UCLA Social Sciences
Photo Credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Park Williams, professor of geography within UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences, was named a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow on April 15.
Williams, who holds a joint appointment in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, is a hydroclimatologist who uses statistical analyses of climate data, reconstructions of past ecosystem behavior and a detailed understanding of plant ecology to study the impacts of climate on Earth’s water and land systems.
His research aims to improve our understanding of how climate change influences the hydrological cycle and ecological dynamics and how extremes like drought, floods, heat waves and wildfires affect life on the planet. Williams, who runs the HyFives research lab at UCLA, was awarded a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 2023.
Williams joins four other UCLA faculty members among a distinguished group of 198 scholars, scientists and creative professionals from the U.S. and Canada selected to receive 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships announced by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The new fellows were chosen from a pool of more than 3,500 applicants.
The prestigious awards, now in their 100th year, recognize scholars in 53 disciplines across the creative arts, social sciences, natural sciences and humanities who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in their fields and show great promise for future endeavors.
Learn more about this year’s UCLA Guggenheim Fellows via UCLA Newsroom’s coverage here.