Four Northwestern University faculty members, each representing a different school, earned 2017 Guggenheim Fellowships, a University news release announced Friday.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, established in 1925 by former U.S. Sen. Simon Guggenheim and his wife, offers fellowships to “further the development of scholars and artists” with financial assistance in research or creation in the arts, according to the program’s website.

Chosen from a field of about 3,000 American and Canadian applicants, Communication Prof. J.P. Sniadecki received one of the 173 Guggenheim fellowships awarded this year. Sniadecki, a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work spans both China and the United States, explores themes like sensory ethnography and the cinema.

The fellowship adds another accolade to his 2017 list of accomplishments. In February, Sniadecki received the Caligari Film Prize for his work at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Teresa Woodruff, the Thomas J. Watkins Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, also received the fellowship. In addition to her work within the field of reproductive medicine, Woodruff was the first to clone inhibin, a gonadal hormone that plays a key role in the endocrine system.

As a Guggenheim fellow, Bienen School of Music Prof. Hans Thomalla plans to continue working on “Dark Spring,” his third opera. Thomalla’s first opera, “Fremd,” premiered in 2011 at the main stage of the Stuttgart Opera, and his 2016 opera “Kasper Hauser” was produced by the Freiburg Opera.

Recipient Shalini Shankar, an anthropology professor and director of the Asian American studies program, will spend her fellowship year researching Generation Z and how to better account for the contributions of minorities and immigrants. According to the news release, Shankar will also spend the year completing her book titled “Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal about Generation Z’s New Path to Success.”

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