The Transmitter’s Rising Stars of Neuroscience recognizes early-career researchers who have made outstanding scientific contributions to the field and demonstrated a commitment to mentoring and community-building.
This group comprises early-career researchers from multiple areas of the field—including computational, molecular and cognitive neuroscience—who strive to answer some of its most pressing questions. They’ve also founded mentorship groups, held leadership positions at neuroscience organizations, developed initiatives to translate basic science for wider audiences and more.
Candidates were nominated by a peer or mentor who submitted the nominee’s CV and a short narrative describing their research, mentoring history and advocacy activities. Postdoctoral researchers and early-career principal investigators who opened their labs within the past five years were eligible for the award. We received more than 100 nominations from scientists around the world.
The Transmitter’s senior editorial staff selected the finalists based on their scientific accomplishments, mentoring and community-building efforts. The candidates’ names, genders and races were masked during the evaluation process.
Read on to learn about these 25 early-career neuroscientists who are poised to shape the neuroscience community for years to come.
Abdelhack uses computational neuroscience approaches to develop biologically relevant models of brain function in health and disease. His work integrates these elements to study sleep, cognition and the mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric disorders. Abdelhack has earned multiple awards for his research, including the Neuro-Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prize and the Canadian Association for Neuroscience Brain Star Award. Outside the lab, Abdelhack is the founder of Arabs in Neuroscience (AiN), a nonprofit organization that promotes collaboration and fosters community among Arab neuroscientists. Through his efforts with AiN, Abdelhack led and developed the AiN Introduction to Computational Neuroscience summer school, a computational neuroscience course taught in Arabic. “Dr. Abdelhack’s unique integration of cutting-edge research, inclusive education and global advocacy makes him a rising leader in neuroscience,” says Abdalrhman Mostafa, director of fundraising for Arabs in Neuroscience.
Singh Alvarado is focused on developing new methods to link the functional and genetic profiles of neurons. He is using these methods to understand how neuromodulatory signaling in the brainstem influences physiological states such as satiety and pain. In a 2024 Neuron paper, Singh Alvarado and his colleagues show how changes in the excitability of parabrachial nucleus glutamatergic neurons in the brainstem drive feeding responses. Singh Alvarado was awarded the 2024 Harvard Brain Initiative Pioneer Award. In 2021, he co-founded NeuroLaunchpad, a cross-institutional online seminar series that features the work of early-career neuroscientists, and during his graduate school training he helped develop STEM training opportunities for underserved communities. “Jonna is and will be a unique role model in neuroscience, a special human who blends scientific rigor and excellence, creativity and risk tolerance with a deep care for mentorship, and expanding diversity in science,” says Mark Andermann, professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
Cazares studies the neural mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders, integrating rodent electrophysiology, patient electroencephalogram data and human-derived brain organoids to assess circuit-level dynamics and identify biomarkers of cortical dysfunction in disease states. Beyond his research, Cazares is a co-founder of Colors of the Brain (CoB), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting neuroscience education and mentorship. Cazares helped secure funding to establish the CoB-Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind scholars program, an undergraduate summer research program at the University of California, San Diego, for students from underrepresented backgrounds. He also established Community and Science Advancements in Spanish, a science, technology, engineering and math research seminar series that provides bilingual neuroscience education to Spanish-speaking communities in San Diego and Baja California. “His ‘humans first, scientists second’ mentoring philosophy reinforces his vision of creating a diverse, inclusive scientific community to address health disparities through neuroscience research,” says Bradley Voytek, professor and chair of the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego.
Cazettes uses her engineering background and computational neuroscience approaches to examine the systems driving decision-making and uncertainty. In a 2023 Nature Neurosciencepaper, she described how the cortex simultaneously tracks multiple variables that may inform decision-making strategy. She received a 2022 Transition to Independence fellowship from the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (the Simons Foundation is The Transmitter’s parent organization). Cazettes was also part of the International Brain Laboratory team that developed a standardized decision task to promote reproducibility in the field. “Fanny’s work, characterized by its combination of elegant experimentation motivated by important theoretical questions and openness to unexpected findings, marks her as a scientist already reshaping our understanding of neural computation,” says Zachary Mainen, a principal investigator at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown.
