Bowdoin College
10/08/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/08/2025 21:56
MacArthur Grant Honors for Two Bowdoin Community Members
Biologist Toby Kiers '98 and Wabanaki basket maker Jeremy Frey H'25 are among the twenty-two "exceptional, creative, and inspiring" people chosen to be 2025 MacArthur Fellows.
The prize is an $800,000, no-strings-attached award, which, according to the foundation, goes "to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential."
Kiers is an evolutionary biologist exploring the relationship between plants, fungi, and other microbes. In 2021 she founded the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), to map and protect the world's underground fungi, and in 2023 she became the youngest scientist ever to win the prestigious Spinoza Prize (sometimes referred to as the "Dutch Nobel"). Check out this Bowdoin Magazine profile of Kiers from fall 2024.
Jeremy Frey was given an honorary Bowdoin degree this summer for his cultural achievements as one of the foremost Passamaquoddy craftspeople of his generation, descended from six generations of esteemed Indigenous basket weavers. The MacArthur Foundation praises him for "balancing tradition with innovation in technically precise and visually stunning woven artworks."
In 1993, ornithologist Heather Williams '77 received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
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