Mala Murthy, director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the Marnie Marcin ’96 Professor of Neuroscience at Princeton University, is a recipient of the 24th annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences from the Wiley Foundation. Dr. Murthy shares the award with Sebastian Seung of Princeton, John White of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gerald Rubin of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus for their combined work in “reconstructing and interpreting connectomes, the anatomical wiring diagrams of neurons and synapses that underlie how the brain processes information and controls actions.”
“The Wiley Foundation honors scientists who are dedicated to solving complex biological mechanisms which result in seminal discoveries that open the door for future innovations,” said Deborah Wiley, chair of the Wiley Foundation. “The work of the 24th Annual Wiley Prize recipients truly upholds this mission by helping us to understand how networks of neurons interact and communicate, offering a framework for diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia.”
Dr. Murthy is a widely recognized expert on fruit fly neuroscience. More specifically, she studies the neural mechanisms underlying social communication in flies. In 2024, she and Dr. Seung completed the first complete brain map of the adult fruit fly, in collaboration with the international FlyWire community.
“I feel very humbled and honored by this prize,” said Dr. Murthy. “The big surprise to me is how quickly this achievement has been recognized. Usually it takes decades for something you’ve worked on to percolate through the field, for people to appreciate the utility of it. I think it speaks to how useful the connectome has been to fly research — not only to understand flies, but because solving how any brain processes sensory information, makes decisions, learns something, executes actions, is important. It’s clear now how a map of the brain can lead to fundamental discoveries about how brains work. And I think the fly field, which I’m very proud to be a part of, has made that very, very clear.”
A native of southeast Texas, Dr. Murthy received her bachelor’s degree in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University in California.