Marina R. Picciotto, the Charles B. G. Murphy Professor of Psychiatry at Yale Medical School and professor in the Child Study Center at the university, recently was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Science. The award is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and awarded by the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, director of the Neuroscience Institute, stated that Professor Picciotto was honored “for her fundamental discoveries as a physiologist but also for being a dynamic leader who has helped shape the field of neuroscience. By making foundational basic science discoveries with an eye to real-world impact and application, her work exemplifies the kind of research to which we aspire here at Carnegie Mellon University.”
Professor Picciotto is currently editor in chief of the Journal of Neuroscience and has served on the scientific council of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as treasurer of the Society for Neuroscience, and as president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. She joined the faculty at Yale in 1995.
Dr. Picciotto is a graduate of Stanford University, where she majored in biological sciences. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular neurobiology at Rockefeller University in New York City.