Danielle Citron. (Courtesy photo)

Boston University law professor and cybersecurity expert Danielle Citron can add a new line to her resume: MacArthur fellow.

Citron on Wednesday was named among the 26 recipients of the annual fellowship program run by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which comes with a $625,000 so-called "genius grant" and is among the most prestigious awards in the country. The foundation cited Citron's efforts to stop cyber harassment and her work to raise awareness of the toll it takes on victims, as well as her policy advocacy to combat online abuse, in her selection.

"I screamed," said Citron, when she found out about the award. "I fell on the floor. It's crazy, right?"

Citron has some lawyer company on this year's list of MacArthur fellows. Among them is former public defender Lisa Daugaard, who designed a diversion program in Seattle in which people suspected of low-level offenses related to behavioral health or extreme poverty are given access to a variety of social services.

The director of Impact Justice's Restorative Justice Project—an Oakland-based program that aims to help crime victims heal while also breaking cycles of recidivism and violence—was also named as a fellow.

Citron said she almost didn't believe it when foundation president John Palfrey called several weeks ago to deliver the news. In fact, she initially wondered if some of her friends in the privacy community were playing a trick on her. But she recognized Palfrey's voice from watching him on YouTube.

Citron is a relative newcomer to Boston University, having joined the faculty in July. She spent the previous 15 years at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Boston University law dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig said Citron has long been ahead of the curve on issues involving cyber abuse. She was calling for remedies a decade before the issue went mainstream.

"People who study technology and cyberlaw are often ahead of the rest of us. Danielle is ahead of them," Onwuachi-Willig said. "She sees the future and recognizes its implications."

Citron is the author of the highly cited 2014 book "Hate Crimes in Cyberspace," and has written more than 30 law review articles on cybersecurity, privacy and balancing freedom of expression on the internet with civil rights and civil liberties. She plans to use a portion of her MacArthur award money to write a second book focused on sexual privacy.

"Danielle's book is groundbreaking, not least by its clear-eyed reflection on the relationship between disruptive technological innovation and previously established legal cases and theory," said Jonathan Zittrain, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, of Citron's first book.

In addition to her work at the law school, Citron is vice president of the nonprofit organization Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which aims to protect civil rights in the digital age. She has also testified before lawmakers in Washington and is an unpaid adviser to Facebook and Twitter on matters of cyber civil rights. Her recent Ted Talk on deepfakes has been viewed nearly 900,000 times.

"Many legal scholars are studied by a relatively narrow group of colleagues in their particular field," Onwuachi-Willig said. "Danielle is cited by experts from a broad range of industries and areas of the law, because in this digital age, the issues she studies are pertinent to everyone and everything."