Institute News: Awards & Honors

Feng Zhang receives 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award

Anne Trafton |

Feng Zhang, a core institute member of the Broad Institute, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and W. M. Keck Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, has been named a recipient of the 2016 Canada Gairdner International Award — Canada’s most prestigious scientific prize — for his role in developing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system.

In January 2013 Zhang and his team were first to report CRISPR-based genome editing in mammalian cells, in what has become the most-cited paper in the CRISPR field. He is one of five scientists the Gairdner Foundation is honoring for work with CRISPR. Zhang shares the award with Rodolphe Barrangou from North Carolina State University; Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Institute; Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley and Phillipe Horvath from DuPont Nutrition and Health.

“The Gairdner Award is a tremendous recognition for my entire team, and it is a great honor to share this recognition with other pioneers in the CRISPR field,” Zhang says. “In the next decade, the understanding and the discoveries that scientists are going to be able to make using the CRISPR-Cas9 system will lead to new innovations that will translate into new therapeutics and new products that can benefit our lives.”

Although Zhang is well-known for his work with CRISPR, the 34-year-old scientist has a long track record of innovation. As a graduate student at Stanford University, Zhang worked with Karl Deisseroth and Edward Boyden, who is now also a professor at MIT, to develop optogenetics, in which neuronal activity can be controlled with light. The three shared the Perl-UNC Prize in Neuroscience in 2012 as recognition of these efforts. Zhang has also received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award (2014), the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine (2014, shared with Charpentier and Doudna), the Tsuneko & Reiji Okazaki Award (2015), and the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) Chen New Investigator Award (2016).

One of Zhang’s long-term goals is to use genome-editing technologies to better understand the nervous system and develop new approaches to the treatment of psychiatric disease. The Zhang lab has shared CRISPR-Cas9 components in response to nearly 30,000 requests from academic laboratories around the world and has trained thousands of researchers in the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology through in-person events and online opportunities. In his current research, he continues to improve and expand the gene-editing toolbox. “I feel incredibly fortunate and excited to work with an incredible team of students and postdocs to continue advancing our ability to edit and understand the genome,” Zhang says.

“CRISPR is a revolutionary breakthrough that will advance the frontiers of science and enable us to meet the health challenges of the 21st century in ways we are only beginning to imagine,” says Michael Sipser, dean of MIT’s School of Science and the Barton L. Weller Professor of Mathematics. “I am exceedingly proud of the contributions Feng has made to MIT and the greater community of scientists, and extend my heartfelt congratulations to him and his colleagues.”

“CRISPR is a great example of how the scientific community can come together and make stunning progress in a short period of time,” says Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute. “On behalf of my colleagues at the Broad and MIT, I wish to congratulate Feng and all the winners of this prestigious award, as well as the teams of scientists and all others who have contributed to these transformational discoveries.”

The Canada Gairdner International Awards, created in 1959, are given annually to recognize and reward the achievements of medical researchers whose work contributes significantly to the understanding of human biology and disease. The awards provide a $100,000 (CDN) prize to each scientist for their work. Each year, the five honorees of the International Awards are selected after a rigorous two-part review, with the winners voted by secret ballot by a medical advisory board composed of 33 eminent scientists from around the world.

The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was launched in 2004 to empower this generation of creative scientists to transform medicine. The Broad Institute seeks to describe all the molecular components of life and their connections; discover the molecular basis of major human diseases; develop effective new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics; and disseminate discoveries, tools, methods, and data openly to the entire scientific community.

Founded by MIT, Harvard, Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and the visionary Los Angeles philanthropists Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the Broad Institute includes faculty, professional staff, and students from throughout the MIT and Harvard biomedical research communities and beyond, with collaborations spanning over a hundred private and public institutions in more than 40 countries worldwide. For further information about the Broad Institute, visit: http://www.broadinstitute.org.

Edward Boyden wins BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Anne Trafton |

Edward S. Boyden, a professor of media arts and sciences, biological engineering, and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, has won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine for his role in the development of optogenetics, a technique for controlling brain activity with light. Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford and Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University were also honored with the prize for their role in developing and refining the technique.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are given annually for “outstanding contributions and radical advances in a broad range of scientific, technological and artistic areas.” The €400.000 prize in the category of biomedicine will be shared among the three neuroscientists.

