2026 McKnight Scholar Awards

The Board of Directors of The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience (MEFN) is pleased to announce it has selected ten neuroscientists to receive the 2026 McKnight Scholar Award.

मैकनाइट स्कॉलर पुरस्कार उन युवा वैज्ञानिकों को प्रदान किया जाता है जो अपनी स्वतंत्र प्रयोगशालाएं और अनुसंधान करियर स्थापित करने की प्रारंभिक अवस्था में हैं और जिन्होंने तंत्रिका विज्ञान के प्रति प्रतिबद्धता प्रदर्शित की है। Since the award was introduced in 1977, this prestigious early-career award has funded 301 innovative investigators and spurred hundreds of breakthrough discoveries. Next year, the Endowment will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Scholar program, one of the very oldest initiatives originally started by the McKnight Foundation.

“This year’s McKnight Scholars exemplify the extraordinary breadth of questions and approaches that define modern neuroscience, from elucidating the circuit logic of central pattern generators and the neural basis of social cooperation, to uncovering the transcriptional programs that shape vocal communication circuits in songbirds, to developing new computational frameworks for extracting insight from increasingly high-dimensional neural data,” said Vanessa Ruta, PhD, chair of the awards committee and Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Professor at The Rockefeller University. “The 2026 McKnight Scholars represent an important diversity of institutions, scientific perspectives, and technical approaches, underscoring how critical it is to support outstanding research broadly across the scientific landscape. At a time when fundamental discovery science faces growing challenges, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience is proud to invest in these exceptional early-career investigators whose creativity, rigor, and vision will help shape the future of the field. On behalf of the entire committee, I congratulate all of the applicants के लिये their creativity, dedication, and scientific ambition.”

निम्नलिखित मैकनाइट स्कॉलर पुरस्कार प्राप्तकर्ताओं में से प्रत्येक को तीन वर्षों के लिए प्रति वर्ष $75,000 प्राप्त होगा। वे हैं:

There were 138 applicants for this year’s McKnight Scholar Awards, representing the best young neuroscience faculty in the country. Faculty are eligible for the award during their first five years in a full-time faculty position. In addition to Ruta, the Scholar Awards selection committee included Marlene Cohen, Ph.D., University of Chicago; Robert Sandeep Datta, M.D., Ph.D., Harvard University; Adrienne Fairhall, Ph.D., University of Washington; Yishi Jin, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego; Michael Long, Ph.D., New York University; and Jennifer Raymond, Ph.D., Stanford University.

Applications for both the 2027 Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Awards and Scholar Awards open August 3, 2026, and will be accepted through October 15 and November 3, 2026, respectively. For more information about McKnight’s neuroscience awards programs, please visit एंडोमेंट फंड की वेबसाइट.

तंत्रिका विज्ञान के लिए McKnight एंडोमेंट फंड के बारे में

The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience is an independent organization funded solely by the McKnight Foundation of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is 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. In addition to the Scholar Awards, the Endowment Fund makes grants to scientists working to apply the knowledge achieved through translational and clinical research to human brain disorders though the McKnight Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Awards.

2026 McKnight Scholar Awards

Salil Bidaye, Ph.D., Research Group Leader, Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, Jupiter, FL 

Central versus peripheral contributions to generation of a walking pattern 

Walking is an efficient way to navigate Earth’s unpredictable and uneven terrain. As a result, not only have animals ranging from insects to mammals converged on this mode of terrestrial locomotion, but now engineers are trying to emulate this in robots. Walking patterns are generated by central spinal circuits that drive rhythmic movements across multiple legs and are fine-tuned by peripheral sensory feedback from each leg. However, it is unclear how these central and peripheral pathways interact to produce agile, stable walking. 

Dr. Bidaye’s research uses the fruit fly, ड्रोसोफिला, to address walking control mechanisms. Cutting-edge genetic tools and a complete wiring diagram of the nervous system makes this an ideal model for understanding neural circuit function. The Bidaye lab will couple these tools with high-speed videography, neural recordings and computational modeling to obtain fundamental insights about contributions and interactions of central and peripheral neural circuits controlling coordinated walking. 

