Rio Americano High School graduate Linsey Marr, a well-known figure in the field of environmental engineering, has been awarded a 2023 MacArthur fellowship, commonly called a “genius grant.”

The $800,000 award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation honors recipients for their “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” The fellows were selected by a nomination process from experts in their fields. Marr, a professor at Virginia Tech, gained national prominence for her research on airborne pathogenic viruses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She and her colleagues convinced the World Health Organization that the virus was transmitted by aerosols that travel farther and remain in the air longer than heavier droplets.

She became a regular expert source for The New York Times and, according to a media release from Virginia Tech, she has been interviewed more than 500 times by  The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Scientific American, CNN, NPR,  and other media outlets.

Marr was profiled in the Rio Mirada in 2021. You can read the story here.