Grant winners have diverse interests

Natalya Stanko For The CDT

Since 1981, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has recognized 805 fellows, ranging in age from 18 to 82 at the time of their selection. Among this year’s 24 fellows are:

•Deborah Eisenberg, 63, who worked as a waitress in New York City into her early 30s, then took up writing.

In 2006 she published her fourth short-story collection, “Twilight of the Superheroes.”

“As with all of Eisenberg’s fiction, these stories show us who we are and what we’re capable of. They chronicle, and edify, our time,” book critic Ben Cosgrove wrote in Salon. The grant will buy the University of Virginia English professor time for writing.

•Artist Camille Utterback, of San Francisco, who creates interactive abstract projections that respond to your body using digital technology.

Technology, like cell phones and iPods, often removes us from our present and makes us unaware of our bodies, Utterback says. She wants her pieces to inspire passersby to ask, “What happens when I stick out my arm? What happens when I group together with other people in this space?”

The grant will let Utterback experiment with new sensors, lights and projection technologies without having to wait for commissions.

•Mathematician L. Mahadevan, who uses complex mathematics to solve simple questions about our everyday world. According to the MacArthur Foundation, Mahadevan researches “how cloth folds when draped, how skin wrinkles, how flags flutter, how Venus flytraps snap closed.”

The Harvard University professor says his children are an inspiration: “They often ask questions that you can’t answer.”

The grant will enable Mahadevan to try to answer some of them.

Among other 2009 MacArthur Fellows are a bridge engineer, a digital artist, an infectious disease physician, an investigative reporter, a filmmaker and an economist.