Vamsi Mootha

Washington : Vamsi Mootha is among 23 people who have won “do-what-you-want-with-it” fellowships of $500,000 each from the MacArthur Foundation.

Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh-born Mootha, an assistant professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, is still trying to come to terms with winning the prestigious annual fellowship for which awardees are nominated without their knowledge.

The fellowships are considered the pinnacle of achievement in mainly academic fields and are aimed at enabling awardees to carry out research or creative work without any constraints.

“I wasn’t having a particularly good day,” recalls Mootha when he found out he has won $500,000 fellowship, in annual installments of $100,000 each.

“I was walking in a parking lot when I got a call on my cellphone from a number I didn’t recognize. I initially thought it was a sales person or a peddler. Or that someone was playing a prank on me. When I realized who the person on the other side of the line was, my first instinct was that of shock and bewilderment,” Mootha told Indo-Asian News Service.

After being given the good news, 33-year-old Mootha was sworn to secrecy till Sept. 28, when the awards were announced here.

“I told my parents this morning. They aren’t in the academic circles so they hadn’t heard much about the foundation. But now they are finding out about it and are obviously very proud of my achievements,” recounted Mootha.

A release from the foundation said, “Fellows are selected for their originality, creativity, and the potential to do more in the future... The stipend carries no restrictions.”

While the process may sound simple enough, there is a catch. Neither anyone applies for the awards nor any interviews are conducted, and those who nominate the awardees are kept confidential (to protect them from unsolicited nomination requests, says the foundation).

“I have no clue who nominated me but it was obviously someone who was familiar with my work and I am grateful for their acknowledgement,” says Mootha. His interests lie in tapping new data from molecular biology, genetics and protein chemistry to identify the cause of, and possible treatment for, metabolic diseases such as diabetes. He says he is “very interested in energy metabolism” and its research potential.

Mootha, who left India with his family when he was six months old, intends on first using some of the money to take his parents on a vacation.

“I haven’t really decided yet what to do with all the money but I am hoping to channel funds into high-risk research projects that I would have been unable to undertake earlier. I may also use some of the funds as seed money for initiatives to back study in my field,” he said.

The youngest of four children, Mootha, a bachelor, says only his immediate family is in the U.S. “My extended family is still in Andhra Pradesh and I have very close links to home. I last visited India a year and a half ago and intend on going back this winter.”

The MacArthur Foundation has assets of around $4 billion. It was named after John D. MacArthur ), who developed and owned Bankers Life and Casualty Company and other businesses, as well as considerable property in Florida and New York.