Nine scientists are among this year's MacArthur Fellowship winners, reports the Nature News Blog. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine's Elodie Ghendin is using sequencing strategies to study human pathogens while William Seeley at the University of California, San Francisco, is using a variety of approaches, including MRI and microscopy, to better understand frontotemporal dementia and the University of Michigan Medical School's Yukiko Yamashita is studying the mechanisms that control stem cell division. The "genius award" totals $500,000. "Fellows are selected for their creativity, originality and potential to make important contributions in the future," Robert Gallucci, the president of the MacArthur Foundation, tells The New York Times.