MIT faculty members Nancy Kanwisher, Robert Langer and Sara Seager are among eight researchers worldwide to receive this year’s Kavli Prizes.
The Kavli Prizes, a partnership between the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and the Kavli Foundation, are awarded every two years to “honor scientists for breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience that advance our understanding of transforming nature.” big, small and complex.” The laureates in each field will share $1 million.
Understanding facial recognition
Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A Rosenblith Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a researcher at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, has been awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience along with Doris Tsao, professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley , and Winrich Freiwald, the Denise A. and Eugene W. Chinery Professor at Rockefeller University.
Kanwisher, Tsao and Freiwald discovered a specialized system in the brain for recognizing faces. Their discoveries provided basic principles of neural organization and provided the starting point for further research into how the processing of visual information 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 discovered individual differences in the location of this area and devised an analysis technique to effectively locate specialized functional areas in the brain. This technique is now widely used and applied to domains beyond facial recognition systems.
Integration of nanomaterials for biomedical advancement
Robert Langer, professor at the David H. Koch Institute, has received the 2024 Kavli Prize for Nanoscience, along 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 have fundamentally contributed to the development of therapies, vaccines, bioimaging and diagnostics.
Langer was the first to develop nanoengineered materials that enabled the controlled release, or steady flow, of drug molecules. This possibility has had a huge impact on the treatment of a range 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 messenger RNA vaccine delivery.
Searching for 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 Aerospace Sciences, has been awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize for Astrophysics 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, paving the way for finding the molecular fingerprints of atmospheres around both giant and rocky planets. Their contributions have been critical to the tremendous progress made in the exploration of countless exoplanets over the past two decades.
Kanwisher, Langer and Seager bring the number of all-time MIT faculty recipients of the Kavli Prize 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).