Two earn prestious Guggenheim fellowships

Two
earn prestigious Guggenheim fellowships

BY JADE BOYD
and B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Joan Strassmann,
professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Benjamin
Lee, professor of anthropology, have been selected as 2004
Guggenheim Fellows.

Guggenheim Fellowships
are among the most competitive awards in academia, partly
because the funding carries very few restrictions, and partly
because of the wide range of disciplines covered. This year’s
185 fellows — chosen from more than 3,200 applicants
— include artists, writers, poets, architects, composers,
filmmakers, playwrights, photographers, choreographers,
social scientists, physical scientists and public health
experts. Almost one-quarter of this year’s fellows
had no university or academic affiliation.

Strassmann was
one of just four biologists selected, and Lee was one of
only five anthropologists on the list.

Strassmann said
she was delighted when she learned she had won the award,
specifically because she knows so few are given to evolutionary
biologists.

“The funds,
combined with Rice support for my sabbatical, will allow
me to be on leave next academic year,” said Strassmann.

She will study
the impact of specific genes on social interactions among
social amoebae, Dictyostelium discoideum, which form colonies
of slime mold on forest floors.

“Some of
these amoebae die to support others,” said Strassmann.
“This is a social act that should only evolve if it
favors relatives. If nonrelatives are in the aggregation,
different family groups should try to exploit each other.”

Strassmann said
developmental biologists have identified a number of genes
that may influence the way individual Dictyostelium behave
toward family members and nonfamily members within a colony.
Strassmann will systematically evaluate these genes to see
what role they play in the social dynamic of the colony.

Lee said he was
also elated about his fellowship because it will enable
him to write the second volume of a collaborative project
with Edward LiPuma, chair of the anthropology department
at the University of Miami.

They have been
studying the globalization of financial risk and derivatives
(new types of investments). The first volume of that research
is an introduction to new forms of finance capital and will
be published by Duke University Press this fall. For the
second volume, “From Primatives to Derivatives,”
Lee plans to focus on the emergence of new derivatives in
a more cultural way and analyze issues of risk from precapitalist
societies to today’s world of commerce.

Lee will be leaving
Rice July 1 to join the faculty at New School University
(formerly the New School for Social Research) in New York
City, where he will be a distinguished professor of anthropology
and philosophy and dean of the graduate faculty.