Nancy Kanwisher to receive George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience

McGovern neuroscientist recognized for "extraordinary innovation and high impact" in the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, has been named this year’s winner of the George A. Miller Prize in Cognitive Neuroscience. The award, given annually by the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), recognizes individuals “whose distinguished research is at the cutting-edge of their discipline with realized or future potential, to revolutionize cognitive neuroscience.”

Kanwisher studies the functional organization of the human mind and, over the last 20 years, her lab has played a central role in the identification of several dozen regions of the cortex in humans that are engaged in particular components of perception and cognition. She is perhaps best known for identifying brain regions specialized for recognizing faces.

Kanwisher will deliver her prize lecture, “Functional imaging of the human brain: A window into the architecture of the mind” at the 2020 CNS annual meeting in Boston this March.