“I would not have become the scientist I am today were it not for my time at Cold Spring Harbor,” says Anne Churchland. The pioneering neuroscientist has received the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2025 Pradel Research Award. Now at the University of California, Los Angeles, Churchland credits her time at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) with teaching her to pursue bold, risk-taking science. Today, her pursuits are paying off in spades. The Academy has recognized Churchland for her groundbreaking research on the neuroscience underlying sensory-guided behavior and decision-making.
The award includes a $50,000 donation from the NAS to support neuroscience research at an institution of her choice. Churchland has chosen to give it all to CSHL.
It was here that Churchland says she learned to “push the envelope of what’s possible” with powerful new tools and techniques for making measurements inside the brain. “It was transformative, and I feel so grateful to have had that time there,” she says. “So, the chance to give back is really meaningful to me.”
Churchland first came to the Laboratory as a visiting scientist in 2009 at the invitation of CSHL Professor Tony Zador. While her work up until then had focused on non-human primates, there was a growing movement at CSHL and abroad to establish rodents as the preferred animal model for studying the brain.
“At the time, few were bold enough to make that kind of change in their careers,” Zador says. “But Anne was sufficiently intrigued, and she spent the summer learning to train rodents on the tasks required for her research. Things worked well, and she decided to make the switch—a very bold move! She joined the faculty in 2010 and became one of the early people to help define the field.”
Mice are now widely considered the preferred models for human brain disorders. Chuchland’s early studies of sensory science helped move the field in this direction. Today, a new generation of CSHL neuroscientists is picking up where she left off.
The $50,000 donation will support Zarmeena Dawood, a young M.D.-Ph.D. student in CSHL’s Albeanu lab. Dawood focuses on how the brain processes smells. She is using BARseq, developed by the Zador lab, to map neural connections from the olfactory bulb to the rest of the brain.
“I am very excited to receive this gift,” Dawood says. “It’s so important to support students as we’re going through our training, because it takes a lot of hard work. I’m very grateful to Anne. And that it came from someone who also studied neuroscience at CSHL makes it even more wonderful.”
For Churchland, paying forward the fruits of her time at CSHL was a no-brainer.
“One thing that’s special about CSHL is their support for students to follow the scientific direction they’re excited about,” she says. “That is a tremendous intellectual freedom to have. I want that for the young scientists of the world. The chance to play a small part in that makes me really happy.”
Churchland will be honored in a ceremony on April 27 during the National Academy of Sciences’ 162nd annual meeting. The ceremony will be live streamed.
Written by: Nick Wurm, Communications Specialist | wurm@cshl.edu | 516-367-5940