ACES researcher named 2026 MacArthur Fellow
Kaiyu Guan, Levenick Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, has been named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow, receiving what is commonly known as a “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The fellowship includes an unrestricted $800,000 stipend that the recipient can use as they see fit. According to the MacArthur Foundation, the fellows are chosen as “talented individuals in a variety of fields who have shown exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits.”
Guan’s research is building a predictive science of agriculture by integrating field and satellite observations, process models, artificial intelligence and supercomputing. His integrative approach links what can be observed with the biological and physical processes that govern how crops, soils, water, nutrients, climate/weather and farm management interact. His team has advanced remote sensing approaches that integrate field, airborne and satellite observations to map agricultural resources and processes while improving advanced models to quantify impacts of diverse management practices — from the scale of individual fields to large regions.