Pradel Research Award

Der Pradel Research Award ist eine Auszeichnung der National Academy of Sciences der Vereinigten Staaten in den Neurowissenschaften. Er wird seit 2012 an Wissenschaftler in der Mitte ihrer wissenschaftlichen Karriere vergeben, die wichtige Beiträge zum Verständnis des Nervensystems geleistet haben. Das Preisgeld von 50.000 US-Dollar darf der Preisträger an eine Institution eigener Wahl geben, um Forschung in den Neurowissenschaften zu unterstützen.

1947 vermachte ein gewisser Jules Pradel der NAS einen Geldbetrag zur Förderung von wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten über das menschliche zentrale Nervensystem und verwandter Gebiete.

Preisträger

• 2012 Dora E. Angelaki: For her fundamental discoveries on mechanisms of representation of vestibular sensory stimuli within the mammalian brain.
• 2013 Kenneth C. Catania: Dr. Catania is a pioneering neuroethologist who has carried out highly imaginative investigations of the neural basis of sensory behavior in model organisms. His comparative studies of mammals that possess specialized sensory capacities have led to discoveries of fundamental principles of behavior, sensory processing, and brain organization, and have resulted in new insights about the evolution of the nervous system.
• 2014 Allison J. Doupe: For her groundbreaking work using song birds to reveal important features of how neural circuits process information and are shaped by experience.
• 2015 Catherine Dulac: For her pioneering contributions to the molecular biology of pheromone signaling in mammals and discoveries of neural mechanisms underlying sex-specific social behaviors including mating, aggression and parenting.
• 2016 Alex L. Kolodkin: For his pioneering work on neuronal development research relating to the establishment of neuronal connectivity. He is known for his work on neuronal guidance cues and their receptors, the discovery of semaphorins, and unveiling guidance cue roles in neural circuit assembly and function in insects and mammals.
• 2017 Karel Svoboda: For his pioneering work to develop technologies for imaging cellular and synaptic structure and activity in the brain, and for using these methods to obtain insight into how the brain represents and stores information about sensory stimuli and transforms such information into action during motivated behavior.
• 2018 Silvia Arber: For her insightful and innovative studies revealing at the cellular and molecular level the developmental mechanisms and organizational principles of motor circuit wiring in the spinal cord and brainstem that enable the execution of specific motor tasks.
• 2019 Liqun Luo: For his pioneering work in developing genetic mosaic methods that have revolutionized the study of diverse biological processes such as cell fate specification and cell morphogenesis and for using these methods to obtain insight into the development of wiring specificity in the nervous system of vertebrates and invertebrates.
• 2020 Leslie B. Vosshall: For her seminal discoveries about the nature and organization of insect olfactory systems. She identified multiple classes of sensory receptors in Drosophila, defined the rules by which they recognize odors and subsequently richly extended this work to sensory biology and integration in the disease-bearing mosquito Aedes aegypti.
• 2021 Tirin Moore: For his transformative contributions to our understanding of visual attention. By showing how neural activity in motor regions of prefrontal cortex influences visual representations in the brain, he established a causal link between motor control signals and the neural circuits of visual perception and attention.
• 2022 Edward Chang: For his pioneering work on the representation of speech perception and speech production in the human brain, carried out through his advances in the technology of neural recordings and their analysis and by the design of experiments to reveal the features represented.
• 2023 Hongkui Zeng: For her extraordinary contributions to our understanding of cell types and connections in the mammalian brain and her development of systems neuroscience tools and data that are freely available to the research community.
• 2024 Paola Arlotta: Arlotta’s innovative work provides key insights into the fundamental principles that guide development of the cerebral cortex, the portion of the brain responsible for cognition.

Weblinks

• Pradel Research Award bei der National Academy of Sciences