NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Rebecca Richards-Kortum, a bioengineering professor at Rice University, was named a 2016 MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation.

More commonly known as a genius grant, the prestigious MacArthur fellowship comes with $625,000 paid over five years.

The MacArthur Foundation considers the no-strings-attached grants as investments in the future of recipients, usually a hodgepodge from among the nation’s best artists, historians, scientists and activists.

For Richards-Kortum, it’s a nod to the global work she’s done to deliver low-cost medical technology to Third World countries. That includes a piece of machinery she helped develop that assists babies who struggle to breathe and has significantly decreased mortality rates in countries using it.