This spring we celebrated with several of our neuroscience colleagues as they were recognized with significant national awards.

Stanley Perlman was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. One of the world’s leading coronavirus experts, Stan leads a lab working to understand the respiratory and neurological diseases caused by human coronaviruses.

Joshua Weiner was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognized for his scientifically and socially distinguished achievements. While Josh was unable to attend the Fellows Forum and induction ceremony this month, I was pleased to be there and celebrate with his fellow Iowa inductees Tina Tootle and Rob Piper.

Mark Blumberg won the 2025 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Sleep Research Society. This award honors “a single prominent individual who has conducted influential basic, translational, clinical, or theoretical research spanning an entire career.” Much of Mark’s recent research aims to answer the fundamental question of why animals, including humans, sleep the most when they are young.  

Val Sheffield and Ed Stone received the 2025 Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research, awarded by the BrightFocus Foundation and the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education. They were jointly recognized for their contributions to advancing vision research. Among their numerous external grants through the years, their INI Research Program of Excellence, funded by the Carver Trust, helped to advance their development of novel gene therapy vectors for inherited eye disease. 

I want to ensure that Iowa neuroscience is in the mix as awards like these are considered each year, so I have asked INI associate directors Joshua Weiner and Kumar Narayanan to co-chair an Awards Committee that will identify candidates and facilitate nominations for significant national awards for our Iowa colleagues. I invite you to share information about awards in your discipline that you think should be on our radar. 

These awards reflect decades of dedication made possible in many ways by our collaborative community. As we join the scientific community in recognizing our colleagues’ accomplishments and celebrating their achievements, we know that these accolades reflect a foundation of scientific excellence at Iowa with broad impact around the world.

Ted

June 2025