“If we imagine the brain as a computer, optogenetics is a keyboard that allows us to send extremely precise commands,” says Boyden, a a faculty member at the MIT Media Lab with a joint appointment at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “It is a tool whereby we can control the brain with exquisite precision.”

Boyden joins an illustrious list of prize laureates including physicist Stephen Hawking and artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky of MIT, who died on January 24.

The BBVA Foundation will host the winners at an awards ceremony on June 21, 2016 at the foundation’s headquarters in Madrid, Spain.

About the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards

The BBVA Foundation promotes, funds and disseminates world-class scientific research and artistic creation, in the conviction that science, culture and knowledge hold the key to better opportunities for all world citizens. The Foundation designs and implements its programs in partnership with some of the leading scientific and cultural organizations in Spain and abroad, striving to identify and prioritize those projects with the power to significantly advance the frontiers of the known world.

The juries in each of eight categories are made up of leading international experts in their respective fields, who arrive at their decisions in a wholly independent manner, applying internationally recognized metrics of excellence. The BBVA Foundation is aided in the organization of the awards by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

Ed Boyden wins 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

Anne Trafton |

MIT researchers took home several awards last night at the 2016 Breakthrough Prize ceremony at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

Edward Boyden, an associate professor of media arts and sciences, biological engineering, and brain and cognitive sciences, was one of five scientists honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, given for “transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life.” He will receive $3 million for the award.

MIT physicists also contributed to a project that won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. That prize went to five experiments investigating the oscillation of subatomic particles known as neutrinos. More than 1,300 contributing physicists will share in the recognition for their work, according to the award announcement. Those physicists include MIT associate professor of physics Joseph Formaggio and his team, as well as MIT assistant professor of physics Lindley Winslow.

Larry Guth, an MIT professor of mathematics, was honored with the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, which is given to promising junior researchers who have already produced important work in mathematics. Liang Fu, an assistant professor of physics, was honored with the New Horizons in Physics Prize, which is awarded to promising junior researchers who have already produced important work in fundamental physics.

“By challenging conventional thinking and expanding knowledge over the long term, scientists can solve the biggest problems of our time,” said Mark Zuckerberg, chairman and CEO of Facebook, and one of the prizes’ founders. “The Breakthrough Prize honors achievements in science and math so we can encourage more pioneering research and celebrate scientists as the heroes they truly are.”

Optogenetics

Boyden was honored for the development and implementation of optogenetics, a technique in which scientists can control neurons by shining light on them. Karl Deisseroth, a Stanford University professor who worked with Boyden to pioneer the technique, was also honored with one of the life sciences prizes.

Optogenetics relies on light-sensitive proteins, originally isolated from bacteria and algae. About 10 years ago, Boyden and Deisseroth began engineering neurons to express these proteins, allowing them to selectively stimulate or silence them with pulses of light. More recently, Boyden has developed additional proteins that are even more sensitive to light and can respond to different colors.

Scientists around the world have used optogenetics to reveal the brain circuitry underlying normal neural function as well as neurological disorders such as autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression.

Boyden is a member of the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Neutrino oscillations

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to five research projects investigating the nature of neutrinos: Daya Bay (China); KamLAND (Japan); K2K/T2K (Japan); Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Canada); and Super-Kamiokande (Japan). Researchers with these experiments were recognized “for the fundamental discovery of neutrino oscillations, revealing a new frontier beyond, and possibly far beyond, the standard model of particle physics.”

Formaggio and his team at MIT have been collaborating on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) project since 2005. Research at the observatory, 2 kilometers underground in a mine near Sudbury, Ontario, demonstrated that neutrinos change their type — or “flavor” — on their way to Earth from the sun.

Winslow has been a collaborator on KamLAND, located in a mine in Japan, since 2001. Using antineutrinos from nuclear reactors, this experiment demonstrated that the change in flavor was energy-dependent. The combination of these results solved the solar neutrino puzzle and proved that neutrinos have mass.

The MIT SNO group has participated heavily on the analysis of neutrino data, particularly during that experiment’s final measurement phase. The MIT KamLAND group is involved with the next phase, KamLAND-Zen, which is searching for a rare nuclear process that if observed, would make neutrinos their own antiparticles.

