Four UC Berkeley professors awarded Guggenheim Fellowships

The Guggenheim Foundation named four UC Berkeley faculty — historians Elena Conis and Hannah Zeavin, biologist Rasmus Nielsen and bioengineer Michael Yartsev — to its Class of 2026; each receives a stipend to pursue independent work under the fellowship.

The Guggenheim Foundation named four UC Berkeley faculty to its 101st class of Fellows. Winners include historians Elena Conis and Hannah Zeavin, biologist Rasmus Nielsen and bioengineer Michael Yartsev. Each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue independent work under "the freest possible conditions." The fellows were chosen through a peer-review process that considered prior achievement and promise. Key details: - The Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellows were selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants, the foundation announced. - Elena Conis is a history professor who recently served as interim dean of the School of Journalism; she has written on the history of vaccines and will use the fellowship to work on a book about the history of measles and related public health debates. - Rasmus Nielsen is a professor of integrative biology and of statistics whose laboratory develops statistical and computational methods for analyzing genomic data in evolutionary, population and medical genetics. - Hannah Zeavin is an associate professor of history affiliated with the Berkeley Center for New Media; her past work has examined teletherapy and media influences on motherhood, and the fellowship will support her book All Freud's Children on the development of psychoanalysis through the lens of practitioners' offspring. - Michael Yartsev is an associate professor of neuroscience and bioengineering and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; his lab has developed technologies to record brain activity in freely flying bats and will continue work on principles of how the brain generates adaptive behavior in realistic settings. - Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation, described the new class as representative of leading thinkers, innovators and creators in art, science and scholarship. Summary: The fellowships provide stipends that enable the four faculty members to advance independent projects across history, biology and bioengineering. Undetermined at this time.