Cummings studies the molecular basis of memory encoding. Her 2022 Neuronpaper demonstrated the importance of prefrontal GABAergic interneurons for emotional learning. “In addition to research, Dr. Cummings equally excels in mentoring the next generation of scientists,” says William Marsiglia, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2022, she served as an early-career panelist at the NIH BRAIN Initiative Diversity Meeting for Next Generation Leaders. She is also on the committee of her university’s Office of Outreach and Engagement, promoting science, technology, engineering and math careers to high school students from underrepresented backgrounds, and has participated in career-focused “Ask Me Anything” sessions at Birmingham City Schools locations through the university group Expanding Science to Students Everywhere.
Chung draws from physics, geometry and machine learning to model perception and cognition in the brain. Her manifold capacity theory, first outlined in a 2018 Physical Review Xpaper, helps explain how the brain efficiently classifies objects given the vast number of possible perceptual parameters. Her lab was awarded a 2023 Klingstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience and earned a research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2024. As a mentor, Chung creates “an inclusive environment emphasizing intellectual innovation and rigorous interdisciplinary training,” says Venkatesh N. Murthy, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University. She has helped organize the Computational and Systems Neuroscience conference since 2022 and has been involved with multiple other workshops and summer schools. (Chung holds a part-time appointment at the Center for Computational Neuroscience at the Flatiron Institute. The Flatiron Institute is supported by Simons Foundation, The Transmitter’s parent organization.)
Dijkstra’s work examines how humans separate imagination from reality using psychophysical measurements, neuroimaging and computational methods. Her 2023 Nature Communications paper describing a source-mixing model that commingles imagined and perceived sensory signals was recognized as one of the journal’s top 25 social or behavioral science articles of the year and named one of the year’s biggest breakthroughs in biology or neuroscience by Quanta Magazine (which, like The Transmitter, is supported by the Simons Foundation). In 2024, she established her Imagine Reality Lab at University College London. “Nadine is a committed mentor and advocate for diversity and inclusion,” within both her lab and her department, says Steve Fleming, professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. Dijkstra organized a university-wide event to explore how scientists should handle failures and was a Wellbeing Champion within her department from 2019 to 2025, helping to carry out the university’s mental health and wellness initiatives. In 2025, she participated in a debate about the nature of imagination at HowTheLightGetsIn, a music and philosophy festival.
Grant uses analytical and computational approaches to study cognition in both the brain and artificial intelligence. Her latest work examines the nonlinear dynamics of learning in neural receptive fields and the relationship between representation and computation in neural networks. During her graduate studies, Grant ventured outside academia for additional training, completing industry internships at Google Brain, Google DeepMind and OpenAI. She has led the development of new resources for the field by organizing training workshops and developing new publication venues at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive science and artificial intelligences. “Her leadership in the very popular Re-Align workshop at the International Conference on Learning Representations, and the ambitious new proceedings publishing venue for the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference, plays a key role in keeping our community dynamic as it undergoes rapid growth,” says Jasper van den Bosch, research fellow at the University of Leeds. She also currently serves on the board of directors for Women in Machine Learning, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the participation of women in machine learning through workshops, seminars and networking events.
Griffith’s lab combines electrophysiological recordings, behavioral experiments and molecular profiling to study how sensory proprioception influences pathways in the brain, spinal cord and skeletal muscle. She was awarded a research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2024 to study disruptions to proprioception and their implications for motor neurons. In 2025 she earned McKnight Scholar and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar awards. “Dr. Griffith’s unique ability to share her passion and her own journey provide trainees with an ability to see themselves in careers they have never imagined,” says Melissa Bauman, professor psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis. Griffith is the author of “The Magnificent Makers,” a series of children’s books featuring a racially diverse cast of scientist characters, and she also writes nonfiction children’s books to accompany the Netflix series “Ada Twist, Scientist.” For her outreach to younger audiences, she was recognized with a 2024 Science Educator Award from the Society for Neuroscience.
