Li and Jin Receive the Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience

For immediate release.

LI AND JIN RECEIVE THE GRUBER INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AWARD IN NEUROSCIENCE

Award recognizes young scientists who have exhibited outstanding science in an international setting

Washington — The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) awarded The Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience to Jian Li, PhD, of New York University, and Xin Jin, PhD, of the National Institutes of Health, during Neuroscience 2011, SfN’s annual meeting and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health. The award recognizes two promising young scientists for their outstanding research and educational pursuit in an international setting. It is supported by The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation and includes $25,000 for each recipient.

“The Society believes it is important for the community to recognize talented young scientists like Dr. Li and Dr. Jin,” said Susan G. Amara, PhD, president of SfN. “Their cutting-edge work on the brain circuits underlying learning and behavior demonstrates the exceptional creativity needed to maintain progress in the field.”

Li is making important contributions to understanding how people learn and make decisions. His training in computational neuroscience has been instrumental in studies characterizing the complementary roles of the amygdala and striatum in associative learning. His work is also concerned with examining how neural systems of reward processing and decision-making can be altered by additional information such as social factors, previous choices, and knowledge. Li completed his doctoral studies at Baylor College of Medicine and is a post-doctoral fellow at New York University. He is a native of China and plans to return there next year to start a faculty position at Peking University.

Jin’s postdoctoral research focused on investigating connections between brain cell activity and behavior. His work on the mechanisms of sequence learning has been instrumental in distinguishing how certain neurons signal the beginning and end of learned behavior. Jin’s recent work examines awake and behaving animals using optogenetics and voltammetry. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and earned his PhD from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The Society for Neuroscience is an organization of more than 41,000 researchers and clinicians who study the brain and nervous system.