Event: Carnegie Mellon University will award the first Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences to Leslie G. Ungerleider, chief of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
The prize, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of its centennial celebration, recognizes trailblazers in the mind and brain sciences whose research has helped advance the field and its applications.
Ungerleider, an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist, is well known for a neurobehavioral theory identifying two cortical visual systems in the primate brain, one for object recognition and one for visuopatial perception. This theory has revolutionized the way we think about the functional architecture of human vision and exemplifies Ungerleider's ability to integrate psychology and brain research. Her work has set high standards for the entire field of cognitive neuroscience and has significantly advanced the understanding of brain functions and their relevance to public health.
She is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Distinguished Investigator and the past recipient of the Women in Neuroscience Lifetime Achievement Award.
As part of the Carnegie Prize ceremony, Ungerleider will present some of her recent research in a talk titled "The Functional Architecture of Face Processing in the Primate Brain."
"Dr. Ungerleider has been at the forefront in the field of cognitive neuroscience for over three decades," said Michael Tarr, the Cowan Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Department of Psychology and co-director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC). "Her research on the functional organization of the primate visual system has been immensely influential to generations of brain scientists. In collaboration with the Carnegie Corporation, the Carnegie Mellon community in the behavioral and brain sciences - through the CNBC - wanted to create a means for publically acknowledging and promoting such significant lifetime contributions. Dr. Ungerleider is richly deserving of the inaugural awarding of this prize and her achievements do great honor to us."
The CNBC, a joint program between CMU and the University of Pittsburgh, has helped establish Carnegie Mellon and the Pittsburgh scientific community as a world leader in the brain and behavioral sciences. To build on its foundation of research excellence in psychology, neuroscience and computational science, CMU has recently launched a Brain, Mind and Learning initiative to enhance the university's ability to innovate in both the laboratory and in the world.
When: 4 p.m. Thursday, May 23; reception to follow.
Where: Singleton Room, George A. Roberts Engineering Hall, Carnegie Mellon University
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