The Bay Area is known for its surplus of geniuses—and not just of the tech variety.





Each year, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards 20 to 30 MacArthur Genius Grants, prizes of $625,000 (paid in installments over five years) that are bestowed upon individuals who, through their exceptional originality and insights, have made significant contributions to their given field of work.





On September 22nd, this year's list of winners was announced, and, not surprisingly, it includes a handful of talents from our own backyard—including a sculptor, a biologist, a finance innovator, and a graphic novelist.





Meet the geniuses.

Manu Prakash's Foldscope (via mccrone.com)

Manu Prakash, Physical Biologist and Inventor

Prakash, 36, is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University. His work focuses on often "easy to observe but hard to explain" phenomena in biological and physical contexts. Recently, Prakash has been inventing new devices that are low-cost and widely accessible to solve difficult problems in global health, science education, and ecological surveillance. His Foldscope, for example, is a lightweight optical microscope that costs less than a dollar to produce and is assembled from a single sheet of paper, with integrated lenses and electronics, in an origami-like folding design. Foldscope has already been accepted in many educational contexts, and Prakash is working to refine it for use in public health and biomedical settings. Another recent project is his sticker-like microfluidic chip that can collect thousands of nanoliter-volume droplets of saliva from mosquito bites that can be screened for pathogens. Learn more about Prakash's work...





Vincent Fecteau in San Francisco. (via wesleyan.edu)

Vincent Fecteau, Sculptor



San Francisco–based sculptor Vincent Fecteau, 47, is known for transforming ordinary materials—foam core, seashells, string, rubber bands, paper clips, walnut shells, popsicle sticks—into beautiful handcrafted sculptures. His art has been included in numerous exhibitions across the country and in Europe, including the 2002 and 2012 Whitney Biennials, the 2013 Carnegie International, and a 2008 solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Locally, his work was included in the 1997 group show "Bay Area Now" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the MOMA in New York and SFMOMA. Learn more about Fecteau's work...





José A. Quiñonez. financial innovator (via latimes.com)

José A. Quiñonez, Financial Services Innovator

Through the Mission Asset Fund of San Francisco, founder and CEO José Quiñonez, 45, is providing low-income, minority, and immigrant families with means to secure safe credit and financial security. A Mexican immigrant himself, the UC Davis alum aims to create a path to mainstream financial services and non-predatory credit for individuals who are invisible to banks and credit institutions, meaning they have no checking or saving accounts—without credit history, it is nearly impossible for them to obtain safe loans for cars, homes, and businesses, or even to rent an apartment. Quiñonez is helping people overcome these challenges by linking rotating credit associations or lending circles, a traditional cultural practice of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, to the formal financial sector. Learn more about Quiñonez's work...





Gene Luen Yang, working on a graphic novel. (via latimes.com)

Gene Luen Yang, Graphic Novelist

Yang, 43, is a writer of graphic novels and comics. He is a Bay Area native, having grown up in the East Bay and attended the University of California, Berkeley. Until recently, he was the Director of Information Services and taught computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland. Currently, in addition to cartooning, he teaches creative writing through Hamline University's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. He is most widely known for his graphic novel American Born Chinese, published in 2006, which was the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award and the first to win the American Library Association's Printz Award. It also won an Eisner Award for Best New Graphic Album. In 2013, he released Boxers & Saints, a two-volume graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion, which was nominated for a National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Prize. Learn more about Yang's work...





American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang (via geneyang.com)



