Ilana Witten of the Class of 2002, professor on the Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Ilana Witten, a professor within the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and a Class of 2002 alumna, has been chosen to obtain a Director’s Pioneer Award from the Nationwide Institutes of Well being. As well as, alumna Christina Kim of the Class of 2011 gained a Director’s New Innovator prize. 

Witten, an knowledgeable within the mind exercise that underlies reward-driven studying and choice making, will obtain funding to review the basic query of what produces particular person variations in habits, a query usually posed as nature versus nurture.

The award, established in 2004, challenges investigators in any respect profession ranges to pursue new analysis instructions and develop groundbreaking, high-impact approaches to a broad space of biomedical, behavioral or social science. The award to Witten is one in all eight issued this yr to scientists at universities and institutes throughout the nation.

Witten and her group will examine what produces particular person variations in persona and in responses to emphasize. They counsel that nature, or one’s organic make-up, and nurture, or one’s setting, whereas each vital, are inadequate to completely clarify particular person variability.

On this new research, the group will look at the event of particular person variations from the attitude of studying, proposing that small variations within the preliminary situations of the training system might be amplified by optimistic suggestions to in the end produce giant variations in outcomes. The group will research how the mind chemical dopamine performs a job on this reward-driven studying, with the purpose of explaining variation throughout people in addition to in neuropsychiatric ailments.

This work pertains to ongoing collaborations with a number of different teams within the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, together with with Annegret Falkner, assistant professor of neuroscience; Jonathan Pillow, professor within the Princeton Neuroscience Institute; and Nathaniel Daw, Huo Professor in Computational and Theoretical Neuroscience and professor of neuroscience and psychology.

Witten earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Stanford College in 2008 and her Bachelor of Arts in physics at Princeton College in 2002, graduating magna cum laude with a certificates in biophysics. She was a postdoctoral scholar from 2008-12 within the laboratory of Karl Deisseroth at Stanford, and in 2012 she joined the Princeton college as an assistant professor, turning into an affiliate professor in 2018 and full professor in 2021.

Amongst her many honors and awards are a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Analysis Fellowship, a Pew Scholarship within the Biomedical Sciences, and a McKnight Students Award. She is an investigator within the NIH BRAIN Initiative and the Simons Collaboration on the International Mind, amongst different collaborations.

Christina Kim of the Class of 2011, assistant professor of neurology on the UC Davis College of Neuroscience

Photograph courtesy of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being

New Innovator Award recipient Kim did her senior thesis with David Tank, Princeton’s Henry L. Hillman Professor of Neuroscience. She is now an assistant professor of neurology on the College of California-Davis College of Neuroscience, the place her group develops molecular and optical approaches to review the perform and molecular group of neurons within the mind. The New Innovator Award, established in 2007, helps unusually modern analysis from early profession investigators who’re inside 10 years of their closing diploma or scientific residency and haven’t but obtained an NIH R01 or equal grant.

The awards are a part of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being’s Excessive-Threat, Excessive-Reward Analysis program, which introduced 85 new analysis grants to assist extremely modern scientists who suggest visionary and broadly impactful behavioral and biomedical analysis tasks. The 85 awards (totaling roughly $187 million) are supported by the NIH Frequent Fund, in addition to six different institutes, facilities, and workplaces throughout NIH, starting in 2023 for 5 years, pending the supply of funds.

“The HRHR program is a pillar for innovation right here at NIH, offering assist to transformational analysis, with advances in biomedical and behavioral science,” mentioned Robert W. Eisinger, Ph.D., Appearing Director of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, which oversees the NIH Frequent Fund. “These awards align with the Frequent Fund’s mandate to assist science anticipated to have exceptionally excessive and broadly relevant affect.”

Witten’s award is supported by NIH grant quantity DP1 MH136573-01 and Kim’s award by DP2-MH136588.