Society for Neuroscience 2026 Promotion of Women in Neuroscience Awards

Society for Neuroscience 2026 Promotion of Women in Neuroscience Awards

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) will honor four neuroscientists with this year's Promotion of Women in Neuroscience Awards for their commitment to supporting and mentoring women in neuroscience. The awards will be presented during SfN's annual meeting.

"The Society is honored to recognize these four phenomenal women who have been deeply committed to promoting other women neuroscientists and making their path into research easier," said SfN President Nicholas C. Spitzer, PhD. "They have changed the field through their courage in challenging assumptions and bias, their creation of programs to promote inclusivity, and their dedication to mentoring women neuroscientists."

Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring: Stephanie A. White

The Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring is supported by Bernice Grafstein, PhD, and recognizes an individual dedicated to women's advancement in neuroscience through mentorship. The recipient receives a $2,500 award and complimentary registration and travel to SfN's annual meeting.

Stephanie A. White, PhD, a professor of integrative biology and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), approaches her research, teaching, leadership, and outreach activities with the goal of increasing diversity and inclusive excellence. An award-winning teacher, White was named the Neuroscience Professor of the Year in 2014 by neuroscience undergraduates. In 2019, she received UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award, the university's highest honor for teaching, and the Life Sciences Excellence in Educational Innovation Award. Throughout her career, she has been dedicated to mentoring and encouraging women to pursue neuroscience and has, to date, trained more than 75 undergraduates, 72% of them women. Her graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, who have been 60% and 75% female, respectively, have won prestigious awards, and many have obtained tenure-track positions. White also serves as chair of the undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, which has flourished under her leadership, and chair of the Mentor Professor Faculty Search Committee, where she helped recruit to UCLA six new faculty members who are women or members of underrepresented groups. She also dedicated many summers to enriching neuroscience education by co-directing the Grass Fellowship Program and the Neural Systems & Behavior course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL). Fifty percent of White's MBL trainees are women, and her work with both programs has had a tremendous impact on the careers of many early career neuroscientists around the world.

Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award: Gina Turrigiano

The Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes an individual with outstanding career achievements in neuroscience who has also significantly promoted the professional advancement of women in neuroscience. The recipient receives a $5,000 prize and complimentary registration and travel to SfN's annual meeting.

Gina Turrigiano, PhD, the Joseph Levitan Professor of Vision Science at Brandeis University, is a leading neuroscientist whose research links fundamental principles of synaptic physiology and plasticity to circuit function and behavior. Her pioneering work on synaptic scaling showed how neurons adjust the strength of their excitatory synaptic inputs to stabilize their activity. This work helped launch the field of homeostatic plasticity. Turrigiano is a dedicated mentor and has trained more than 25 doctoral students, over half of them women, and 22 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom have become leaders in their respective fields. Her mentees appreciate that she is deeply committed to her role as a mentor and that the lessons learned from her have shaped how they run their own labs. She is committed to rigorous, thorough, and meaningful science and cultivates individuality and independence while maintaining deep respect for her trainees' experiences and lives.

Patricia Goldman-Rakic Hall of Honor: Annette Dolphin

The Patricia Goldman-Rakic Hall of Honor is a posthumous award for a neuroscientist who pursued career excellence and exhibited dedication to the advancement of women in neuroscience. The recipient is recognized at SfN's annual meeting, and a member of the honoree's family is invited to attend the award presentation in the honoree's memory.

Annette Dolphin, PhD, was a formidable and prolific scientist. She was internationally recognized as a world leader in the field of neuronal voltage-gated calcium channels. Her record of highly cited publications in leading journals includes work identifying calcium channel subunits and how they influence channel function and synaptic transmission showing that long-term potentiation is associated with an increase in glutamate release, and revealing the mechanism of G-protein-mediated inhibitory modulation of calcium channels. Her work provided insight into mechanisms underlying chronic pain, epilepsy, and other neurological disorders. She was elected a fellow of both the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society, major scientific honors in the U.K. She also served as president of both the British Neuroscience Association and the Physiological Society, championing equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives and giving back to the field. Dolphin was also a mentor to countless women scientists around the world. She was a vocal proponent of equality in the academic world, calling out sexism and misogyny in science and writing opinion pieces advocating equitable representation among plenary speakers and panelists and fair recognition through scientific prizes. Her remarkable research and advocacy helped expand opportunities for women in science.

Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Award: Elizabeth English

The Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Award honors an individual who has significantly promoted the professional development of women in neuroscience through teaching, organizational leadership, public advocacy, or other efforts that are not necessarily research related. The recipient receives complimentary registration and travel to SfN's annual meeting.

Elizabeth English, a recent PhD graduate of the University of Cambridge, is a dynamic and inspiring advocate for gender equity in neuroscience. At age 22, she proposed, organized, and chaired a British Neuroscience Association event on women in neuroscience, revealing her courage and leadership in bringing sexism and gender bias into discussion at a national meeting. English founded Women in Neuroscience UK (WiNUK), a powerful grassroots initiative promoting gender equity in the U.K. neuroscience community. WiNUK delivers sustained and meaningful action to tackle gender bias and promote inclusion through in-person and online events, blogs, social media campaigns, and newsletters. She also created the WiNUK Awards, which recognize women neuroscientists and aim to build their confidence and visibility, and founded an annual WiNUK Day promoting inclusion in neuroscience research and research culture. In addition to studying protein aggregation in Alzheimer's disease, she has co-authored research on sexism and gender disparities in dementia research workplaces. English also created the Unconscious Bias in Neuroscience Workshops, which she has delivered in four U.K. cities, training more than 330 neuroscientists and neurologists and providing them with tools to foster inclusive research environments. Her work equips scientists to address sexism and gender bias and supports women's advancement into research leadership.

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The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of nearly 30,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and the nervous system.