Lillian Brady, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 

Sex-specific tuning of cholinergic and dopaminergic integration in context-reward circuits 

Substance use disorders affect men and women differently, yet the brain mechanisms underlying these differences remain poorly understood. Dr. Lillian J. Brady’s work has uncovered striking sex differences in how nicotinic acetylcholine receptors regulate dopamine release, effects that are strongly influenced by ovarian hormones. This proposal focuses on how hormones shape communication between brain circuits that control reward learning, motivation, and responses to environmental cues linked to addiction. Her research focuses on interactions between the hippocampus, which processes contextual information, and the nucleus accumbens, a key reward center where cholinergic and dopaminergic signaling regulate motivation and reinforcement. 

Using advanced physiological, neuromodulatory, and behavioral approaches, Dr. Brady will investigate how hippocampal projections influence dopamine signaling and reward-related behaviors. By uncovering how hormones and neural circuits integrate contextual and motivational signals, her research aims to identify fundamental biological mechanisms underlying sex-specific vulnerability to addiction and guide the development of more precise and personalized treatments for substance use disorders. 

Astra Bryant, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA 

Mechanisms of thermal adaptability in a human-parasitic nematode 

Soil-transmitted parasitic nematodes infect over a billion people, causing devastating and sometimes fatal illness. The nervous systems of these parasites are quite similar to that of the non-parasitic nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, with common identifiable cell types. But whereas सी। एलिगेंस avoids warm temperatures, parasitic worms locate hosts using body heat then survive and reproduce for many months in host tissues. How does the conserved nematode nervous system give rise to these dramatically different behavioral and physiological repertories? 

Dr. Bryant has developed field-defining methods for quantitative and mechanistic analyses of sensory-driven behavior and nervous system function in parasitic nematodes. Her lab now uses these tools to identify the specific molecular and neural adaptations that shape the dynamically adaptable thermosensory biology mammalian parasitic worms. Their results will reveal fundamental principles underlying the evolution of sensory behaviors and unlock new strategies for controlling a major source of neglected human disease. 

SueYeon Chung, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 

Geometric principles of neural population representations and computation 

Although neuroscientists can now record the activity of thousands of neurons simultaneously, it remains difficult to understand how these complex patterns of activity give rise to computation in the brain. Dr. SueYeon Chung investigates how large populations of neurons represent information and support perception and behavior.  Dr. Chung’s research focuses on neural population geometry, a framework for understanding how patterns of neural activity are organized and transformed across the brain.

To address these questions, the Chung lab develops mathematical theories and computational tools for analyzing large-scale neural recordings from sensory and cognitive brain regions. By studying how these representations change across brain areas and during learning, the lab seeks to identify geometric principles that govern neural computation. This work links single-neuron properties, population activity, and behavior, revealing geometric principles that underlie efficient neural representations and robust, flexible behavior.

Bradley Colquitt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 

Birdsong Takes Flight: neural evolution and the emergence of complex motor control 

Our ability to speak and precisely control our hands relies on specialized brain regions whose proper function is critical for human health and well-being. Yet we still do not understand how these regions develop or how they evolved. Songbirds, whose complex vocalizations are produced by dedicated brain circuits that share striking similarities with the brain’s speech and manual control areas, offer a powerful model system for deciphering how the brain develops and evolves to support advanced motor skills. 

Dr. Bradley Colquitt’s research focuses on the molecular and cellular innovations that enable songbirds to sing. His work combines cellular-resolution molecular assays, comparative genomics, and genetic manipulations in avian species to identify how evolved differences in gene regulation establish the specialized properties of birdsong control neurons. This research will help define the neural mechanisms underlying complex motor skills and provide insight into the biological causes of developmental motor disorders. 

Brielle Ferguson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 

Cholinergic modulation of attention and adaptive behavior 

As we move through the world, our sensory systems are bombarded with far more information than we can consciously process. Attention acts as a spotlight, dynamically selecting what matters and filtering out the rest. However, this process is not fixed. It is flexible and adaptive, and enables our ability to adjust our behavior and learn from our mistakes. Disruptions in attention and adaptive behavior are central features of many brain disorders, however the neural mechanisms are largely unknown. 

