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Benjamin Van Mooy is a new MacArthur Fellow, the foundation announced Thursday.
Benjamin Van Mooy, 52, an oceanographer from Woods Hole, Mass., has been named a Class of 2024 MacArthur Fellow.
Massachusetts oceanographer awarded ‘genius grant’ to continue research on microbial organisms, MacArthur Foundation announced on Tuesday.
Benjamin Van Mooy is a senior researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, where he studies how plankton can affect sensitive food webs, climate regulation and carbon storage in the ocean.
“When I first got the call from the MacArthur Foundation, I was absolutely convinced they dialed the wrong number,” Van Mooy said in a statement.
The MacArthur Fellows program recognizes a handful of “extraordinarily creative individuals” each year, program said. In addition to the title, the foundation awards each individual member a grant of $800,000.
“These plankton, and the molecules they contain, are my passion,” Van Mooy said in a statement on MacArthur’s website. “The role of plankton in critical ocean processes remains a mystery, but the molecules in plankton, particularly lipids, can help us ‘see’ plankton, and thus the ocean, in entirely new ways.”
Van Mooy has been with WHOI since 2003 and was recently named interim vice president for science and technology, the institution said.
Of 22 fellows named this year, two others reside in New England. Providence-based media artist Tony Cokes and Yale professor Martha Muñoz both also received the grant.
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