Five Researchers Win Guggenheim

Five researchers connected with Harvard have won Guggenheim Fellowship grants for a varsity of projects including an examination of the function of regulatory genes and a book on the assimilation of West Indian immigrants in New York City.

Professor of Biology Fotis C. Kafatos, Radcliffe Public Policy Fellow Wendy Kaminer, Associate Professor of History Zachary Lockman, Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences Mary C. Waters and Visiting Professor A. Mitchell Polinsky all received the awards, which range in size.

Waters will use her prize money while she writes a book based on research she did last summer on the assimilation of West Indian immigrants into New York life.

"I'm interested in the interplay of race and ethnicity in Black immigrants," she said. "[The award] offers me the opportunity to write without having to teach."

When she found out about the prize, she said, "I was very happy and elated and I jumped around the office."

Kafatos, also professor of Biology at the University of Crete, said his award will take him to Cambridge University to study and research at the school's department of genetics.

Polinsky, who is Crocker professor of law and economics at Stanford University, is a visiting professor at the Law School. His grant money will fund "a study of the role of federal and state governments in sanctioning individual and corporate wrongdoers," he said.

Receiving the award reaffirmed that others took interest in his work, Polinsky said.

Kaminer won a fellowship to research capital punishment, politics and culture, and Lockman will write on popular culture and social change in Cairo between 1882 and 1919, according to a Guggenheim Foundation press release.