Reaching new horizons

Guth, who will receive a $100,000 prize, was honored for his “ingenious and surprising solutions to long standing open problems in symplectic geometry, Riemannian geometry, harmonic analysis, and combinatorial geometry.”

Guth’s work at MIT focuses on combinatorics, or the study of discrete structures, and how sets of lines intersect each other in space. He also works in the area of harmonic analysis, studying how sound waves interact with each other.

Guth’s father, MIT physicist Alan Guth, won the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2015.

Fu will share a New Horizons in Physics Prize with two other researchers: B. Andrei Bernevig of Princeton University and Xiao-Liang Qi of Stanford University. The physicists were honored for their “outstanding contributions to condensed matter physics, especially involving the use of topology to understand new states of matter.”

Fu works on theories of topological insulators — a new class of materials whose surfaces can freely conduct electrons even though their interiors are electrical insulators — and topological superconductors. Such materials may provide insight into quantum physics and have possible applications in creating transistors based on the spin of particles rather than their charge.

Yesterday’s prize ceremony was hosted by producer/actor/director Seth MacFarlane; awards were presented by the prize sponsors and by celebrities including actors Russell Crowe, Hilary Swank, and Lily Collins. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan.

“Breakthrough Prize laureates are making fundamental discoveries about the universe, life, and the mind,” Yuri Milner said. “These fields of investigation are advancing at an exponential pace, yet the biggest questions remain to be answered.”

MIT researchers to win awards from the Society for Neuroscience

Anne Trafton |

Three neuroscientists at MIT have been selected to receive awards from the Society for Neuroscience (SfN).

Tomaso Poggio, a founding member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, will receive the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience; Feng Zhang, a member of the McGovern Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, will receive the Young Investigator Award; and Sung-Yon Kim, a Simons postdoctoral fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation at MIT, will receive the Donald B. Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience.
 
The awards will be presented during Neuroscience 2014, the SfN’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience
 

The $25,000 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, supported by the Swartz Foundation, recognizes an individual who has produced a significant cumulative contribution to theoretical models or computational methods in neuroscience.

“Dr. Poggio’s contributions to the development of computational and theoretical models of the human visual system have served to advance our understanding of how human systems learn from experience,” said Carol Mason, president of SfN. “It is an honor to recognize him as a founder and driving force in the field of computational neuroscience.”

Poggio, the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the director of the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, develops computational models of the brain to understand human intelligence. Specifically, he has developed models that mimic the ways that humans learn to recognize objects, such as faces, and actions, such as motion — applications now present in digital cameras and some cars. Poggio is currently working to develop more complex models that mimic the forward as well as feedback signals that the human brain uses during visual recognition. The ultimate goal of this research is to better understand how the brain works and to apply this technology to build intelligent machines.


Young Investigator Award
 

The SfN has also named two winners of this year’s Young Investigator Award: Feng Zhang of MIT and Diana Bautista of the University of California at Berkeley.

The $15,000 award recognizes the outstanding achievements and contributions by a young neuroscientist who has recently received his or her advanced professional degree.

“Drs. Zhang and Bautista are two young neuroscientists who have demonstrated remarkable dedication to their work,” Mason said. “Their creative research is advancing their respective fields, and their commitment to helping other scientists succeed is an inspiration to us all.”

Zhang, who is also a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the W. M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering, uses synthetic biology methods to study brain disease.
 
As a graduate student at Stanford University, Zhang was instrumental in advancing the development of optogenetic technology, which allows researchers to manipulate genetically modified neurons with light. More recently, Zhang was a leader in the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 method for genome editing – a powerful new technology with many applications in biomedical research, including the potential to treat human genetic disease.

Donald B. Lindsley Prize in Behavioral Neuroscience
 


The SfN will award the Donald B. Lindsley Prize to Sung-Yon Kim, a postdoc in Kwanghun Chung’s lab at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Supported by The Grass Foundation, the prize recognizes an outstanding PhD thesis in the area of general behavioral neuroscience.
 
Kim, who earned his PhD at Stanford University, used optogenetics to study the brain circuits underlying anxiety.

“The Society is pleased to honor Dr. Kim’s groundbreaking research in the neuroanatomical basis of anxiety behavior,” said Mason. “His approach to behavioral neuroscience will likely have a broad and lasting impact on biology and medicine.”

