Geniza to deepen our understanding of medieval Muslim and Jewish communities”.

Beth Stevens, 45, Boston: “Neuroscientist revealing the heretofore unknown role of microglial cells in neuron communication and prompting a fundamental shift in thinking about brain development in both healthy and unhealthy states”.

Dorrance, a faculty member at the Broadway Dance Center, is the founder Dorrance Dance/New York, a troupe that “aims to honor tap dance’s uniquely handsome history in a new and dynamically compelling context”.

Other fellows are pioneering change at the local level.

Four of the fellowships went to theater artists from a range of backgrounds. The 2015 class of “geniuses” (a term the foundation avoids for its connotation of “a singular characteristic of intellectual prowess”) contains familiar names and faces, as well as less well-known individuals, thrust suddenly into a much brighter spotlight as a result of their having being included in the fellowship’s illustrious roster.

The 44-year-old Professor of Energy in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, specializes in semiconductor nanowires and their practical applications, such as in the conversion of waste heat into electricity.