Jain harnesses artificial intelligence to model how the brain processes language. As a doctoral student, she published studies showing how large language models can be used to understand the brain, was the engineering lead on a large open fMRI dataset of natural language processing published in Scientific Data in 2023 and was part of the team that built a language decoder to process brain signals into text. Her thesis received the 2023 Dissertation Award from the Society for the Neurobiology of Language and the 2024 Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society. She also fosters community within her field as a handling editor of the Journal of Cognitive NeuroscienceDiscussion Forum and organizer of multiple NeuroAI symposiums and workshops. Jain’s “scientific rigor, mentorship and community-building set her apart as a future leader in neuroscience,” says Edward Chang, professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.
Kim’s lab studies the molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric diseases, such as depression and anxiety, with a special focus on developing new tools to record neuronal activity in animal models. In a 2024 Nature Methods paper, Kim’s group described how they engineered a new activity-dependent enzyme that rapidly identifies and tags activated neurons that have elevated intracellular calcium in vivo—a method that improves on traditional transcriptional reporters. Kim’s research uncovering molecular mechanisms of neurological disorders has received multiple awards, including the Freedman Prize from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and the Beckman Young Investigator Award. “She has a tremendous track record as an early-career investigator, with a passion not only for developing and applying novel neuroscience technologies for studying neuropsychiatric disorders, but also for advocating for trainees in science,” says Lin Tian, scientific director at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. Kim’s mentoring work includes judging the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists and serving as panelist for mentorship programs, such as Científico Latino.
Kirchgessner studies how sensory and social environments and neuromodulatory signaling shape neuronal circuits in the auditory system during development in mice. In her 2025 preprint, Kirchgessner and her colleagues show how single-cell and population-level sensory representations change throughout early development in the mouse auditory cortex. She received a Simons Junior Fellow Award in 2022 (the Simons Foundation is The Transmitter’s parent organization) and was selected as a Leading Edge Fellow in 2024. Kirchgessner is a co-founder and current co-director of Stories of Women in Neuroscience (WiN), a media project that highlights the work of women neuroscience researchers in written profiles and podcast interviews. “Megan is an excellent scientist and leader in the neuroscience community,” says Nancy Padilla-Coreano, assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Florida.
Luppi’s work examines how different drugs and conditions, such as the use of psychedelics or a comatose state, affect brain dynamics in mice, nonhuman primates and humans. His work in translational and computational neuroscience is already having an impact on the field. In a Nature Communications paper published in 2019, Luppi and his colleagues “pioneered the comparison of brain dynamics from anesthetised volunteers and comatose patients, to identify neural signatures of consciousness, an approach that is now widespread in the field,” says Bratislav Misic, associate professor at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Luppi is also actively involved in science mentorship and outreach. He has published articles about the challenges early-career researchers in NeuroAI face and how to navigate life as a grad student, and served as a mentor for Project Access Italy, a nonprofit startup aimed at improving access to educational institutions for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
Maina’s research examines the molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease. He has led substantial efforts to help develop neuroscience research and the study of Alzheimer’s disease pathology in Africa. His lab generated 10 induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from members of five different indigenous African ethnic groups, which led to the launch of the African iPSC Initiative, an open-access iPSC biobank. He helped establish the Northern Nigeria Dementia Research Group, a group of scientists and clinicians who aim to develop the region’s first characterized Alzheimer’s disease cohort. “I believe that Mahmoud will become a global leader in the field of iPSC technology and will make significant advances toward understanding Alzheimer’s disease in the world population,” says Louise Serpell, professor of biochemistry and director of Sussex Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. Maina is also the founder of the Biomedical Science Research and Training Centre, a research center that advances neuroscience research in Africa, and the TReND in Africa Outreach Programme, a nonprofit organization that provides science training and workshops and builds scientific infrastructure for African researchers.
