News: 2013 McKnight Scholar Awardees

​Minneapolis, MN (May 17, 2013) — The Board of Directors of The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience is pleased to announce the 2013 McKnight Scholar Award recipients.

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:

Hillel Adelsnik, University of California – Berkeley
Optically Probing the Neural  Basis of Perception
    
Mark Churchland, Columbia University
The Neural Substrate of Voluntary Movement Initiation

Elissa Hallem, University of California – Los Angeles
Functional Organization of Sensory Circuits in C. Elegans
    
Andrew Huberman, University of California – San Diego
Trans-Synaptic  Circuits for Processing Directional Motion

Dayu Lin, NYU Langone Medical Center
The Circuit Mechanism of Lateral Septum Mediated Aggression Modulation
    
Nicole Rust, University of Pennsylvania
The Neural Mechanisms Responsible for Identifying Objects and Finding Targets
    
Applications for next year’s awards will be available in September and are due in early January 2014. For more information about McKnight’s neuroscience awards programs, check the Endowment Fund’s website at www.neuroscience.mcknight.org.

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.