Mehrdad Jazayeri receives Robert A. Wurtz Award in Systems Neuroscience

The NIH award recognizes critical advancements in systems-level neural research.

McGovern Investigator Mehrdad Jazayeri has received the 2026 Robert A. Wurtz Award in Systems Neuroscience for his efforts to understand how neural circuits support cognition and behavior.

The Robert H. Wurtz Award and Lecture in Systems Neuroscience recognizes advancements in neural research, including discoveries deciphering how brain circuits generate vision and guide behavior, and how their dysfunction contributes to visual disorders and disease. The award honors Bob Wurtz, PhD, whose pioneering vision research profoundly influenced the field of neuroscience. Recipients are chosen by a panel of esteemed scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and top universities.

Jazayeri, who is also an HHMI Investigator and a Professor and Director of Education in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, studies how the brain creates internal models of the external world. By combining sophisticated experiments in humans and nonhuman primates with computational modeling, his work has revealed fundamental principles by which the brain represents time, integrates information, and develops flexible strategies to guide behavior.

“His rigorous, integrative approach exemplifies systems-level neuroscience and illuminates how neural circuits transform sensory information into perception, decisions, and actions,” according to an announcement by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, who manages the award along with the National Eye Institute (NEI).

Jazayeri delivered his prize lecture, “Strategic problem solving in the primate brain” at the NEI on September 29, 2026.