Fifteen MIT scientists receive NIH BRAIN Initiative grants

Anne Trafton |

Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced their first round of BRAIN Initiative award recipients. Six teams and 15 researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were recipients.

Mriganka Sur, principal investigator at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Paul E. Newton Professor of Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) leads a team studying cortical circuits and information flow during memory-guided perceptual decisions. Co-principal investigators include Emery Brown, BCS professor of computational neuroscience and the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering; Kwanghun Chung, Picower Institute principal investigator and assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES); and Ian Wickersham, research scientist at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and head of MIT’s Genetic Neuroengineering Group.

Elly Nedivi, Picower Institute principal investigator and professor in BCS and the Department of Biology, leads a team studying new methods for high-speed monitoring of sensory-driven synaptic activity across all inputs to single living neurons in the context of the intact cerebral cortex. Her co-principal investigator is Peter So, professor of mechanical and biological engineering, and director of the MIT Laser Biomedical Research Center.

Ian Wickersham will lead a team looking at novel technologies for nontoxic transsynaptic tracing. His co-principal investigators include Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute and the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience in BCS; Li-Huei Tsai, director of the Picower Institute and the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in BCS; and Kay Tye, Picower Institute principal investigator and assistant professor of neuroscience in BCS.

Robert Desimone will lead a team studying vascular interfaces for brain imaging and stimulation. Co-principal investigators include Ed Boyden, associate professor at the MIT Media Lab, McGovern Institute, and departments of BCS and Biological Engineering; head of MIT’s Synthetic Neurobiology Group, and co-director of MIT’s Center for Neurobiological Engineering; and Elazer Edelman, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences and Technology in IMES and director of the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center. Collaborators on this project include: Rodolfo Llinas (New York University), George Church (Harvard University), Jan Rabaey (University of California at Berkeley), Pablo Blinder (Tel Aviv University), Eric Leuthardt (Washington University/St. Louis), Michel Maharbiz (Berkeley), Jose Carmena (Berkeley), Elad Alon (Berkeley), Colin Derdeyn (Washington University in St. Louis), Lowell Wood (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Xue Han (Boston University), and Adam Marblestone (MIT).

Ed Boyden will be co-principal investigator with Mark Bathe, associate professor of biological engineering, and Peng Yin of Harvard on a project to study ultra-multiplexed nanoscale in situ proteomics for understanding synapse types.

Alan Jasanoff, associate professor of biological engineering and director of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering, will lead a team looking at calcium sensors for molecular fMRI. Stephen Lippard, the Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry, is co-principal investigator.

In addition, Sur and Wickersham also received BRAIN Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Sur will focus on massive-scale multi-area single neuron recordings to reveal circuits underlying short-term memory. Wickersham, in collaboration with Li-Huei Tsai, Kay Tye, and Robert Desimone, will develop cell-type specific optogenetics in wild-type animals. Additional information about NSF support of the BRAIN initiative can be found at NSF.gov/brain.

The BRAIN Initiative, spearheaded by President Obama in April 2013, challenges the nation’s leading scientists to advance our sophisticated understanding of the human mind and discover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, and traumatic brain injury. The scientific community is charged with accelerating the invention of cutting-edge technologies that can produce dynamic images of complex neural circuits and illuminate the interaction of lightning-fast brain cells. The new capabilities are expected to provide greater insights into how brain functionality is linked to behavior, learning, memory, and the underlying mechanisms of debilitating disease. BRAIN was launched with approximately $100 million in initial investments from the NIH, the National Science Foundation, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

BRAIN Initiative scientists are engaged in a challenging and transformative endeavor to explore how our minds instantaneously processes, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information. Their discoveries will unlock many of the remaining mysteries inherent in the brain’s billions of neurons and trillions of connections, leading to a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of many neurological and psychiatric conditions. Their findings will enable scientists and doctors to develop the groundbreaking arsenal of tools and technologies required to more effectively treat those suffering from these devastating disorders.

Feng Zhang shares Gabbay Award for CRISPR research

Anne Trafton |

Feng Zhang of MIT and the Broad Institute, Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of Umeå University have been awarded Brandeis University’s 17th Annual Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine.

