Four from MIT win prestigious Guggenheim fellowships

Four MIT researchers are among 181 scholars, artists and scientists recently awarded 2012 fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Guggenheim fellowships are intended for those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. In this year's competition — the 88th in the Guggenheim Foundation's history — nearly 3,000 applicants vied for fellowships.

This year's recipients from MIT, and their projects, are:

• Sheperd S. Doeleman, principal research scientist and assistant director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, for “building an event horizon telescope.”
• Scott A. Hughes, associate professor of physics, for studying “the astrophysics of ultra-strong gravity.”
• Keeril Makan, composer and associate professor in the Music and Theater Arts Section for “music composition.”
• Stephen Yablo, professor of linguistics and philosophy, for “subject matter, seeing-As, and semantics.”

See the full list of winners

U.S. Sen. Simon Guggenheim and his wife established the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1925 as a memorial to their son. The Foundation offers fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions and irrespective of race, color or creed.