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 and behavior can be accurately diagnosed, prevented, and treated. The five McKnight Scholar Award recipients will each receive $75,000 per year for three years. They are:

Anatol C. Kreitzer, Ph.D., J. David Gladstone Institutes
Function and  Dysfunction of Basal Ganglia Circuits In Vivo

Seok-Yong Lee, Ph.D., Duke University Medical Center
Structure and pharmacology of sodium channel voltage sensors

Stavros Lomvardas, Ph.D., University of California
Molecular mechanisms of olfactory receptor choice

Song-Hai Shi, Ph.D., Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Clonal production and organization of interneurons in the mammalian neocortex

Andreas S. Tolias, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine
The functional organization of the cortical microcolumn

Applications for next year’s awards will be available in September 2010 and are due in early January 2011.

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 its 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 Neuroscience of 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.