The McKnight Scholar Awards are granted to young scientists who are in the early stages of establishing their own independent laboratories and research careers and who have demonstrated a commitment to neuroscience. The Endowment Fund seeks to support innovative research designed to bring science closer to the day when diseases of the brain can be accurately diagnosed, prevented, and treated. The six McKnight Scholar Award recipients will each receive $75,000 per year for three years. They are:
Susanne Ahmari |
Identifying Neural Circuit Changes Underlying OCD-related Behaviors |
Marlene Cohen University of Pittsburgh |
Causal and Correlative Tests of the Hypothesis that the Neuronal Mechanisms Underlying Attention Involve Interactions between Cortical Areas |
Daniel Dombeck |
Functional Dynamics, Organization and Plasticiity of Place Cell Dendritic Spines |
Surya Ganguli Stanford University |
From Neural data to Neurobiological Understanding through High Dimensional Statistics and Theory
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Gaby Maimon Rockefeller University |
Neuronal Basis for the Internal Initiation of Action |
Kay Tye Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Deconstructing the Distributed Neural Mechanisms in Emotional Valence Processing |
Applications for next year’s awards will be available in September and are due in early January 2016. More information about McKnight’s neuroscience awards programs is available here.
About The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience
The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience is an independent organization funded solely by The McKnight Foundation of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and led by a board of prominent neuroscientists from around the country. The McKnight Foundation has supported neuroscience research since 1977. The Foundation established the Endowment Fund in 1986 to carry out one of the intentions of founder William L. McKnight (1887-1979). One of the early leaders of the 3M Company, he had a personal interest in memory and brain diseases and wanted part of his legacy used to help find cures. The Endowment Fund makes three types of awards each year. In addition to the McKnight Scholar Award, they are the McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Awards, providing seed money to develop technical inventions to enhance brain research, and the McKnight Memory and Cognitive Disorders Awards, for scientists working to apply the knowledge achieved through basic research to human brain disorders that affect memory or cognition.