(GIN) – A Nigerian biophysicist and Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering with the California Institute of Technology has been named among 23 new Fellows of the MacArthur Foundation for 2010, with each receiving a $500,000 "genius" grant.
John Dabiri, 30, will receive the “no strings attached” award over the next five years, enabling him to “reflect, create and explore” without stipulations or reporting requirements.

Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie, was a 2008 recipient of the MacArthur grant.
Dabiri’s studies cover a wide range of fields, including theoretical fluid dynamics, evolutionary biology, and biomechanics. His special interest is in simple multi-cellular organisms such as jellyfish with profound implications not only for understanding the evolution of locomotion in jellyfish and other aquatic animals, but also for a host of distantly related questions and applications in fluid dynamics, from blood flow in the human heart to the design of wind power generators."

Other winners are jazz pianist Jason Moran and Annette Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, and The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which won a Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009. A professor of law at Rutgers University, she is recognized as one of our country’s most distinguished presidential scholars.