Nigerian Biophysicist wins $500, 000 Science Prize

Dabiri

30year old biophysicist Genius, Nigerian Dr. John O. Dabiri is among the 23 winners selected across the globe in this years MacArthur Genius Awards, a fellows Program that awards “Genius” grants to exceptional inventors,  innovators and other creative types.


The MacArthur Foundation was quoted as saying that Dabiri is “investigating the  hydrodynamics of jellyfish propulsion, which has profound implications for our  understanding of evolutionary adaptation and such related issues in fluid dynamics as  blood flow in the human heart.”

This year’s honorees were contacted by The John D. and Catherine T.  MacArthur Foundation and offered $500,000 each with no strings attached over the next  five years to pursue work in their field of interest.

Biography
John Dabiri is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories and the Option of Bioengineering at Caltech.  He graduated from Princeton University with a B.S.E. degree summa cumlaude in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in June 2001.  In September 2001, he came to Caltech as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow, Betty and Gordon Moore Fellow, and Y.C. Fung Fellow in Bioengineering. Under the supervision of Professor Morteza Gharib, he earned an M.S. degree in Aeronautics in June 2003, followed by a Ph.D. in Bioengineering with a minor in Aeronautics in April 2005. He joined the Caltech faculty in May 2005. In 2008, he was selected as an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator for research in bio-inspired propulsion, and Popular Science magazine named him one of its "Brilliant 10" scientists.