An Oscar-nominated film director, a labour organiser for household workers, a physicist who specialises in the brain, a cartoonist chronicler of lesbian life and experts on nanotechnology and cryptography were among this year’s recipients of MacArthur fellows “genius” grants, announced on Wednesday.



The nine women and 12 men will each receive a no-strings-attached stipend of $625,000, paid out over five years. The awards come with no stipulations or reporting requirements, and allows recipients maximum freedom to follow their own creative visions.



Artist Rick Lowe, who has transformed a row of neglected houses in Houston into an art project, community centre and preservation initiative, said he was sitting in a meeting when his phone went off. “It was a huge shock. It’s not the sort of thing that happens everyday,” he said.



He said the grant was presenting a dilemma. “I’m used to not having anything. I now have significant resources and am thinking about what I can do and how it can benefit the community. I keep vacillating between wow, I can do anything and oh shit. What am I going to do? It’s a great problem to have.”



This year’s group includes:



• Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing, a 2012 documentary film about the Indonesian killings of 1965–66 that was nominated for an Academy award.



• Ai-jen Poo, who as lead organizer of the New York City–based Domestic Workers United has worked to improve conditions and labour standards for the US’s estimated one to two million domestic or private household workers.



• Alison Bechdel, the cartoonist behind long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.



• Craig Gentry, a computer scientist who specialises in cryptography and theoretical computer science.



• Jonathan Rapping, director of Gideon’s Promise, an organization devoted to training and supporting public defenders across the south-eastern United States.



“Those who think creativity is dying should examine the life’s work of these extraordinary innovators who work in diverse fields and in different ways to improve our lives and better our world,” said Cecilia Conrad, vice-president of the MacArthur fellows program. “Together they expand our view of what is possible and they inspire us to apply our own talents and imagination.”



The MacArthurs are awarded not for “past accomplishment but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential,” according to the foundation’s website. Awards are made by an anonymous group which nominates potential fellows. Former recipients have included writer Cormac McCarthy, film-maker Errol Morris and Nobel prize winning astrophysicist Joseph Taylor.

