Seven 'genius' Asian Americans receive MacArthur Fellowships

This year's MacArthur Fellows.

This year's 25 MacArthur Fellows include seven Asian Americans who are using their "genius" ideas and deeds to improve life in America.

“The 2022 MacArthur Fellows are architects of new modes of activism, artistic practice, and citizen science," said Marlies Carruth, director of MacArthur Fellows. 

"They are excavators uncovering what has been overlooked, undervalued, or poorly understood. They are archivists reminding us of what should survive," Carruth continued.

"Their work extends from the molecular level to the land beneath our feet to Earth’s orbital environment—offering new ways for us to understand the communities, systems, and social forces that shape our lives around the globe.”

The MacArthur Fellows for 2022 include seven Asian Americans. Each of the "geniuses" will receive $800,000. They are:

Paul Chan

Paul Chan  of New York is an artist striving to express humanity’s complexities and contradictions through an artistic practice that moves across media. He makes drawings, sculptures, and digital projections; writes essays on culture and history; ran a publishing enterprise; and staged a play. He draws on a wealth of cultural touchstones—from classical philosophy to modern literature, critical theory, and hip-hop culture—to produce works that respond to our current political and social realities, making those realities more immediately available to the mind for contemplation and critical reflection.

"I admire works that say and mean nothing in particular. What sets them apart? They tend to manifest a desperate immanence, as if what is expressed is not good enough, but will have to do. They seize time the way a beat possesses a song, to evoke the vertiginous feeling of seeing something emerge by being made and unmade at the same instant. They last as experiences by not staying whole as forms. They radiate an inner irreconcilability about what they are and what they want to be with unrestrained abandon, which is as close as it comes to an honest insight about the plight of living today. 

"This radiance is what makes them pleasurable. Lively. But this is also why they rarely console, as art perhaps ought to, in these great times. They remain, in the end, comfortless. Why? They remind us of just how little time there is left—for anyone—of all that has been lost, how close it all is from disappearing, and what it takes to go on."

Yejin Choi

Yejin Choi of the University of Washington is a computer scientist leveraging her expertise in natural language processing (NLP) to develop artificial intelligence-based systems that can perform commonsense reasoning. The ability to reason, or make inferences, is beyond the reach of existing AI systems because it requires implicit knowledge about how the world works. Choi recognized that rules-based models, such as logic or conditional probabilities, are too rigid to encompass the complexity of commonsense knowledge and thinking. Instead, she uses computational methods for understanding language, or NLP, to develop commonsense knowledge and reasoning models.

”Commonsense is the dark matter of intelligence. We know it’s there, and we all rely on it effortlessly, yet it has been notoriously hard to pin down, especially for machines. My research seeks to tackle this longstanding challenge in AI (artificial intelligence) by teaching machines to reason about the likely causes and effects of everyday events and the likely intents and mental states of people in relation to those events. Through this research I hope to make machines communicate better with humans and align better with human values.”

June Huh

June Huh of Princeton University is a mathematician proving long-standing mathematical conjectures through novel connections between different branches of math: combinatorics and algebraic geometry. Huh began his study of mathematics in algebraic geometry, which involves the properties of geometric structures (such as curves or surfaces) that are described using polynomial equations. 

Combinatorics concerns counting, arranging, and combining sets of elements within a discrete system (for example, in how many different orders can five people sit at a round table). Within mathematics, algebraic geometry and combinatorics are considered quite distinct.

Monica Kim

Monica Kim of the University of Wisconsin is a historian uncovering new insights into U.S. foreign policy in the context of global decolonization after World War II. Through a focus on perspectives beyond American state actors, Kim reorients our understanding of U.S. foreign policy during and after the Korean War.

Kim’s scholarship demonstrates the extent to which military interventions presented as communist containment in fact reflected more individualized struggles over national allegiance, agency, and political recognition.

Afro-Asia, examines economic development as a tool of foreign policy and international influence. Economic scarcity, famine, and political debates about socialism and capitalism often challenge societies freed from colonial rule.

Priti Radhakrishnan Krishtel

Priti Krishtel of Oakland, California, is a health justice lawyer exposing the inequities in the patent system to increase access to affordable, life-saving medications on a global scale. By distilling the technical aspects of the patent system to show its sometimes devastating impact on people’s lives, Krishtel is galvanizing a movement to center people instead of only commercial interests in our medicines patent policy.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Krishtel has argued powerfully that incentivizing innovation should not come at the expense of equity and public health. Particularly during public health emergencies and for taxpayer-funded research, commercial and public interest concerns can be balanced. Krishtel is increasing understanding of how intellectual property policy can impact personal, public, and global health care, and she and I-MAK are envisioning a patent system that benefits all people regardless of geography and economic status.

”I think a lot about who owns our right to heal. We live in a hierarchy of health. Some people get medicine first, and some don’t get it at all. Our ability to heal should not depend on our ability to pay or where we live. But it does. 

"Medicine must always be a global public good. Knowledge can no longer be locked up in this way.

"The challenge right now is that we are living in the age of the bully. A time when a small minority of the historically powerful are trying to own the un-ownable. We are saying no and creating a new, more compassionate and inclusive future in its place.”

Ikue Mori

Ikue Mori of New York is an electronic musician expanding the range of sonic and technical possibilities for experimental and improvisational music. She creates rhythmic and ambient soundscapes using digital processing techniques, a laptop computer, and repurposed elements of electronic drumming equipment. Over her five-decade career, Mori has transformed the use of percussion in improvised music and inspired generations of electronic musicians.

Mori’s most recent recording, Tracing the Magic (2022), consists of seven pieces inspired by women artists who continued creating new work well into their eighties and nineties. It is a continuation of her explorations of sound and improvisational dialogue. The pieces often begin in hushed electronic thumps, pops, and brushed tones. The layering of instruments (among them prepared piano, vocals, percussions, reeds, and bagpipe) builds gradually, ascending to achieve a riveting cacophony. With unceasing curiosity, Mori continues to evolve and to blaze an uncharted path exploring new ways to create experimental, machine-based music.

Emily Wang

Emily Wang of Yale University is a physician investigating the health-harming effects of incarceration and improving health outcomes for people exiting prison. In her clinical practice and research, Wang partners closely with justice-involved populations to develop effective clinical services and to deepen understanding of the structural barriers to healthcare access that they face.

In 2020, Wang became the inaugural director of the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, a collaboration between Yale School of Medicine and Yale Law School. The center bridges the disparate domains of health, law, and criminal justice to study how specific policies and interventions affect the well-being of individuals and communities impacted by mass incarceration. 

One current SEICHE project considers the ethical concerns and potential solutions for COVID-19 testing and prevention measures in correctional facilities. Another explores community-led strategies for reducing incidences of gun violence. Through the dignified, direct care she provides and the rigorous research she leads, Wang is shining a light on complex health needs and inequities that are largely obscured from public view.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.