The researchers are being honored for their work on the CRISPR/cas system, a genome editing technology that allows scientists to make precise changes to a DNA sequence — an advance that is expected to transform many areas of biomedical research and may ultimately form the basis of new treatments for human genetic disease.

Feng Zhang wins NSF’s Alan T. Waterman Award

Anne Trafton |

The National Science Foundation (NSF) named Feng Zhang the 2014 recipient of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is NSF’s highest honor that annually recognizes an outstanding researcher under the age of 35 and funds his or her research in any field of science or engineering. Zhang’s research focuses on understanding how the brain works.

“It is a great pleasure to honor Feng Zhang with this award for his young, impressive career,” said NSF Director France Córdova. “It is exciting to support his continued fundamental research, which is certain to impact the field of brain research. Imagine a future free of schizophrenia, autism and other brain disorders that wreak havoc on individuals, families and society. Feng’s research moves us in that direction.”

Zhang seeks to understand the molecular machinery of brain cells through the development and application of innovative technologies. He created and is continuing to perfect tools that afford researchers precise control over biological activities occurring inside the cell. With these tools, researchers can deepen their understanding of how the genome works, and how it influences the development and function of the brain. Zhang also examines failures within the systems that cause disease.

Two different lines of fundamental research and technology development are helping him do that: optogenetics and genome engineering. With Edward Boyden and Karl Deisseroth at Stanford University, he developed optogenetics to study brain circuits, a technique in which light is used to affect signaling and gene expression of neurons involved in complex behaviors. Zhang also developed the CRISPR system to enable new, cheaper, more effective ways to “edit” animal genomes–that is, to identify and cut a short DNA sequence underlying a disorder so that it may be deleted or substituted out for other genetic material. Although Zhang’s main area of focus is the brain, the potential applications of CRISPR technology extend well beyond neuroscience.

“This is an immensely exciting time for the field because of the tremendous potential of tools like CRISPR, which allows us to modify the genomes of mammalian cells,” Zhang said. “One of my long-term goals is to better understand the molecular mechanisms of brain function and identify new ways to treat devastating neurological disorders.”

Since high school, Zhang has devoted his time, energy and intellectual prowess to developing ways to study and repair the nervous system. Today, he is one of 11 core faculty members at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; an investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research; and the W. M. Keck Career Development Professor with a joint appointment in MIT’s Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering.

Zhang is widely recognized for his pioneering work in optogenetics and genome editing. He shared the Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize with Karl Deisseroth and Edward Boyden in 2012. In 2013, MIT Technology Review recognized him as a “pioneer” and one of its 35 Innovators Under 35; Popular Science magazine placed Zhang on its Brilliant 10, an annual list of the most promising scientific innovators. Nature also named him as one of the “ten people who mattered” in 2013 for his work on developing the CRISPR system for genome editing in mammalian cells.

The Waterman award will be presented to Zhang at an evening ceremony at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on May 6. At that event, the National Science Board will also present its 2014 Vannevar Bush award to mathematician Richard Tapia and Public Service awards to bioethicist Arthur Caplan and to the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships Program.

Plans are underway for Zhang to deliver a lecture at a meeting of the National Science Board at NSF and to meet with students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology during his visit this spring.

Feng Zhang named to Popular Science Brilliant 10

Anne Trafton |

Popular Science magazine has named two MIT junior faculty members — Pedro Reis and Feng Zhang — to its 2013 Brilliant 10 list of young stars in science and technology. The list will appear in the magazine’s October issue.

“Popular Science prides itself on revealing the innovations and ideas that are laying today’s groundwork for tomorrow’s breakthroughs, and the Brilliant 10 is one of the most exciting ways we do that,” says Jake Ward, editor-in-chief. “This collection of 10 brilliant young researchers is our chance to honor the most promising work — and the most hardworking people — in science and technology today. This year’s winners are particularly distinguished and I’m proud to welcome them all as members of the 2013 Brilliant 10.”

Pedro Reis, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, studies the mechanics of slender structures, with a particular focus on devising new ways of turning mechanical failure into functionality.

