Professor, alumnus discuss award-winning research

What would you do with $625,000?

University Professor Julie Livingston is one of 23 recipients of the MacArthur fellowship, a five-year, unrestricted stipend of $625,000, due to her research in Botswana. She looked at the care and treatment of the sick in the southern parts of Africa.

Livingston, a public health historian and anthropologist, said her research aims to understand how the relationships between the sick and those who care for them change over time.

According to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation website, Livingston illustrates how traditional healing and care giving practices have been reshaped by regional political and economic dislocation, as well as Western biomedical ideas and techniques.

“By unflinchingly detailing an over-extended medical infrastructure and the families and health care providers who navigate it, Livingston exposes the limits of biomedicine and the unlikelihood that technology alone will fix health issues in Africa or anywhere else,” according to the website.

The grant came as a surprise, Livingston said. The MacArthur fellowship is not something that can be applied for — researchers need to be nominated by their colleagues.

“It’s this interesting, magical thing that you don’t apply for. Instead, they ask people to nominate who you think would be a good candidate,” she said. “If they are interested, they ask for letters from others in the field. It’s a total surprise [for those who are the recipients.]”

While she is thankful for the fellowship, Livingston said she has no idea who nominated her. The whole process is kept secret from the person who receives the award.

“I have no idea who nominated me. No idea who the letter writers are either, or who was on the selection committee,” she said. “I hope that someone out there sees this as a continuing validation of the humanities at Rutgers. It’s nice the foundation selected two historians this year.”

Along with Livingston, Craig Fennie, an assistant professor at the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University, was another of the MacArthur fellows.

A materials scientist and Rutgers alumnus, Fennie said he works with types of materials used in electronic devices. The works he does touches multiple fields of science.

“A lot of what we are doing is fundamental in chemistry,” he said. “It really is a very disciplinary material. We need to know what physicists and chemists know.”

According to the MacArthur website, Fennie identifies new materials by employing a “first principles” approach based on quantum mechanics, in which they are rationally built up, atom by atom, to possess the needed physical properties.

“We plan to take the idea of materials and designing them and working in types of physics,” he said. “Can we design materials that have property ‘X,’ and create them with property ‘Y?’ We design materials with different properties than the one we are looking at.”

Fennie said his research would not be possible without the University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. He received his Ph.D. in 2006 from Rutgers.

“The people and environment they created, [they take] chances and [do] things different,” he said.

The grant money they were awarded came with no strings attached, Livingston said. She would like to start research on the problem of suicide and its aftermath in New York City.

“It’s still in the very, very early stages,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure how the money or recognition will help. It will take time to figure out the best way to use the money. Maybe it can be used to bring people together to have conversations.”

Right now, she said she is just learning how to relax about her bills and mortgage. Her landlord is having asbestos removed from the roof of her building, and her only stress is the noise.

Receiving the fellowship is like a vote of confidence from colleagues, Livingston said.

“The vote of confidence is equally important to the money. For me, I’m just a woman with a notebook. It’s not as financially intense as what other people do,” she said. “Whatever it is I’m doing, it’s going OK, and someone is getting something out of it.”

The humanities at Rutgers are not just an appendage to the medical school, Livingston said.

According to the website, the foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just and peaceful world. The organization offers grants and loans through four programs: International Programs; U.S. Programs; Media, Culture and Special Initiatives; and the MacArthur Fellows Program.

“The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted $625,000 fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction,” according to the website.

Last year, the organization received more than 6,000 grant requests, according to the website. The total number of grants given was 562, totaling $215.2 million. The fellows program awarded $11.8 million.