Müller models brain networks based on neuroimaging data, applying dynamical systems theory to capture complex shifts in brain states. In a 2020 Nature Communicationspaper, he used this framework to characterize local and diffuse neural coupling in the thalamocortical system. He received a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council in 2024 to investigate neural flexibility and was awarded a 2025 National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant for research into deep brain stimulation in the thalamus. Initially trained in physics, Müller is “fostering a new generation of interdisciplinary thinkers who blend physics, mathematics and neuroscience,” says Mac Shine, associate professor of computational systems neurobiology at the University of Sydney, noting his “rare combination of technical depth, conceptual clarity and field-building leadership.”
Murray combines computational neuroscience approaches and neuroengineering to develop brain-computer interface (neural implant) technologies to monitor brain injury in a variety of disorders, such as stroke, traumatic brain injury and epilepsy. In 2024, he was named a Rising Star in Engineering in Health by the Boston University College of Engineering for his work in neural implant development. Murray has written op-eds on the promises and risks of neurotechnology development and the importance of diversity and inclusion in neuroscience research. He is the president and co-founder of Black In Neuro, a nonprofit organization that promotes the participation of Black scholars and researchers in neuroscience. “Murray continues to shape the future of neuroscience, not only through his research but by challenging systems, lifting others and leading by example,” says Jheannelle Johnson, director of development for Black In Neuro and a computational neuroscience researcher at Stanford University.
Nau studies the general principles underlying visual perception, memory and imagination by combining multi-task studies, naturalistic neuroimaging and eye tracking. In a 2020 Nature Communicationspaper, he illustrated connections between memory and the visuospatial tuning of neural populations. His research has “demonstrated that shared neural and behavioral mechanisms underlie vision and memory, challenging traditional conceptual boundaries and advancing an action-oriented, task-general framework of cognition,” says Christian Olivers, professor of behavioral and movement sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. A proponent of open science, Nau helped create the large Natural Scenes Dataset and co-led the development of DeepMREye, open-source software enabling eye-tracking movements in fMRI without a camera. For DeepMREye, he received an award from the Open Science Community Amsterdam in 2025.
Olson uses neuroimaging techniques to study the neurobiology of language development in toddlers and children. In a 2024 Imaging Neurosciencepaper, Olson and her colleagues developed a personalized neuroimaging approach to study the effects of individually varying factors in language processing in children, demonstrating that activity in canonical language areas and reward regions increases when children listen to a topic of interest. “Halie is a dreamer but also a doer,” says Anila D’Mello, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “Her drive to understand language using creative methods in a critical period that few have studied positions her as a rising star in neuroscience.” Olson has advocated for early-career scientists and trainees in her roles as co-chair of the Fetal, Infant and Toddler Neuroimaging (FIT’NG) Trainee Committee and of MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Science department education committee.
Padilla-Coreano studies the neural mechanisms that regulate social dynamics and how they are disrupted in disease states. Her research combines electrophysiological recordings, behavioral assays and modern machine-learning approaches to examine social decision-making in mouse models. “Nancy’s innovative research, mentoring excellence and advocacy work exemplify the transformative potential of diverse leadership in our field,” says Jennifer Bizon, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Padilla-Coreano has received several awards for her scientific contributions to the field, including a McKnight Scholar Award and a Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience. She is a co-founder and current co-director of Stories of Women in Neuroscience (WiN), a media project that highlights the work of women in neuroscience and has featured more than 140 researchers in written profiles and podcast interviews.
Parkes’ lab uses neuroimaging data to develop computational models that describe how psychopathology develops across complex neural systems. In 2018, he published a review of best practices for motion correction in fMRI data to encourage more transparent accounting of how motion artifacts might influence experimental results. He co-organized a symposium on network controllability at the 2025 Organization for Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting and, between 2021 and 2024, participated in the organization’s International Mentoring Programme. Parkes is “a deeply committed and compassionate mentor,” says Amber Howell, a postdoctoral researcher in Parkes’ lab. “His trainee-centered approach fosters both intellectual growth and personal development, creating a research environment that is as inclusive and supportive as it is rigorous.”
