From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Hebrew University’s Haim Sompolinsky awarded prestigious Brain Prize for pioneering neuroscience research
Renee Ghert-Zand is the health reporter and a feature writer for The Times of Israel.
Prof. Haim Sompolinsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is awarded the Brain Prize for 2024, the largest and most prestigious international prize for brain research. The prize is awarded annually by the Lundbeck Foundation of Denmark.
Sompolinsky, who is also affiliated with Harvard University, is a physicist and pioneer in the field of theoretical and computational neuroscience, particularly in the study of neural circuit dynamics in the brain. His research has significantly contributed to understanding how neural circuits process and encode information, map the external world and participate in learning and memory.
Sompolinsky shares the annual prize totaling 1.3 million euros with Prof. Larry Abbott of Columbia University and Prof. Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute, who are also widely recognized for their groundbreaking work in computational and theoretical neuroscience, which applies physics, mathematics, and statistics as tools for studying the brain and how it functions.
“It’s a very satisfactory and personal honor for me to receive this award. More so, it is a fantastic recognition of the important contribution of radical computational science at the heart of brain science. This would not have been the case decades ago,” he tells The Times of Israel.
His Royal Highness King Frederik of Denmark, will present the Brain Prize medals to the winners at a ceremony in Copenhagen on May 30.
