Institute News: Awards & Honors

Ed Boyden receives 2019 Warren Alpert Prize

by Sabbi Lall |

The 2019 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize has been awarded to four scientists, including Ed Boyden, for pioneering work that launched the field of optogenetics, a technique that uses light-sensitive channels and pumps to control the activity of neurons in the brain with a flick of a switch. He receives the prize alongside Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Gero Miesenböck, as outlined by The Warren Alpert Foundation in their announcement.

Harnessing light and genetics, the approach illuminates and modulates the activity of neurons, enables study of brain function and behavior, and helps reveal activity patterns that can overcome brain diseases.

Boyden’s work was key to envisioning and developing optogenetics, now a core method in neuroscience. The method allows brain circuits linked to complex behavioral processes, such as those involved in decision-making, feeding, and sleep, to be unraveled in genetic models. It is also helping to elucidate the mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric disorders, and has the potential to inspire new strategies to overcome brain disorders.

“It is truly an honor to be included among the extremely distinguished list of winners of the Alpert Award,” says Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at the McGovern Institute, MIT. “To me personally, it is exciting to see the relatively new field of neurotechnology recognized. The brain implements our thoughts and feelings. It makes us who we are. This mysteries and challenge requires new technologies to make the brain understandable and repairable. It is a great honor that our technology of optogenetics is being thus recognized.”

While they were students, Boyden, and fellow awardee Karl Deisseroth, brainstormed about how microbial opsins could be used to mediate optical control of neural activity. In mid-2004, the pair collaborated to show that microbial opsins can be used to optically control neural activity. Upon launching his lab at MIT, Boyden’s team developed the first optogenetic silencing tool, the first effective optogenetic silencing in live mammals, noninvasive optogenetic silencing, and single-cell optogenetic control.

“The discoveries made by this year’s four honorees have fundamentally changed the landscape of neuroscience,” said George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School. “Their work has enabled scientists to see, understand and manipulate neurons, providing the foundation for understanding the ultimate enigma—the human brain.”

Beyond optogenetics, Boyden has pioneered transformative technologies that image, record, and manipulate complex systems, including expansion microscopy, robotic patch clamping, and even shrinking objects to the nanoscale. He was elected this year to the ranks of the National Academy of Sciences, and selected as an HHMI Investigator. Boyden has received numerous awards for this work, including the 2018 Gairdner International Prize and the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

The Warren Alpert Foundation, in association with Harvard Medical School, honors scientists whose work has improved the understanding, prevention, treatment or cure of human disease. Prize recipients are selected by the foundation’s scientific advisory board, which is composed of distinguished biomedical scientists and chaired by the dean of Harvard Medical School. The honorees will share a $500,000 prize and will be recognized at a daylong symposium on Oct. 3 at Harvard Medical School.

Ed Boyden holds the titles of Investigator, McGovern Institute; Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT; Leader, Synthetic Neurobiology Group, Media Lab; Associate Professor, Biological Engineering, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Media Lab; Co-Director, MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering; Member, MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Computational and Systems Biology Initiative, and Koch Institute.

Mark Harnett receives a 2019 McKnight Scholar Award

Anne Trafton |

McGovern Institute investigator Mark Harnett is one of six young researchers selected to receive a prestigious 2019 McKnight Scholar Award. The award supports his research “studying how dendrites, the antenna-like input structures of neurons, contribute to computation in neural networks.”

Harnett examines the biophysical properties of single neurons, ultimately aiming to understand how these relate to the complex computations that underlie behavior. His lab was the first to examine the biophysical properties of human dendrites. The Harnett lab found that human neurons have distinct properties, including increased dendritic compartmentalization that could allow more complex computations within single neurons. His lab recently discovered that such dendritic computations are not rare, or confined to specific behaviors, but are a widespread and general feature of neuronal activity.

“As a young investigator, it is hard to prioritize so many exciting directions and ideas,” explains Harnett. “I really want to thank the McKnight Foundation, both for the support, but also for the hard work the award committee puts into carefully thinking about and giving feedback on proposals. It means a lot to get this type of endorsement from a seriously committed and distinguished committee, and their support gives even stronger impetus to pursue this research direction.”