Over the past few years, Reis, 35, has published a number of eclectic and impactful papers in prominent journals. In 2009 he reported on the delamination of thin films adhered to soft foundations, which is relevant for stretchable electronics. He explained why adhesive films tear into triangular shapes, a problem that applies to both the everyday peeling of adhesive tape from a roll and the manufacturing of tapered graphene nanoribbons. Motivated by the closing of aquatic flowers, he recently discovered a new mechanism for passively pipetting liquids using a petal-shaped object. And last year inspired by a toy, Reis introduced the Buckliball, a new class of structures that uses buckling to provide origami-like folding capabilities to curved structures with potential uses for encapsulation and soft robotics.

In other work undertaken just for fun, Reis and colleagues reported in 2010 that when cats lap fluids (milk or water, for example), they take advantage of a perfect balance between gravity and inertia.

Feng Zhang, 31, is the W.M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering, an assistant professor in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and a core member of the Broad Institute. He received the award for his work on genome editing. Earlier this year he reported a powerful new way to make targeted mutations in genomic DNA, based on a bacterial system known as CRISPR. The new method will greatly accelerate the development of animal models of human genetic diseases, and may eventually make it possible to correct genetic mutations in patients. Zhang, a pioneer in optogenetics, has also recently invented a new method for controlling gene expression with light, in which light-sensitive plant proteins are engineered to create an “optical switch” that can turn other genes on or off at will.

This is the 12th annual Brilliant 10 list. Ten MIT researchers were included on previous lists.

Obama hosts Dresselhaus, Graybiel and Luu in Oval Office

Anne Trafton |

President Barack Obama met Thursday, March 28, in the Oval Office with the six U.S. recipients of the 2012 Kavli Prizes — including MIT’s Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Ann M. Graybiel and Jane X. Luu. Obama and his science and technology advisor, John P. Holdren, received the scientists to recognize their landmark contributions in nanoscience, neuroscience and astrophysics, respectively. [watch video]

“American scientists, engineers and innovators strengthen our nation every day and in countless ways, but the all-stars honored by the Kavli Foundation deserve special praise for the scale of their advances in some of the most important and exciting research disciplines today,” said Holdren, who also serves as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “I am grateful not only for their profound accomplishments, but for the inspiration they are providing to a new generation of doers, makers and discoverers.”

The researchers received their Kavli Prizes for making fundamental contributions to our understanding of the outer solar system; of the differences in material properties at nano- and larger scales; and of how the brain receives and responds to sensations such as sight, sound and touch.

The 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics was awarded to Luu, David C. Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Michael E. Brown of the California Institute of Technology for discovering and characterizing the Kuiper Belt and its largest members, work that led to a major advance in the understanding of the history of our planetary system. The Kuiper Belt lies beyond the orbit of Neptune and is a disk of more than 70,000 small bodies made of rock and ice, and orbiting the sun. Jewitt and Luu discovered the Kuiper Belt, and Brown discovered and characterized many of its largest members.

The 2012 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience was awarded to Dresselhaus for her work explaining why the properties of materials structured at the nanoscale can vary so much from those of the same materials at larger dimensions. Her early work provided the foundation for later discoveries concerning the famous C60 buckyball, carbon nanotubes and graphene. Dresselhaus received the Kavli Prize for her research into uniform oscillations of elastic arrangements of atoms or molecules called phonons; phonon-electron interactions; and heat conductivity in nanostructures.

The 2012 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience was awarded to Graybiel, Cornelia Isabella Bargmann of Rockefeller University, and Winfried Denk of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, who have pioneered the study of how sensory signals pass from the point of sensation — whether the eye, the foot or the nose — to the brain, and how decisions are made to respond. Each working on different parts of the brain, and using different techniques and models, they have combined precise neuroanatomy with sophisticated functional studies to gain understanding of their chosen systems.

Martha Constantine-Paton to receive top honors from Tufts University

Anne Trafton |

Martha Constantine-Paton will receive the Dean’s Medal from Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences for her “exceptional contributions to the field of developmental neuroscience.” Constantine-Paton, a Tufts alumna, refers to her time at the university as a “turning point” in her life and credits the school for giving her the self-confidence she needed to pursue a career in science. The Dean’s Medal is the highest honor available at each school at Tufts, reserved only “for those select individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the university and to the greater community.”

Constantine-Paton will be awarded the Dean’s Medal on March 25, 2013.