September 29, 2026 — Congratulations to Immanuel Wilkins (CRF 2025), recipient of a 2026 MacArthur “Genius” Award! The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today its 2026 class of MacArthur Fellows each awarded an $800,000 grant for their exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the Fellowship to enable or facilitate subsequent creative work. The award, an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential, is distributed over five years in quarterly installments.
“For 45 years, MacArthur Fellows have defied boundaries, by questioning conventions, crossing disciplines, and driving collective progress. The 2026 Fellows continue that creative tradition—they explore the depths of our humanity; they reveal untold origins to modern challenges; they expand the edges of scientific inquiry and life-saving research. They show us new ways to understand the world.” —Kristin Mack, Vice President, Communications, MacArthur Fellows, and Partnerships
About the Award
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. At the heart of the MacArthur Fellows Program is its aim to identify extraordinarily creative individuals with a track record of excellence in a field of scholarship or area of practice, who demonstrate the ability to impact society in significant and beneficial ways through their pioneering work or the rigor of their contributions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or individuals in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations.
Similar to Civitella, nominees are brought to the program’s attention through a constantly changing pool of invited external nominators. Nominators come from as broad a range of fields and areas of interest as possible. Nominees are reviewed by an independent Selection Committee composed of a rotating roster of leaders in the arts, sciences, and humanities professions and in the for-profit and nonprofit communities.
About Immanuel
Congratulazioni to Immanuel on this momentous achievement!