The McKnight Foundation has supported neuroscience research since 1977, and provides three prominent awards, with the Scholar award aimed at supporting young scientists, and drawing applications from the strongest young neuroscience faculty across the US. William L. McKnight (1887-1979) was an early leader of the 3M Company and had a personal interest in memory and brain diseases. The McKnight Foundation was established with this focus in mind, and the Scholar Award provides $75,000 per year for three years to support cutting edge neuroscience research.

 

Ed Boyden elected to National Academy of Sciences

by Sabbi Lall |

Ed Boyden has been elected to join the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The organization, established by an act of Congress during the height of the Civil War, was founded to provide independent and objective advice on scientific matters to the nation, and is actively engaged in furthering science in the United States. Each year NAS members recognize fellow scientists through election to the academy based on their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

“I’m very honored and grateful to have been elected to the NAS,” says Boyden. “This is a testament to the work of many graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, research scientists, and staff at MIT who have worked with me over the years, and many collaborators and friends at MIT and around the world who have helped our group on this mission to advance neuroscience through new tools and ways of thinking.”

Boyden’s research creates and applies technologies that aim to expand our understanding of the brain. He notably co-invented optogenetics as an independent side collaboration, conducted in parallel to his PhD studies, a game-changing technology that has revolutionized neurobiology. This technology uses targeted expression of light-sensitive channels and pumps to activate or suppress neuronal activity in vivo using light. Optogenetics quickly swept the field of neurobiology and has been leveraged to understand how specific neurons and brain regions contribute to behavior and to disease.

His research since has an overarching focus on understanding the brain. To this end, he and his lab have the ambitious goal of developing technologies that can map, record, and manipulate the brain. This has led, as selected examples, to the invention of expansion microscopy, a super-resolution imaging technology that can capture neuron’s microstructures and reveal their complex connections, even across large-scale neural circuits; voltage-sensitive fluorescent reporters that allow neural activity to be monitored in vivo; and temporal interference stimulation, a non-invasive brain stimulation technique that allows selective activation of subcortical brain regions.

“We are all incredibly happy to see Ed being elected to the academy,” says Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. “He has been consistently innovative, inventing new ways of manipulating and observing neurons that are revolutionizing the field of neuroscience.”

This year the NAS, an organization that includes over 500 Nobel Laureates, elected 100 new members and 25 foreign associates. Three MIT professors were elected this year, with Paula T. Hammond (David H. Koch (1962) Professor of Engineering and Department Head, Chemical Engineering) and Aviv Regev (HHMI Investigator and Professor in the Department of Biology) being elected alongside Boyden. Boyden becomes the seventh member of the McGovern Institute faculty to join the National Academy of Sciences.

The formal induction ceremony for new NAS members, during which they sign the ledger whose first signatory is Abraham Lincoln, will be held at the Academy’s annual meeting in Washington D.C. next spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guoping Feng elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

by MIT News |

Four MIT faculty members are among more than 200 leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced today.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications, as well as studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities and culture, and education.

Those elected from MIT this year are:

  • Dimitri A. Antoniadis, Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering;
  • Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science;
  • Guoping Feng, the James W. (1963) and Patricia T. Poitras Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; and
  • David R. Karger, professor of electrical engineering.

“We are pleased to recognize the excellence of our new members, celebrate their compelling accomplishments, and invite them to join the academy and contribute to its work,” said David W. Oxtoby, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “With the election of these members, the academy upholds the ideals of research and scholarship, creativity and imagination, intellectual exchange and civil discourse, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge in all its forms.”

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony in October in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading “thinkers and doers” from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Maria Mitchell and Daniel Webster in the 19th century, and Toni Morrison and Albert Einstein in the 20th century. The current membership includes more than 200 Nobel laureates and 100 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Halassa named Max Planck Fellow

by Sabbi Lall |

Michael Halassa was just appointed as one of the newest Max Planck Fellows. His appointment comes through the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI), which aims to forge collaborations between exceptional neuroscientists from around the world to answer fundamental questions about brain development and function. The Max Planck Society selects cutting edge, active researchers from other institutions to fellow positions for a five-year period to promote interactions and synergies. While the program is a longstanding feature of the Max Planck Society, Halassa, and fellow appointee Yi Guo of the University of California, Santa Cruz, are the first selected fellows that are based at U.S. institutions.

