MacArthur Foundation names 20 Fellows for 2024, awarding $800,000 each across science, arts, and humanities

The MacArthur Foundation's 2024 Fellowship class spans researchers working on climate modeling and drug delivery systems, historians reexamining race and Indigenous sovereignty, and artists whose work addresses migration, systemic inequality, and community identity.

Among the science-focused Fellows, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign climate scientist Kaiyu Guan combines satellite data and machine learning to model how crop productivity can be increased while reducing environmental impact. National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Marika Holland studies interactions between polar sea ice and global climate dynamics, and has demonstrated feedback loops that accelerate ice loss as sea ice thins. Stanford organic chemist Song Lin has advanced electrosynthesis methods that use electrical currents — including from ordinary AA batteries — in place of toxic heavy metals to synthesize molecules for new medicines, according to NPR.

In the humanities and social sciences, Princeton labor economist Ellora Derenoncourt studies the historical roots of the racial wealth gap in the United States. Her research on the 1966 extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act found that expanding minimum wage protections to previously excluded sectors — including agriculture, domestic work, and service industries — sharply narrowed the Black-white earnings gap in the late 1960s and early 1970s, NPR reported. Princeton historian Elizabeth Ellis shifts scholarly focus toward smaller Indigenous groups and their role in shaping early American diplomacy.