Nancy Kanwisher Wins the National Academy of Sciences Award in the Neurosciences

Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has received the 2022 National Academy of Sciences Award in the Neurosciences for her “pioneering research into the functional organization of the human brain.” The $25,000 prize, established by the Fidia Research Foundation, is presented every three years to recognize “extraordinary contributions to the neuroscience fields.” The National Academy of Sciences will present Dr. Kanwisher with the award during its annual meeting on May 1 in Washington.

“I am deeply honored to receive this award from the NAS,” said Professor Kanwisher. “It has been a profound privilege, and a total blast, to watch the human brain in action as these data began to reveal an initial picture of the organization of the human mind. But the biggest joy has been the opportunity to work with the incredible group of talented young scientists who actually did the work that this award recognizes.”

Professor Kanwisher is perhaps best known for her landmark insights into how humans recognize and process faces. Psychology had long suggested that recognizing a face might be distinct from general object recognition. But Professor Kanwisher galvanized the field in 1997 with her influential discovery that the human brain contains a small region specialized to respond only to faces.

Dr. Kanwisher joined the MIT faculty in 1997. Earlier, she served on the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and a Ph.D. in brain and cognitive sciences from MIT.