Michael Halassa is an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Halassa’s research focuses on the neural architectures that underlie complex cognitive processes. He is particularly interested in goal-directed attention, our ability to rapidly switch attentional focus based on high level objectives. For example, when you are in a roomful of colleagues, the mention of your name in a distant conversation can quickly trigger your ‘mind’s ear’ to eavesdrop into that conversation. This contrasts with hearing a name that sounds like yours on television, which does not usually grab your attention in the same way. In certain mental disorders such as schizophrenia, the ability to generate such high-level objectives, while also accounting for context, is perturbed. Recent evidence strongly suggests that impaired function of the prefrontal cortex and its interactions with a region of the brain called the thalamus may be altered in such disorders. It is this thalamocortical network that Halassa has been studying in mice, where his group has uncovered how the thalamus supports the ability of the prefrontal cortex to generate context-appropriate attentional signals.

The fellowship will support extending Halassa’s work into the tree shrew (Tupaia belangeri), which has been shown to have advanced cognitive abilities compared to mice while also offering many of the circuit-interrogation tools that make the mouse an attractive experimental model.

The Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI), a not-for-profit research organization, is part of the world-renowned Max Planck Society, Germany’s most successful research organization. The Max Planck Society was founded in 1911, and comprises 84 institutes and research facilities. While primarily located in Germany, there are 4 institutes and one research facility located aboard, including the Florida Institute that Halassa will collaborate with. The fellow positions were created with the goal of increasing interactions between the Max Planck Society and its institutes with faculty engaged in active research at other universities and institutions, which with this appointment now include MIT.

2019 Scolnick Prize Awarded to Richard Huganir

by Sabbi Lall |

The McGovern Institute announced today that the winner of the 2019 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience is Rick Huganir, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Huganir is being recognized for his role in understanding the molecular and biochemical underpinnings of “synaptic plasticity,” changes at synapses that are key to learning and memory formation. The Scolnick Prize is awarded annually by the McGovern Institute to recognize outstanding advances in any field of neuroscience.

“Rick Huganir has made a huge impact on our understanding of how neurons communicate with one another, and the award honors him for this ground-breaking research”, says Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute and the chair of the committee.

“He conducts basic research on the synapses between neurons but his work has important implications for our understanding of many brain disorders that impair synaptic function.”

As the past president of the Society for Neuroscience, the world’s largest organization of researchers that study the brain and nervous system, Huganir is well-known in the global neuroscience community. He also directs the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute and serves as director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute.

From the beginning of his research career, Huganir was interested in neurotransmitter receptors, key to signaling at the synapse. He conducted his thesis work in the laboratory of Efraim Racker at Cornell University, where he first reconstituted one of these receptors, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, allowing its biochemical characterization. He went on to become a postdoctoral fellow in Paul Greengard’s lab at The Rockefeller University in New York. During this time, he made the first functional demonstration that phosphorylation, a reversible chemical modification, affects neurotransmitter receptor activity. Phosphorylation was shown to regulate desensitization, the process by which neurotransmitter receptors stop reacting during prolonged exposure to the neurotransmitter.

Upon arriving at Johns Hopkins University, Huganir broadened this concept, finding that the properties and functions of other key receptors and channels, including the GABAA, AMPA, and kainite receptors, could be controlled through phosphorylation. By understanding the sites of phosphorylation and the effects of this modification, Huganir was laying the foundation for the next major steps from his lab: showing that these modifications affect the strength of synaptic connections and transmission, i.e. synaptic plasticity, and in turn, behavior and memory. Huganir also uncovered proteins that interact with neurotransmitter receptors and influence synaptic transmission and plasticity, thus uncovering another layer of molecular regulation. He went on to define how these accessory factors have such influence, showing that they impact the subcellular targeting and cycling of neurotransmitter receptors to and from the synaptic membrane. These mechanisms influence the formation of, for example, fear memory, as well as its erasure. Indeed, Huganir found that a specific type of AMPA receptor is added to synapses in the amygdala after a traumatic event, and that specific removal results in fear erasure in a mouse model.

Among many awards and honors, Huganir received the Young Investigator Award and the Julius Axelrod Award of the Society for Neuroscience. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Scolnick Prize was first awarded in 2004, and was established by Merck in honor of Edward M. Scolnick who was President of Merck Research Laboratories for 17 years. Scolnick is currently a core investigator at the Broad Institute, and chief scientist emeritus of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute.

