NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Pershing Square Foundation has announced the opening of applications for the 2025 MIND (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery) Prize. Since the Prize launched in 2023, it has been awarded to 14 multidisciplinary investigators from institutions across the country. The annual prize awards $250,000 per year for three years ($750,000 total) to six scientists looking to uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition. The Prize is meant to enable the most talented early-to-mid-career investigators to pursue bold, creative projects that could have transformative impacts on the field of brain research.
“Our understanding of the neurodegenerative (ND) space appears to advance in parallel to its expansion: the more we learn, the more we seek to understand. This Aristotelian ‘paradox of knowledge,’ while puzzling in scope and in scale, propels forward the search for better forms of prevention and treatment,” remarked The Pershing Square Foundation Co-Trustee Neri Oxman, PhD.
“The MIND Prize seeks a ‘society of mind’ to tackle the black box of ND across scales, disciplines, and applications, including the formation of a holistic road map fusing the molecular basis of related diseases with their behavioral symptoms. From genes to viruses, from molecules to movement, we seek to better our comprehension of the ND space. We believe in bold, yet well informed bets made possible through interdisciplinary and trans-modal approaches that combine genetics with mobility, applied physics with neurodegeneration, memory, and AI, and more.”
“The Pershing Square Foundation continues to push forth as we shed light on stellar research projects and the people behind them racing to gain knowledge and remedy,” continued Oxman.
Applicants must have between one and ten years of experience running their own laboratories by the award start date (May 2025), hold a PhD, MD, or MD-PhD (or degree equivalent), and be affiliated with a research institution in the United States of America. The deadline to submit a Letter of Intent is November 4, 2024, by 5:00pm EST. For more details on the MIND Prize and the application process, including the full eligibility criteria, a link to FAQs, and a link to the application submission platform, please visit: http://MINDPrize.org.
The highly competitive MIND Prize will catalyze novel and daring interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work by facilitating collaborations across academic departments and institutions and amongst the academic, biomedical industry, philanthropic, and business communities. These breakthroughs in basic, fundamental research will help augment the toolkit for, and knowledge of, neurodegenerative and neurocognitive disorders. Projects may range from the invention of novel tools, techniques, and technologies for mapping and analyzing the brain, to bold approaches that demonstrate extraordinary therapeutic potential.
“Our first two years of the MIND Prize have impressed us with the remarkable talent across the country,” said Olivia Tournay Flatto, PhD, President of The Pershing Square Foundation and Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance. “As we embark on our third year, we continue to seek out researchers who aren’t afraid to tackle an old problem in a new way, that compel us to find new paths forward in the fields of neurobiology, immunology, engineering, computational biology, and more. We are grateful to our Scientific Advisory Board, which includes experts spanning across scientific disciplines, ready to help The Pershing Square Foundation uncover transformative and novel projects from investigators ready to change the field as we know it.”
"The MIND Prize will enable us to pursue a bold idea with the potential to revolutionize the treatment of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases,” said 2024 MIND Prize winner Xuebing Wu, PhD, Assistant Professor at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “This high-risk project is something that few funding agencies are willing to support, making the MIND Prize crucial for its advancement."
“The MIND Prize will enable us to explore novel avenues in our research on the role of Schwann cells in ALS. These cells, a relatively underexplored type of glia in the peripheral nervous system, have an elusive role in the development of neurodegenerative disorders,” 2024 MIND Prize winner Faranak Fattahi, PhD, Assistant Professor at University of California, San Francisco remarked. “We are thankful for the support from The Pershing Square Foundation in advancing this new and exciting research direction.”
The MIND Prize is proud to rely on the guidance of a highly accomplished scientific advisory board:
Paola Arlotta, PhD, Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University
Richard Axel, MD, Nobel Laureate; Co-director, Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University; University Professor, Columbia University; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Ed Boyden, PhD, Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT; MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Ali Brivanlou, PhD, Robert & Harriet Heilbrunn Professor, Head of Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology, and Synthetic Embryology, The Rockefeller University; Co-founder, Rumi Scientific Inc.
Navdeep Chandel, PhD, David W. Cugell Professor of Medicine & Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
Moses Chao, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology, Physiology & Neuroscience, and Psychiatry, NYU Langone School of Medicine
Mikael Dolsten, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and President, Worldwide Research, Development and Medical, Pfizer, Inc.
Fred “Rusty” Gage, PhD, Professor, Laboratory of Genetics, Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Michael E. Greenberg, PhD, Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University
Richard Isaacson, MD, Director of Brain Health, Atria Institute; Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology, Weill Cornell Medicine
Dean Kamen, Founder, FIRST; President, DEKA Research & Development Corporation
Sergiu Pasca, MD, Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program, Stanford University
Gregory A. Petsko, Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital; Tauber Professor Biochemistry and Chemistry, Emeritus, Brandeis University; Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University
James Rothman, PhD, Nobel Laureate; Sterling Professor of Cell Biology; Professor of Chemistry; Director, Nanobiology Institute, Yale University
Bernardo Sabatini, MD, PhD, Alice and Rodman W. Moorhead III Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School
Scott A. Small, MD, Director, Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center; Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology, The Taub Institute, The Sergievsky Center; Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, Radiology, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Beth Stevens, PhD, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Institute Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Lavine Family Research Chair, F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children’s Hospital
Bruce Stillman, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Richard Tsien, PhD, Founding Director, Neuroscience Institute; Druckenmiller Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology, NYU Langone Medical Center
Stacie Weninger, PhD, President, FBRI
George Yancopoulos, MD, PhD, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman, President and Chief Scientific Officer, Regeneron
Michael Young, PhD, Nobel Laureate; Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor, The Rockefeller University
Anthony Zador, MD, PhD, Alle Davis Harrison Professor of Neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Feng Zhang, PhD, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Core Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT; James and Patricia Poitras Professor in Neuroscience, MIT; Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering, MIT
About The Pershing Square Foundation
The Pershing Square Foundation (PSF) is a family foundation established in 2006 to support exceptional leaders and innovative organizations that tackle important social issues and deliver scalable and sustainable global impact. PSF has committed more than $750 million in grants and social investments in target areas including health and medicine, education, economic development and social justice. Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman are co-trustees of the Foundation. For more information visit: www.pershingsquarefoundation.org.