Johns Hopkins School of Medicine alum Jason McLellan named 2025 MacArthur Fellow

Jason McLellan, a structural biologist who earned a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2009, was one of 22 individuals named to the 2025 cohort of MacArthur Fellows.

The award, often called a genius grant, is given annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to "extraordinarily talented and creative individuals," a mix of visual artists and writers, scientists, and scholars. Honorees are nominated by anonymous experts in their fields and receive $800,000 over five years to advance their work in any way they see fit, "no strings attached."

McLellan earned a PhD from the Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology graduate program, where he trained in the laboratory of former School of Medicine faculty member Dan Leahy. Now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, McLellan is a structural biologist whose work on viral fusion proteins has transformed vaccine design and the prevention of infectious disease.

McLellan's research helped pave the way for the first successful RSV vaccine. When SARS-CoV-2 emerged in early 2020, his team rapidly engineered a stabilized, antigenic version of the coronavirus spike protein within weeks of the genome's release. That design underlies all COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the United States, enabling vaccines that train the immune system to recognize and neutralize the virus by targeting the stabilized spike. His work has been published in leading journals, including Nature, Science, Cell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Virology.

McLellan's lab is currently pursuing a universal coronavirus vaccine. His insights into protein structure, function, and engineering are strengthening global preparedness against current and future infectious threats.

McLellan joins a distinguished community of School of Medicine-affiliated MacArthur Fellows, including Peter Pronovost (2008), Lisa Cooper (2007), Kay Redfield Jamison (2001), and Geraldine Seydoux (2001).

This year's cohort of MacArthur Fellows includes Johns Hopkins political scientist Hahrie Han, who has directed the university's SNF Agora Institute since 2019. Han is the first JHU faculty member to be named a MacArthur Fellow since Pronovost and astrophysicist Adam Riess in 2008.