Three women with links to Stanford are among the recipients of this year’s $500,000 MacArthur “genius” fellowships. The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation made the announcement of the “no strings attached” five-year awards on Tuesday.
YUKIKO YAMASHITA, 39, is studying the process of stem cell division and its role in age-related decline in organ repair and in the onset of some disorders and diseases, such as some cancers. The developmental biologist was a postdoctoral fellow in Stanford’s Department of Developmental Biology from 2001 to 2006. She is now at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as an assistant professor at the Life Sciences Institute and an assistant professor at the medical school.
“I feel now that I’ve got some freedom to try some out-of-the-blue-type ideas that probably would not receive funding through conventional research grants,” Yamashita told the Ann Arbor Chronicle.
Alumna SARAH OTTO, 43, a theoretical biologist at the University of British Columbia, focuses on fundamental questions about population genetics and evolution, such as why some species reproduce sexually and why some species carry more than one copy of each gene and the ecological structure and conditions that favor sexual over asexual reproduction. She holds two Stanford degrees: BS ’88 and PhD ’92, both in biological sciences.
Washington, D.C., lawyer MARIE-THERESE CONNOLLY, 54, fights for the rights of older Americans as the director of the Life Long Justice project at Appleseed, a nonprofit network of public interest justice centers. She received her undergraduate degree in political science from Stanford in 1981.
“I couldn’t think of another issue in this country that has such an impact on so many people,” Connolly told the New York Times. She combats physical and psychological elder abuse and mistreatment, and elder financial exploitation, by breaking down barriers among social services, health care, legal and financial systems. She said her award will bring attention to the issue.
— BY CYNTHIA HAVEN