The Ferguson lab seeks to uncover the neural mechanisms of attention by observing brain activity in states of optimal or impaired attentional control. Dr. Ferguson and her team explore these phenomena in mice, leveraging cutting-edge genetic tools to monitor and manipulate brain circuits of interest. By integrating circuit level approaches with physiology across species and disease contexts, her work will reveal how the brain integrates information across timescales to adapt and optimize behavior. 

Timothy Machado, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 

Relating muscle activity to neural dynamics at ultrahigh resolution 

Understanding muscle recruitment is necessary for understanding how the brain produces behavior because the brain does not control movement directly—it controls muscles. Yet most studies of motor control relate neural activity to movement because monitoring population-level muscle activity is especially difficult in rodents. This leaves a critical gap: muscle activation can occur without movement, and similar movements can arise from different patterns of muscle recruitment. 

To remedy this gap, the Machado lab is developing a new approach for measuring population-level orofacial muscle activity during behavior. By combining this method with neural recordings, the lab aims to determine how activity in motor circuits is transformed into the structured patterns of muscle activation that underlie behavior. This work will provide a new framework for relating neural activity to behavior by measuring the large-scale muscle activity patterns that the nervous system uses to produce behavior. 

Kara Marshall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 

Understanding the contribution of internal mechanosensation to fear and anxiety 

Within our bodies, organs distend and contract as they perform their duties: the heartbeat pulses a rhythm over the expansion and contraction of the lungs with each breath. Our nervous system monitors these mechanical sensations to adjust physiological responses. Internal sensations like a racing heart or churning stomach are also associated with emotion states like fear and anxiety. This might prepare one for escape or contribute to hypervigilance when in danger, but these signals could go awry in anxiety disorders. Despite their importance, how mechanosensory systems contribute to emotion states is not well understood. 

Dr. Marshall’s team will use PIEZO ion channels, sensors of mechanical force in mammals, as tools to specifically probe the contribution of internal mechanosensation in shaping emotion states, particularly in the context of fear and anxiety. By doing so, they will more fully define how the body and brain are intertwined to shape behavior. 

Alexandre Tiriac, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 

Why do we twitch when we sleep? 

A developing animal must maintain motor control while its body changes daily: limbs lengthen, muscles strengthen, and mass redistributes. How does the brain keep its internal model of the body up to date? Dr. Tiriac’s research leverages his expertise in both sleep physiology and sensory-map development to test whether REM-sleep twitches serve as a self-calibration mechanism, enabling the brain to continuously learn the structure and capabilities of its own body. 

Building on his work showing that twitches produce widespread sensory feedback throughout the developing brain, his lab will test whether twitches are required for sculpting the neural maps responsible for sensing body position and whether twitch patterns predict the emergence of motor milestones during development. Because twitches persist into adulthood, he will also investigate whether adult motor learning reshapes subsequent twitching, revealing a lifelong bidirectional loop between sleep and movement. 

Herbert Wu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 

Neural basis of social role dynamics in group behavior 

From flocks of birds to human organizations, social groups accomplish more than any individual acting alone. A key ingredient is the division of roles such as leader and follower, which allow individuals to coordinate efforts, anticipate one another’s actions, and make decisions efficiently. Despite how universal these dynamics are, little is known about their brain mechanisms. How do social roles emerge, and how does neural activity across different roles coordinate in real time? 

Dr. Wu’s team developed a cooperative foraging task that naturally elicits asymmetric yet reciprocal leader-follower interactions. Using cutting-edge systems neuroscience approaches, his team has identified social representations in the prefrontal cortex supporting group decision-making. Dr. Wu now aims to uncover the brain circuits that drive role formation through learning, and how neural activity across different social roles enables real-time coordination. This work will reveal the neural mechanisms underlying a fundamental feature of group life: how individual brains interact to produce structured collective behavior.