Guggenheim Fellowship awarded Prof. Jingyi Jessica Li
Five UCLA faculty members are among a distinguished group of 198 scholars, scientists and creative professionals from the U.S. and Canada selected to receive 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced this week. The new fellows were chosen from a pool of more than 3,500 applicants.
The prestigious awards, now in their 100th year, recognize scholars in 53 disciplines across the creative arts, social sciences, natural sciences and humanities who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in their fields and show great promise for future endeavors.
This year’s fellows from UCLA — Mona Jarrahi, Suk-Young Kim, Jingyi Jessica Li, Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni and Park Williams — are engaged in transformative scholarship in areas ranging from Earth science, data science and climate studies to engineering and theater arts and performance studies. Each will receive a no-strings-attached monetary stipend to independently pursue work and research of their choice.
“At a time when intellectual life is under attack, the Guggenheim Fellowship celebrates a century of support for the lives and work of visionary scientists, scholars, writers and artists,” said Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation and an award-winning poet. “We believe that these creative thinkers can take on the challenges we all face today and guide our society towards a better and more hopeful future.”
Learn more about UCLA’s new Guggenheim Fellows:
Mona Jarrahi
Professor of electrical and computer engineering, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
Jarrahi, who holds the Northrop Grumman Chair in Electrical Engineering, focuses on the development and application of novel electromagnetic techniques. As director of the Terahertz Electronics Laboratory at UCLA, she studies ultrafast electronic and optoelectronic devices with a focus on expanding the capabilities of terahertz sensing, imaging and communication systems for applications in a variety of areas, ranging from atmospheric research and biological analysis to medical imaging. Jarrahi is also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.
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Suk-Young Kim
Professor and head of theater and performance studies, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Kim’s research interests cover a wide range of disciplines, from East Asian performance and visual culture to Russian and Slavic literature and folklore. Her work focuses primarily on body politics, transmedia, the entertainment industry and the historical roots of today’s popular culture. She is the author of several books on Korean pop music and television and is a sought-after media commentator on Korean politics, culture and media.
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Jingyi Jessica Li
Professor of biostatistics, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
An interdisciplinary expert in statistics and genomics, Li focuses on developing statistical and computational tools to answer biological and biomedical questions, including reducing false positives in the analysis of large RNA sequencing data sets. Her research aims to provide more reliable information about genetics and cell biology, with significant potential positive impacts in the prevention and treatment of disease. Li is also a faculty member in the interdepartmental doctoral program in bioinformatics and leads the Junction of Statistics and Biology, a research group focused on bridging methodological innovation with impactful biomedical applications.
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Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni
Professor and chair of Earth, planetary and space sciences, UCLA College
Lithgow-Bertelloni, who holds UCLA’s Louis B. and Martha B. Slichter Chair in Geosciences, studies the connections between Earth’s surface processes and the subsurface forces that drive and shape them. As the leader of the KGB Lab, her recent work has reexamined the strength of Earth’s mantle and explored the ways in which the mantle’s fluid dynamics and thermodynamics may have influenced the planet’s thermal and biological evolution. She has developed and applied techniques of particle image velocimetry and thermometry to visualize vigorous flow in very viscous fluids, aiding our understanding of Hawaiian volcanoes.
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Park Williams
Professor of geography, UCLA College
Williams, who holds a joint appointment in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, is a hydroclimatologist who uses statistical analyses of climate data, reconstructions of past ecosystem behavior and a detailed understanding of plant ecology to study the impacts of climate on Earth’s water and land systems. His research aims to improve our understanding of how climate change influences the hydrological cycle and ecological dynamics and how extremes like drought, floods, heat waves and wildfires affect life on the planet. Williams, who runs the HyFives research lab at UCLA, was awarded a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 2023.
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