Scavuzzo studies the enteric nervous system with a focus on glia, using cellular and genomic techniques to understand how these cells may be involved in gastrointestinal and neurological dysfunction. She was awarded the 2023 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology for her research, having identified a population of “hub cells” that sense gut contents and facilitate intestinal motility. Before that, she earned a Hanna H. Gray Fellowship Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Scavuzzo “has worked for over a decade to make science accessible to people from all backgrounds,” says Paul Tesar, professor of innovative therapeutics at Case Western Reserve University. She is a co-founder and scientific director of Rise Up: Northeast Ohio, which provides hands-on science opportunities to underfunded Cleveland-area school districts.
Seemiller models adolescent alcohol use in mice to examine how these habits influence later-life behavior. With a focus on the prefrontal cortex, her work incorporates techniques such as patch-clamp electrophysiology, neuroimaging and peptidomics, bridging disciplines with neuroendocrinology. She was awarded a Kirschstein-NRSA fellowship from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 2024 to study sex differences in behavior arising from adolescent drinking. She and a fellow postdoctoral researcher co-founded a neuroscience journal club for trainees at her university. “Laurel is, to put it bluntly, the exact type of trainee we want to see stay in academia,” says Nikki Crowley, associate professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University. “She is a thoughtful leader in the lab, rigorous in her data integrity and work ethic, and a role model in the community.”
Sydnor studies mechanisms regulating human developmental plasticity using neuroimaging. She theorized and validated the sensorimotor-association axis of cortical development in a 2021 Neuron paper and a 2023 Nature Neurosciencepaper, respectively. In 2024, her doctoral thesis was awarded the University of Pennsylvania Saul Winegrad Award for Outstanding Dissertation in the neuroscience category. Also as a doctoral student, she co-founded the Action Against Bias Committee for her cohort and helped organize the Upward Bound Neuroscience Course summer program for students in grades 9 to 12. More recently, she has presented talks on brain development to secondary school students in the Pittsburgh area through her university’s Center for Neuroscience Brain Program. She currently serves on the Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Committee for the Flux Society. Sydnor is “a thought leader in neuroscience, but also a proponent of equitable access to science education and a catalyst for inclusive change,” says Theodore D. Satterthwaite, professor of psychiatry and behavioral research at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
Urai applies computational modeling of behavioral data to understand the neural basis of decision-making and its variability across individuals and contexts. Urai was one of the first core members of the International Brain Laboratory, a global consortium of systems and computational neuroscientists, where she helped develop reproducible methods to study decision-making in mice. In addition to her scientific achievements, Urai is interested in addressing the role of academics in responding to climate change. In a 2023 perspective paper, Urai and her colleague Clare Kelly proposed seven practical reforms to increase sustainable practices in academia. Alexandre Pouget, professor of basic neurosciences at the University of Geneva, says that this is one of the reasons why Urai stands out. “Our field is far from efficient, and in the face of global warming, we must seriously rethink how to make our work both more effective and more sustainable. Many acknowledge it—few act on it. Anne is one of those few.”
Zheng uses local field potentials and single-unit neuronal recordings to study the neural mechanisms that govern cognitive functions in humans. Her work has deepened the field’s understanding of the neural mechanisms that control memory formation. In a 2022 Nature Neurosciencepaper, Zheng and her colleagues described how neurons in the human medial temporal lobe segment continuous experience into discrete memories. Outside the lab, Zheng works to foster science literacy in children at an early age. She has been a scriptwriter on “The Loh Down on Science,” a podcast series that breaks down complex science topics for children, and she is an associate editor for Frontier for Young Minds, a journal that translates basic science research into child-friendly articles. “Dr. Zheng is a visionary neuroscientist whose innovative research, mentorship and advocacy are shaping the future of the field,” says Jack Lin, professor of neurology at the University of California, Davis.
