Cooke Alum William Tarpeh Awarded 2025 MacArthur Fellowship
(Photo by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)
Cooke Scholar Alum William Tarpeh has been announced as a 2025 MacArthur Fellow. The MacArthur Fellowship, also referred to as a “genius grant,” is a prestigious award of $800,000 presented to “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential,” according to the MacArthur Foundation.
This incredible honor is in recognition of William’s dedicated pursuit towards developing sustainable and innovative solutions to wastewater issues.
Tarpeh is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and Principal Investigator in the Tarpeh Lab. Tarpeh’s research is focused on finding ways to recover mineral resources from wastewater to improve both sanitation and fertilization practices in developing countries. He has worked for over a decade to solve “real people’s real problems” and envisions using scalable technology to allow local sanitation systems to treat wastewater and use it to manufacture needed chemicals.
Cooke Foundation Executive Director Seppy Basili shared, “Dr. William Tarpeh has been a valued member of the Cooke Scholar community since we met him at age 13. His curiosity, ingenuity, and kindness were evident from the start, and we have seen how William has worked for over 20 years to solve real world problems. We are thrilled to see him receive this award from the MacArthur Foundation.”
William joined the Cooke Young Scholars Program in 2003 when he was in eighth grade and went on to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia. He received the Cooke College Scholarship in 2008 to attend Stanford University, where he double majored in Chemical Engineering and African American Studies. As a 2012 Cooke Graduate Scholar, William earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. He’s been an active Cooke Scholar Alumni ever since, and was awarded the Quinn Prize, celebrating Alumni and Graduate Scholar exceptional achievement, in 2020.
To learn more about William Tarpeh’s journey as a Cooke Scholar, click here.