It took a second to sink in that he was calling to give her money. Lots of money. As in $500,000 lots of money.

That wasn't even the least of it. That nice man, a representative from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, was calling to tell Theriot that she was one of 23 people selected this year to receive a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, awarded annually to those whose work is deemed among the most creative, most intellectual and most promising of their time.

It's the award they call the "genius grant."

"I screamed," recalled Theriot of San Mateo, a 36-year-old Stanford University assistant professor recognized for her research on how pathogenic bacteria cause diseases in the body.

Theriot is in good company. Several East Bay "geniuses" are among those honored this year as MacArthur fellows, according to a list released today by the Chicago-based foundation.

They include a University of California, Berkeley historian who studies the Byzantine Empire, a debate coach at Union City's James Logan High School, the executive director of a Berkeley-based nonprofit that works to keep medical technology affordable for the poor and a Stanford University associate professor of computer science who developed a new computational model for representing reason and knowledge.

Other honorees include a UC San Francisco biochemist and the executive director of a San Francisco-based foundation that advocates for political prisoners in China.

They join a pool of scholars, intellectuals and interesting folks throughout the nation in receiving the award, including Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edward P. Jones; glass sculptor James Carpenter, who is involved in rebuilding a structure at the site of the World Trade Center; and Reginald Robinson of Chicago, a pianist devoted to the preservation of ragtime music.

The process of selecting MacArthur winners is done secretly. They are chosen from a pool of nominees, and the winners say they didn't even know they were being considered for the honor until they were notified they had been selected.

"My husband says I say 'I can't believe this' more than 10 times a day," said honoree Maria Mavroudi, 37, an assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley who is one of the few in her field who studies the history of shared knowledge between medieval Byzantium and its neighbors in the Islamic Middle East.

"I feel extremely, extremely honored and extremely grateful," Mavroudi said. "I know this sounds corny, but it's true. I'm grateful to my teachers, grateful to my colleagues and grateful to my students, because they keep me thinking."

Each of the fellows will receive a $500,000 award, paid over five years. There are no restrictions on how the money may be used.

What to do with the money?
Mavroudi said she's overwhelmed by the amount of money, and she expects she'll use it to continue her work.

"For my field, this kind of money is almost too much," Mavroudi said. "In the sciences, people need several hundreds of thousands of dollars for research and experiments. In my field, what I mainly need is microfilms of manuscripts, and they can be expensive. Depending on the library, they can be between $50 and $300, and I need a lot of those. So I know I'll be buying lots and lots of those. But other than that, I haven't thought about it."

More than funding
Winners agreed, however, the honor is worth much more than the cash.

"The honor and the recognition and what it says about the way in which my work is used -- that's much more significant for me," said Daphne Koller, 36, a Stanford University associate professor of computer science honored for her work with computational modeling. "The truth is, I feel somewhat humbled by it. I wouldn't have thought the work was getting that much recognition."

Other Bay Area honorees include:

David Green, 48, of Berkeley, executive director of Project Impact, a non-profit organization that applies traditional business strategies in developing countries to make health care products available inexpensively.

Tommie Lindsey, 53, of Union City, debate coach at Logan High School who regularly leads his team -- many of them from poor or broken homes -- to the state championships.

Lindsey's debate program was featured in a 2002 public television documentary, "Accidental Hero: Room 408," and the coach has won a string of awards for his work. In 1999, he was voted the No. 1 forensics coach in the nation, and in 2003, he was named as one of the "10 Most Influential African Americans in the Bay Area."

Last year, the Logan coach was inducted into the KEY Coach Society, one of the nation's top high school forensics organizations.

Lindsey taught public speaking and other courses at the Alameda County Juvenile Hall and at the now-closed El Rancho Verde High School in Hayward before he began teaching at Logan in 1988.

Joseph DeRisi, 35, of San Francisco, associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, who develops new technologies for exploring the pathways regulating gene expression.

John Kamm, 53, San Francisco, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation, has won the release of or improved the conditions for hundreds of political prisoners in China.

Staff writer Rob Dennis and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Michelle Maitre at## mmaitre@angnewspapers.com .

The Oakland Tribune: Cityside
Leanne McLaughlin, Managing Editor
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