MacArthur ‘genius’ grants awarded to three Bay Area residents

Michael Lionstar / Michael Lionstar

Twenty-two people received the MacArthur grant this year. They include various artists and scientists, a nuclear weapons specialist , and a harm reduction advocate .

Representing the Bay Area are Oakland-based author Tommy Orange , Berkeley-based neurobiologist and optometrist Teresa Puthussery , [tear-ee-sah poot-a-sare-ee] and Stanford-based chemical engineer William Tarpeh [tar-pay]

Orange is a fiction writer whose novels There, There and Wandering Stars weave together the stories of contemporary, urban Native Americans, and their ancestors.

Puthussery runs a lab at UC Berkeley . Her research has helped create a more complete understanding of human vision, bringing us closer to treating debilitating eye diseases like