Violinist, teacher and pastor among the 25 winners of the "Engineering Grant"

CHICAGO – A violinist who hosts concerts for the homeless, a professor whose research is being used to increase the access of poor communities to civil justice, and an activist pastor are among MacArthur's recipients this year and recipients of so-called engineering grants.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Thursday named 25 people, including academics, activists, artists, academics and scientists, who will receive $ 625,000 over five years for their own use.

The Chicago-based foundation has been awarding scholarships annually since 1981 to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional talent to contribute to the pursuit of their creative, professional or intellectual pursuits. Potential candidates are brought to the attention of the foundation by an anonymous group of candidates. The selected persons are sworn to secrecy until the announcement of their names.

The first violinist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vijay Gupta, said he was "quite upset" when he said he was named MacArthur. He has been honored to be the co-founder and Artistic Director of Street Symphony, which has been performing in homeless shelters, jails and halfway houses for about eight years.

"They reminded me why I became a musician," Gupta said of the homeless. "Artists have a role to play in telling the truth about what is happening in our world today."

Gupta, 31, had the idea of ​​Street Symphony while he was giving lessons to Nathaniel Ayers, a Juilliard-trained musician whose mental illness had led to homelessness and which had inspired the movie "The Soloist".

"I grew up in contact with mental illness," Gupta said, noting that he had experienced it. "Our goal is to find more artists who want to have not only their artistic talent, but also to be told their human story."

Gupta, who won a spot at the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 19, said he had no idea how he would spend the money, but that it gave him the money. opportunity to think.

"I've been performing all my life, playing the violin at age 4 and on stage at age 7," he said. "I've never had the opportunity to sit down and think about what my life will be like.It gives me a little space to breathe, plan and look ahead."

Rebecca Sandefur, Associate Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Cecilia Conrad, Executive Director of the MacArthur Fellows program, gave her the award. She happened to be on campus and asked to meet for an unrelated topic.

"It was an extraordinary experience and a total shock," said Sandefur. "It was not something you expect."

Sandefur's research calls for a new approach to increasing the access of poor communities to the justice system. She created the first national mapping of civil legal aid providers, revealing which states had the resources to provide this assistance and which ones did not. She also determined that cost is just one of many factors that prevent the poor from hiring a lawyer. Other problems include aversion to lawyers, fear and pessimism about the fairness of the legal system and lack of understanding of what constitutes a legal issue.

Sandefur, 47, argues that while the problems of the criminal justice system have received much attention, the civil side of the law has not made the case. subject of sufficient attention.

"This also affects millions of people," she said. "A person can lose a house or be evicted, do not see children after a divorce proceeding or get unemployment insurance that is due to them."

Sandefur said the prize would be important to advance his work.

"We are going to act on a problem that has existed for a long time," she said.

Gregg Gonsalves, 54, is a global health advocate and assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University. A long-time advocate of HIV / AIDS, his research focuses on the use of quantitative analysis and operational research to improve responses to public health challenges around the world. He co-founded the Global Partnership on Justice for Justice at Yale to advance the perspectives of human rights and social justice in the areas of public health, legal research and law enforcement. ;education.

Matthew Aucoin, a 28-year-old composer, conductor and resident artist at Los Angeles Opera, is another winner this year. Aucoin composes instrumental works ranging from pieces for soloists to compositions for choir and orchestra. His operatic work "Crossing", inspired by Walt Whitman's diary during his work on the Civil War with wounded soldiers, was premiered in 2015.

Ken Ward Jr., an award-winning journalist at the Charleston Gazette-Mail and formerly at the Charleston Gazette, was the only journalist on the list this year. The foundation said Ward was chosen because he excels at "revealing the human and environmental consequences of extracting natural resources in West Virginia and strengthening the accountability of public and private actors".

William J. Barber II, pastor of the Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and founder of the Leadership Development Organization, Repairers of the Breach, have also been appointed members. In 2017, Barber began a series of rallies around the "Moral Monday" outside Capitol Hill, North Carolina, to protest laws cracking down on voter turnout.

Entered on the phone Thursday after the announcement of the Fellows' nomination, Barber was participating in a protest against the minimum wage "Fighting for $ 15" in front of the McDonald's headquarters in Chicago. He told The Associated Press that this honor simply meant that he still had work in front of him, not less.

"They do not share these grants for you to sit in. They hope and believe that you will do more," said Barber, who co-chairs the Campaign for the Poor, a revival of the movement launched by Reverend Martin Luther King. Jr. just before his assassination.

The other recipients named on Thursday are:

Julie Ault, artist and curator of New York; Clifford Brangwynne, Biophysics Engineer, Princeton, New Jersey; Natalie Diaz, a poet from Tempe, Arizona; Livia S. Eberlin, an analytical chemist from Austin, Texas; Deborah Estrin, a computer scientist from New York; Amy Finkelstein, health economist from Cambridge, Massachusetts; Becca Heller, a lawyer specializing in human rights in New York

Raj Jayadev, a community organizer from San Jose, California; Titus Kaphar, a painter from New Haven, Connecticut; John Keene, a writer from Newark, New Jersey; Kelly Link, a fiction writer from Northampton, Massachusetts; Dominique Morisseau, a playwright from New York; Okwui Okpokwasili, choreographer and performer from New York;

Kristina Olson, a Seattle psychologist; Lisa Parks, Media Specialist, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Allan Sly, a mathematician from Princeton, New Jersey; Sarah T. Stewart, a global scientist from Davis, California; Wu Tsang, New York filmmaker and performer; and Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist from Pasadena, California.