The Pershing Square Foundation has announced the opening of applications for the 2024 MIND (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery) Prize. Since the prize launched in 2023, it has been awarded to seven multidisciplinary investigators from institutions across the country. The annual prize awards $250,000 per year for three years ($750,000 total) to at least six scientists looking to uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition. The prize is meant to enable the most talented early-to-mid-career investigators to pursue bold, creative projects that could have transformative impacts on the field of brain research.

Neurodegenerative diseases are like the Eldredge knot, nearly impossible to untie. Stemming from compromised cellular pathways, neural circuit dysfunctions, genetic risk factors, pathological epigenetic landscapes; these networked ailments are tightly coupled and profoundly intertwined, said Pershing Square Foundation Co-trustee Neri Oxman, PhD.

The MIND Prize calls for the creation of a road map to enable the understanding of related pathologies at a cellular and molecular level; to develop a single yet holistic theory blending genetics, environmental insults, and viruses, and to comprehend the bodys natural defenses against NDDs. Through MINDand its communitywe seek to disentangle cause-and-effect and offer radically novel insights into disease prevention and treatment. We believe in unforeseen visions made possible by interdisciplinary and trans-modal approaches that combine genetics with mobility, applied physics with neurodegeneration, memory and AI, and more.

The Pershing Square Foundation remains fueled by the urgency of this vast problem, and the individualsacross ages and disease stateswhose lives this work could and should transform. We remain enthusiastic, hopeful and proud of the bold work set forth by our first cohort of grantees, and the next, and the next, continued Oxman.

Applicants must have between one and ten years of experience running their own laboratories by the award start date (May 2024), hold a PhD, MD, or MD-PhD (or degree equivalent), and be affiliated with a research institution in the United States of America. The deadline to submit a Letter of Intent is November 13, 2023 at 5:00pm EST. For more details on the MIND Prize and the application process, including the full eligibility criteria, a link to FAQs, and a link to the application submission platform, please visit: https://pershingsquarefoundation.org/portfolio-organization/mind-prize/.

The highly competitive MIND Prize will catalyze novel and daring interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work by facilitating collaborations across academic departments and institutions and amongst the academic, biomedical industry, philanthropic, and business communities. These breakthroughs in basic, fundamental research will help augment the toolkit for, and knowledge of, neurodegenerative and neurocognitive disorders. Projects may range from the invention of novel tools, techniques, and technologies for mapping and analyzing the brain to bold approaches that demonstrate extraordinary therapeutic potential.

Our first year of the MIND Prize impressed us with the remarkable talent across the country, said Olivia Tournay Flatto, PhD, president of the Pershing Square Foundation and co-founder and executive director of the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance. This year, we are looking forward to receiving more bold proposals from researchers who arent afraid to tackle an old problem in a new way, that compel us to find new paths forward in the fields of neurobiology, immunology, engineering, computational biology, and more. We are grateful to our Scientific Advisory Board, which includes experts spanning across scientific disciplines, ready to help The Pershing Square Foundation uncover transformative and novel projects from investigators ready to change the field as we know it.

"The MIND Prize is allowing me to start projects that otherwise I wouldn't be able to do with traditional funding sources. said 2023 MIND Prize winner Sergey Stavisky, PhD, assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, It's letting me do something that's very hard, that's risky, that hasn't been done before, and to do it at a much earlier stage of my career."

The MIND Prize is proud to rely on the guidance of a highly accomplished scientific advisory board:

About The Pershing Square Foundation

The Pershing Square Foundation (PSF) is a family foundation established in 2006 to support exceptional leaders and innovative organizations that tackle important social issues and deliver scalable and sustainable global impact. PSF has committed more than $600 million in grants and social investments in target areas including health and medicine, education, economic development and social justice. Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman are co-trustees of the foundation. For more information visit: http://www.pershingsquarefoundation.org.

More:
The Pershing Square Foundation Is Accepting Applications for Its ... - Yale School of Medicine