Huganir will deliver the Scolnick Prize lecture at the McGovern Institute on May 8, 2019 at 4:00pm in the Singleton Auditorium of MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex (Bldg 46-3002), 43 Vassar Street in Cambridge. The event is free and open to the public.

 

 

Feng Zhang wins 2018 Keio Medical Science Prize

Anne Trafton |

Molecular biologist Feng Zhang has been named a winner of the prestigious Keio Medical Science Prize. He is being recognized for the groundbreaking development of CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome engineering in cells and its application for medical science.

Zhang is the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, an associate professor in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

“We are delighted that Feng is now a Keio Prize laureate,” says McGovern Institute Director Robert Desimone. “This truly recognizes the remarkable achievements that he has made at such a young age.”

Zhang is a molecular biologist who has contributed to the development of multiple molecular tools to accelerate the understanding of human disease and create new therapeutic modalities. During his graduate work, Zhang contributed to the development of optogenetics, a system for activating neurons using light, which has advanced our understanding of brain connectivity.

Zhang went on to pioneer the deployment of the microbial CRISPR-Cas9 system for genome engineering in eukaryotic cells. The ease and specificity of the system has led to its widespread use across the life sciences and it has groundbreaking implications for disease therapeutics, biotechnology, and agriculture. He has continued to mine bacterial CRISPR systems for additional enzymes with useful properties, leading to the discovery of Cas13, which targets RNA, rather than DNA, and may potentially be a way to treat genetic diseases without altering the genome. Zhang has also developed a molecular detection system called SHERLOCK based on the Cas13 family, which can sense trace amounts of genetic material, including viruses and alterations in genes that might be linked to cancer.

“I am tremendously honored to have our work recognized by the Keio Medical Prize,” says Zhang. “It is an inspiration to us to continue our work to improve human health.”

Now in its 23rd year, the Keio Medical Science Prize is awarded to a maximum of two scientists each year. The other 2018 laureate, Masashi Yanagisawa, director of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine at the University of Tsukuba, is being recognized for his seminal work on sleep control mechanisms.

The prize is offered by Keio University, and the selection committee specifically looks for laureates that have made an outstanding contribution to medicine or the life sciences. The prize was initially endowed by Mitsunada Sakaguchi in 1994, with the express condition that it be used to commend outstanding science, promote advances in medicine and the life sciences, expand researcher networks, and contribute to the wellbeing of humankind. The winners receive a certificate of merit, a medal, and a monetary award of approximately $90,000.

The prize ceremony will be held on Dec. 18 at Keio University in Tokyo.

Mark Harnett named Vallee Foundation Scholar

Anne Trafton |

The Bert L and N Kuggie Vallee Foundation has named McGovern Institute investigator Mark Harnett a 2018 Vallee Scholar. The Vallee Scholars Program recognizes original, innovative, and pioneering work by early career scientists at a critical juncture in their careers and provides $300,000 in discretionary funds to be spent over four years for basic biomedical research. Harnett is among five researchers named to this year’s Vallee Scholars Program.

Harnett, who is also the Fred and Carole Middleton Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, is being recognized for his work exploring how the biophysical features of neurons give rise to the computational power of the brain. By exploiting new technologies and approaches at the interface of biophysics and systems neuroscience, research in the Harnett lab aims to provide a new understanding of the biology underlying how mammalian brains learn. This may open new areas of research into brain disorders characterized by atypical learning and memory (such as dementia and schizophrenia) and may also have important implications for designing new, brain-inspired artificial neural networks.

The Vallee Foundation was established in 1996 by Bert and Kuggie Vallee to foster originality, creativity, and leadership within biomedical scientific research and medical education. The foundation’s goal to fund originality, innovation, and pioneering work “recognizes the future promise of these scientists who are dedicated to understanding fundamental biological processes.” Harnett joins a list of 24 Vallee Scholars, including McGovern investigator Feng Zhang, who have been appointed to the program since its inception in 2013.

Michale Fee receives McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award

by Julie Pryor |

McGovern Institute investigator Michale Fee has been selected to receive a 2018 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award for his research on “new technologies for imaging and analyzing neural state-space trajectories in freely-behaving small animals.”

“I am delighted to get support from the McKnight Foundation,” says Fee, who is also the Glen V. and Phyllis F. Dorflinger Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Neurosciences at MIT. “We’re very excited about this project which aims to develop technology that will be a great help to the broader neuroscience community.”

