MIT faculty members Nancy Kanwisher, Robert Langer and Sara Seager are among eight researchers worldwide receiving this year’s Kavli Prizes.
A partnership between the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and the Kavli Foundation, the Kavli Prizes are awarded every two years to “honour scientists for discoveries in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience that transform our understanding of the big, small and complex.” Laureates in each field will share $1 million.
Understanding face recognition
Nancy Kanwisher, Walter A Rosenblith Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and McGovern Institute for Brain Research investigator, has been awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Doris Tsao, professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. , and Winrich Freiwald, Denise A. and Eugene W. Chinery Professor at Rockefeller University.
Kanwisher, Tsao and Freiwald discovered a specialized system within the brain to recognize faces. Their discoveries have provided basic principles of neural organization and provided the starting point for further research into how visual information processing is integrated with other cognitive functions.
Kanwisher was the first to prove that a specific area in the human neocortex is dedicated to recognizing faces, now called the fusiform face area. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, she found individual differences in the location of this area and devised an analysis technique to effectively locate specialized functional regions in the brain. This technique is now widely used and applied to domains beyond the facial recognition system.
Integrating nanomaterials for biomedical advances
Robert Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor, has been awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience with Paul Alivisatos, president of the University of Chicago and John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Chad Mirkin, professor of chemistry at Northwestern University.
Langer, Alivisatos, and Mirkin each revolutionized the field of nanomedicine by demonstrating how nanoscale engineering can advance biomedical research and application. Their discoveries contributed fundamentally to the development of therapeutics, vaccines, bioimaging and diagnostics.
Langer was the first to develop nano-engineered materials that enabled the controlled release, or steady flow, of drug molecules. This ability has had a tremendous impact on the treatment of a variety of diseases, such as aggressive brain cancer, prostate cancer and schizophrenia. His work also showed that small particles, containing protein antigens, could be used in vaccination and was instrumental in the development of delivery of RNA vaccines.
In search of life beyond Earth
Sara Seager, 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and professor in the Departments of Physics and Aeronautics and Astronautics, has been awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics along with David Charbonneau, the Fred Kavli Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University.
Seager and Charbonneau are known for their discoveries of exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres. They pioneered methods for detecting atomic species in planetary atmospheres and measuring their thermal infrared emission, setting the stage for finding molecular fingerprints of atmospheres around giant and rocky planets. Their contributions have been key to the great progress seen in the last 20 years in the exploration of a host of exoplanets.
Kanwisher, Langer and Seager bring the number of all-time MIT faculty Kavli Award recipients to eight. Previous winners include Rainer Weiss in astrophysics (2016), Alan Guth in astrophysics (2014), Mildred Dresselhaus in nanoscience (2012), Ann Graybiel in neuroscience (2012), and Jane Luu in astrophysics (2012).
