"Science thrives as a vibrant network of individuals committed to advancing it,” said SfN President John H. Morrison. “These awardees push the boundaries of neuroscience through their own work while uplifting and empowering others, who will in turn shape the future of the neuroscience community."
Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring: David Poeppel
The Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring recognizes individuals dedicated to developing the careers of female neuroscientists. Named after the first female president of SfN, the award recognizes leaders who have aided the early careers of women neuroscientists and facilitated their retention in the field. The award includes a $2,500 prize and complimentary registration and travel to SfN’s annual meeting.
This year’s awardee is David Poeppel, PhD, professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University. During his distinguished career as a cognitive neuroscientist and linguist, Poeppel has mentored more than 60 scientists, including more than 20 early career women, creating opportunities for mentees and encouraging scientific integrity, intellectual honesty, and risk-taking in pursuit of excellence. His mentees have observed that he has exceptional emotional awareness, perceiving who needs encouragement or is going through a difficult time on the competitive path toward scientific independence. They also note that his mentorship is characterized by trust, respect, and a genuine investment in the personal and professional well-being of the scientists he advises, whether informally or formally. Without fanfare, he has actively ensured early career female scientists have a voice in every event he organizes. Poeppel has been an outspoken advocate for gender parity, both publicly and behind the scenes in key scientific organizations. He fosters a collaborative environment rooted in curiosity, encouragement, and unwavering support that goes beyond traditional academic advising. Poeppel’s exceptional leadership and ongoing mentorship have been complemented by his major theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of cognitive neuroscience.
Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement: Carmen Sandi
The Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a neuroscientist with outstanding achievements in research who has significantly promoted the professional advancement of women in neuroscience. The award includes a $5,000 prize and complimentary registration and travel to the SfN annual meeting.
This year’s award recipient is Carmen Sandi, PhD, professor of neuroscience and director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics within the Brain Mind Institute at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL). Her contributions have transformed the understanding of how stress influences motivation, learning, memory, and social behavior, revealing neural mechanisms that mediate individual differences to stress and resilience. Sandi’s early career research in rodents demonstrated that glucocorticoids are critical mediators of both stress-induced synaptic plasticity and the molecular processes that underlie long-term memory formation. Later research identified mitochondrial function across rodents and humans as a key modulator of neural activity and effort-based decision-making, linking brain metabolism to the willingness to exert motivated effort. Taken together, these findings suggest that metabolic interventions could ameliorate conditions such as high anxiety and motivational deficits. A pioneer in translating fundamental neurobiological findings into human research, Sandi’s laboratory has developed a virtual reality tool to predict individual differences in stress vulnerability that could lead to tailored interventions for human psychiatric disorders. In recognition of her research excellence (documented in more than 275 publications), she has been honored with numerous awards including the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Distinguished Investigator Grant, the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Optimus Agora Prize, the European Brain and Behaviour Society Diversity Award, and the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Neuropsychopharmacology Award. Sandi created the ALBA Network to broaden inclusion in neuroscience and she regularly mentors early career women in neuroscience worldwide. Sandi has mentored 20 graduate students and 33 postdoctoral scholars, who all speak of her tireless energy, immense warmth, and determination to make neuroscience a more equitable place.
Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award:
Sara Mederos and Malavika Murugan
The Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award promotes successful academic transitions prior to tenure by recognizing early career professionals who have demonstrated originality and creativity in their research. The award is supported by the Trubatch family and includes a $2,000 prize and complimentary registration to the SfN annual meeting.
This year’s awardees are Sara Mederos, PhD, and Malavika Murugan, PhD, who have each exhibited originality and creativity in their research, along with scientific initiative and technical versatility. Their stellar early career contributions in systems and circuits neuroscience are transforming the understanding of brain circuits underlying flexible behavior as shaped by experience and in social contexts. Their research findings have significant implications in mental health and psychiatric disorders.
Mederos is a Wellcome Early-Career Award fellow at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at University College London (UCL). As a graduate student at the Cajal Institute in Madrid, Spain, her research on astrocyte-interneuron communication and its role in goal-directed behaviors resulted in two first-author publications and several awards, including the Margarita Salas Research Award for her doctoral thesis and the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies’ European Journal of Neuroscience Young Investigator Prize in 2022 — one of Europe’s most prestigious recognitions for early career neuroscientists. Mederos’ postdoctoral research in the Hofer Lab at UCL mapped out how the brain learns to suppress responses to perceived threats that prove harmless over time. With support from the Wellcome Trust, she has launched an ambitious research program focused on how cortical and subcortical circuits support behavioral flexibility depending on the perceived level of threat and safety. She has mentored more than 16 trainees and is active in professional organizations such as the Young Researchers Committee of the Spanish Society for Neuroscience and the Early Career Researchers’ Symposium organization at the International Winter Neuroscience Conference, along with actively promoting science outreach through her work with BrainCamp Kosovo and other organizations. Mederos will be starting her own group at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain in January 2026.
