Two Stanford faculty win 'genius' grants Two Stanford faculty win 'genius' grants (October 01, 2004)

Two Stanford faculty members were among 23 nationally -- and seven in the Bay Area -- to win prestigious MacArthur Foundation grants of $500,000 each. Daphne Koller, a Stanford computer scientist, and Julie Theriot, a Stanford microbiologist, were the local recipients.

"I was very surprised. It was surreal," Theriot told the Stanford Medical School news office. "It's amazing because it's absolutely unrestricted."

Theriot, 36, is an assistant professor of biochemistry and of microbiology and immunology. Her research has tried to give a better understanding of bacterial infections, particularly a food-borne germ which causes dysentery.

She said she hasn't decided what to do yet with the grant money.

Neither has Koller, an associate professor of computer science. "It's a really major decision, and they give you some to think about it," she told the Stanford News Service.

Koller, 36, has worked using algorithms, probabilistic modeling and other computer methods to try to decipher complex information with high levels of uncertainty. Her work has implications in the fields of artificial intelligence and biomedical and genetic data analysis.

-- Don Kazak

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