Young Investigator Award
The Brainbox Initiative Young Investigator Award aims to stimulate and reward the very best, most novel neuroscience research being carried out by early-career academics. We welcome applications from current graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and encourage anyone who has undertaken notable research with non-invasive brain stimulation or imaging techniques to submit an entry for consideration.
The Prize
Each year, we award one successful applicant with:
- A presentation slot to speak about their research at the Brainbox Initiative Conference in London (including a travel and accommodation bursary);
- A £500 cash prize;
- Ongoing support and promotion of your research by the Brainbox Initiative;
- The opportunity to work with the Brainbox Initiative as a Brainbox Ambassador as part of our workshop and webinar series.
Eligibility
In order to be eligible for the Young Investigator Award, applicants must:
- Be currently-enrolled graduate students or postdoctoral fellows within five years of gaining their PhD (excluding parental leave), and should be primarily responsible for the research described in the application;
- Agree to present their results/data at the Brainbox Initiative Conference;
- Be first or second author on at least one peer-reviewed paper relevant to the field of non-invasive brain stimulation and/or imaging.
Winners
Dr Avital Hahamy
2024
Dr Avital Hahamy uses fMRI to study real-world behaviours and associated brain activity in both neurotypical individuals and clinical populations (e.g. individuals with autism, schizophrenia, congenital hand absence). Her work has been supported by numerous awards and fellowships, including a Human Frontier Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship, an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship.
She holds a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she worked with Rafael Malach. She is completing her postdoctoral research in Tim Behrens' lab at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at UCL and will soon start her own lab as a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL.
Dr. Joshua Brown
2023
Joshua C. Brown, MD, PhD, is a neuroscientist dually trained in psychiatry and neurology. He directs the Brain Stimulation Mechanisms Laboratory and serves as the Director of Research and Medical Director of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) at McLean Hospital of Harvard Medical School. His research interests are focused on understanding the synaptic-level mechanisms of TMS and leveraging this knowledge to improve and eventually optimize its clinical effectiveness for indications of brain medicine.
Dr Syanah Wynn
2022
After a bachelor’s in Psychology at Leiden University and a research master’s in Cognitive Neuropsychology at the VU Amsterdam, Syanah Wynn started her PhD at the Donders Institute. Here she did research on the role of the parietal cortex in memory confidence, using electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). Thereafter, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Bowdoin College where her work focused on the role of specific oscillations in brain networks underlying memory retrieval, utilizing EEG and tACS. Currently, she is a research fellow at the University of Birmingham, examining how the brain accomplishes rapid object recognition, using Magnetoencephalography (MEG).
Dr Daniel Corp
2021
Dr Daniel Corp is a neuroscientist at Deakin University, Australia. Daniel's research is focused on brain stimulation and neuroimaging in neurological disorders
Davide Folloni
2020
Dr Davide Folloni of the University of Oxford is interested in understanding the architecture and functional dynamics of the neural circuits supporting learning and decision making. Its research uses a multi-modal approach to describe the anatomy, organization and neural activity of higher-order brain networks.
Camilla Nord
2019
Congratulations to Dr Camilla Nord of the University of Cambridge who has been selected by the Brainbox Initiative’s esteemed Scientific Committee as the winner of the 2019 Young Investigator Award for her exciting neuroscience research.
Maria Ironside
2018
Maria Ironside, D.Phil, is a post-doctoral research fellow in affective neuroscience at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ironside completed her doctoral training in 2016 at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, under the supervision of Prof. Catherine Harmer and Dr. Jacinta O’Shea. As a graduate student she used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the effects of frontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on vigilance to threat in trait anxious females, funded by the Medical Research Council of England. She is currently collaborating with clinical trials of tDCS for major depressive disorder (MDD) in Brazil to help establish cognitive neuropsychological biomarkers of treatment response.
Thank you for your award application.
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