Fee studies the neural mechanisms by which the brain, specifically that of juvenile songbirds, learns complex sequential behaviors. The way that songbirds learn a song through trial and error is analogous to humans learning complex behaviors, such as riding a bicycle. While it would be insightful to link such learning to neural activity, current methods for monitoring neurons can only monitor a limited field of neurons, a big issue since such learning and behavior involve complex interactions between larger circuits. While a wider field of view for recordings would help decipher neural changes linked to this learning paradigm, current microscopy equipment is large relative to a juvenile songbird, and microscopes that can record neural activity generally constrain the behavior of small animals. Ideally, technologies need to be lightweight (about 1 gram) and compact in size (the size of a dime), a far cry from current larger microscopes that weigh in at 3 grams. Fee hopes to be able to break these technical boundaries and miniaturize the recording equipment thus allowing recording of more neurons in naturally behaving small animals.

“We are thrilled that the McKnight Foundation has chosen to support this project. The technology that Michale’s developing will help to better visualize and understand the circuits underlying learning,” says Robert Desimone, director of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

In addition to development and miniaturization of the microscopy hardware itself, the award will support the development of technology that helps analyze the resulting images, so that the neuroscience community at large can more easily deploy and use the technology.

Ed Boyden and Feng Zhang named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators

Anne Trafton |

Two members of the MIT faculty were named Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators today. Ed Boyden and Feng Zhang join a community of 300 HHMI scientists who are “transforming biology and medicine, one discovery at a time.” Both researchers have been instrumental in recognizing, developing, and sharing robust tools with broad utility that have revolutionized the life sciences.

“We are thrilled that Ed and Feng are being recognized in this way” says Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. “Being named to the investigator program recognizes their previous achievements and allows them to follow the innovative path that is a trait of their research.”

HHMI selects new Investigators to join its flagship program through periodic competitions. In choosing researchers to join its investigator program, HHMI specifically aims to select ‘people, not projects’ and identifies trail blazers in the biomedical sciences. The organization provides support for an unusual length of time, seven years with a renewal process at the end of that period, thus giving selected scientists the time and freedom to tackle difficult and important biological questions. HHMI-affiliated scientists continue to work at their home institution. The HHMI Investigator program currently funds 300 scientists at 60 research institutions across the United States.

Ed Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT, has pioneered a number of technologies that allow visualization and manipulation of complex biological systems. Boyden worked, along with Karl Deisseroth and Feng Zhang, on optogenetics, a system that leverages microbial opsins to manipulate neuronal activity using light. This technology has transformed our ability to examine neuronal function in vivo. Boyden’s work initiated optogenetics, then extended it into a multicolor, high-speed, and noninvasive toolbox. Subsequent technological advances developed by Boyden and his team include expansion microscopy, an imaging strategy that overcomes the limits of light microscopy by expanding biological specimens in a controlled fashion. Boyden’s team also recently developed a directed evolution system that is capable of robotically screening hundreds of thousands of mutated proteins for specific properties within hours. He and his team recently used the system to develop a high-performance fluorescent voltage indicator.

“I am honored and excited to become an HHMI investigator,” says Boyden, who is also a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and an associate professor in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab; the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; and the MIT Department of Biological Engineering. “This will give my group the ability to open up completely new areas of science, in a way that would not be possible with traditional funding.”

Feng Zhang is a molecular biologist focused on building new tools for probing the human brain. As a graduate student, Zhang was part of the team that developed optogenetics. Zhang went on to develop other innovative tools. These achievements include the landmark deployment of the microbial CRISPR-Cas9 system for genome engineering in eukaryotic cells. The ease and specificity of the system has led to its widespread use. Zhang has continued to mine bacterial CRISPR systems for additional enzymes with useful properties, leading to the discovery of Cas13, which targets RNA, rather than DNA. By leveraging the unique properties of Cas13, Zhang and his team created a precise RNA editing tool, which may potentially be a safer way to treat genetic diseases because the genome does not need to be cut, as well as a molecular detection system, termed SHERLOCK, which can sense trace amounts of genetic material, such as viruses.

“It is so exciting to join this exceptional scientific community,” says Zhang, “and be given this opportunity to pursue our research into engineering natural systems.”

Zhang is the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, an associate professor in the MIT departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The MIT Media Lab, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and MIT departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering contributed to this article.