Murugan is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University. Her graduate research in neurobiology at Duke University focused on identifying molecular and circuit mechanisms in the basal ganglia that support learned vocalizations in songbirds. During her postdoctoral research at Princeton, she identified prefrontal cortex circuitry in mice that encode an unexpected combination of spatial and social information. In her research group at Emory, Murugan uses modern neural circuit dissection techniques and advanced computational methods to investigate neural mechanisms underlying social decision-making in rodents. Her laboratory developed a novel two-choice operant assay to determine how social and non-social rewards are represented in the brain, discovering non-overlapping representations for social and sucrose rewards in the mouse prefrontal cortex. In another research project, the Murugan Lab identified a novel hippocampal circuit that drives social novelty-related approach behaviors. Within her collaborative work, she is applying her circuit dissection expertise to other ethological model systems to study social behaviors such as pair bonding in prairie voles and peer group affiliation in spiny mice. Murugan’s innovative research program was recently recognized with an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and her extensive history of excellence in mentorship has been recognized by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellows Program.
Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Recipient: Chinna Orish
The Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Award honors individuals who have significantly promoted the professional development of women in neuroscience through teaching, organizational leadership, public advocacy, or other efforts. The award includes complimentary registration and travel to the SfN annual meeting.
This year’s recipient is Chinna Orish, PhD, senior lecturer in the Department of Human Anatomy at the University of Port Harcourt and co-director and group leader of the Neuro-Provictoire Research Hub in Nigeria. Orish is a trailblazing neuroscientist whose research has provided important insights into neurotoxicology, neurodegenerative diseases, and the neuroprotective role of natural compounds. Her leadership and advocacy for women in neuroscience are equally significant. Her contributions to global neuroscience research and capacity building in Africa extend beyond Africa’s borders. After postdoctoral training at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s National Center for Toxicological Research, Orish returned to Nigeria and established the first Drosophila neuroscience lab in the region, the Neuro-Provictoire Research Hub in Port Harcourt. The Hub, founded in 2023, provides hands-on training and research opportunities in neuroscience, molecular biology, and toxicology. She also founded the Youth Neuroscience Association of Nigeria, as well as Women in Neuroscience, Nigeria (WIN) to support women in neuroscience at all career stages. Her leadership roles, including those with the Neuroscience Society of Nigeria and World Women in Neuroscience, have shaped neuroscience education, policy, and outreach in Africa and beyond. Her work has led to the creation and funding of numerous programs that support, inspire, and empower thousands of women and girls, including Neuro4Girl Outreach, the Annual WIN Luncheon at the Neuroscience Society of Nigeria conference, the WIN Child-care Travel Grant, the WIN ECO Award for best female undergraduate student, and the SheSynapse Summit Award (honoring female neuroscientists for leadership and advocacy). For her leadership and advocacy, Orish was honored as a Falling Walls Women’s Impact Award finalist.
Patricia Goldman-Rakic Hall of Honor: Elena Chartoff
The Patricia Goldman‐Rakic Hall of Honor posthumously recognizes a neuroscientist who pursued career excellence and exhibited dedication to the advancement of women in neuroscience; it is named after Patricia Goldman-Rakic, PhD, a past president of SfN and the award’s second recipient. The family of the honoree receives complimentary registration and travel to the SfN annual meeting.
The late Elena Chartoff, PhD, was an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and founder and director of the Neurobiology of Motivated Behavior Laboratory at McLean Hospital. She obtained her undergraduate degree at Carnegie Mellon University and continued with her PhD at the University of Washington in the late 1990s, where her foundational research in dopaminergic transmission in the striatum was ahead of its time for its inclusion of female mice and focus on sex differences. Her research provided insights into often-overlooked aspects of women’s health and why treatments based on male neurophysiology might not benefit women with substance use disorders (SUDs). After establishing her laboratory at Harvard Medical School in 2007, she became a leading authority on sex differences in SUDs. Her finding of substantial sex differences in oxycodone self-administration greatly influenced studies of prescription opioid misuse and dependence. Her outstanding addiction research was recognized with the 2019 Jack H. Mendelson Memorial Research Award. In 2021, she co-founded the McLean Mental Health Research Summer Program and served as faculty director of the paid neuroscience research experience for undergraduates identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. Known for her intellect and sense of humor, Chartoff was a leader, innovator, and dedicated mentor to over 50 women in science and leaves a lasting effect on the next generation of neuroscientists. For those wishing to honor her memory, the Dr. Elena Chartoff Endowed Scholarship has been established at Carnegie Mellon University and will provide financial assistance to a Carnegie Mellon student studying neuroscience or biology.
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The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of nearly 30,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and the nervous system
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