Blog Archives
2023 Blavatnik National and Regional Awards Ceremony
“Scientists who make up this community aren’t just achieving incredible things in isolation; they’re also inspiring and nurturing the next generation of scientists.”
Published October 2, 2023
By Kamala Murthy
The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences hosted the 2023 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on September 19, 2023. The event honored the 2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureates and Finalists as well as the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureates and Finalists.
France Anne Córdova, President of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, former director of the National Science Foundation, and the first woman to be chief scientist for NASA, served as presenter. A distinguished group of leaders from the worlds of philanthropy, academia, science, and technology was joined at the event by notable members from New York’s artistic community including Carnegie Hall’s artistic director Sir Clive Gillinson, Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music, Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music; and Lauren Selig of Shake and Bake Productions.
During her opening remarks, Córdova spoke about the impact the Blavatnik Awards have made on scientists’ careers: “A recent survey of Blavatnik honorees showed that in the two years following their first recognition, more than half reported feeling validation and increased confidence after receiving a Blavatnik Award. These awards help recipients progress in their careers and increase their visibility. They also give honorees the courage to pursue high-risk, high-reward research. After recognition, 75% started a new research direction and many started a new collaboration with another Blavatnik Awards honoree.”
Next, Córdova introduced the 31 Blavatnik National Awards Finalists who each came on stage, receiving a standing ovation from the audience.
The ceremony then turned its spotlight on the talented young scientists being recognized as part of the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards–nine postdoctoral fellows selected from among 121 outstanding nominees from 28 academic institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Córdova called each Regional Finalist to the stage who received a round of applause. Short videos featuring each of the three Regional Laureates were then presented. Córdova called the Regional Laureates to the stage and awarded each with a medal in their award category:
Chemistry (Regional)
2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureate in Chemistry, quantum chemist Joonho Lee, nominated by Columbia University and currently at Harvard University.
Physical Sciences & Engineering (Regional)
2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering, physicist Zoe Yan, nominated by Princeton University and currently at The University of Chicago.
Life Sciences (Regional)
2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureate in Life Sciences, biomedical engineer Yanxiang Deng, nominated by Yale University and now at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nicholas B. Dirks, President and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences, led the next part of the evening’s ceremony. Prof. Dirks commented on the power of community within the Blavatnik Awards program. “Scientists who make up this community aren’t just achieving incredible things in isolation; they’re also inspiring and nurturing the next generation of scientists. In addition, they’re collaborating. In doing so, they’re making discoveries beyond what they might have been able to do on their own.”
Prof. Dirks gave a presentation featuring numerous collaborations that came about through the Blavatnik Awards community. He then highlighted other innovations that have had a direct impact on humankind and fostered economic growth. “With the confidence and financial support provided by the Blavatnik Awards, our community of Blavatnik Scholars has founded more than 50 companies, some publicly traded today on the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ. There is no question that together–and as individuals–they are driving economic growth at home and abroad while using science to advance the public good.”
Córdova announced the 2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureates by introducing a video profile of each Laureate. Len Blavatnik, Founder and Chairman, Access Industries and the Blavatnik Family Foundation, then conferred the medals to each of the Laureates, who went on to deliver brief presentations showcasing their prize-winning research.
Chemistry (National)
2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Life Sciences, forest ecologist expert William Anderegg, from the University of Utah, spoke about his research on how climate change is impacting the earth’s forests.
Physical Sciences & Engineering (National)
2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering, mathematician Svitlana Mayboroda, University of Minnesota, gave a talk on her discoveries in mathematics that are unlocking the potential of electronic waves – ideas that can lead to crucial new 21st-century technologies.
Life Sciences (National)
2023 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Chemistry, materials chemist Shannon Boettcher, from the University of Oregon, spoke about his discoveries in electrochemistry which are enabling new sustainable methods to create fuels, plastics, fertilizers, and other important chemicals.
The ceremony concluded with the Blavatnik Awards tradition of making a “Toast to Science.”
To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, visit blavatnikawards.org.
Sparking Innovation: UK Scientists Changing Our World
Explore tumor metastasis prediction, RNA’s role in cold-resistant plants, quantum internet technologies, extraterrestrial life detection, computer-aided molecule design, and enzyme engineering in this interactive lecture series by 2024 Blavatnik Award winners. Discover cutting-edge insights across Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemical Sciences, suitable for science enthusiasts of all ages. Join us to witness UK scientists’ transformative innovations shaping the future.
2022 Innovators in Science: Gastroenterology
This one-day symposium will bring together researchers, physicians, industry professionals, and patient advocates to exchange new knowledge on novel research approaches, expanding our understanding of disease development, novel paths to treatment, and ways to improve the lives of those living with GI and liver disease.
Science and Society: 2022 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel Symposium
This exciting, free symposium features a series of short talks from three brilliant young scientists recognized as the Laureates of the 2022 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel. Their award-winning research will be on display as we learn about new materials that rival the photosynthetic efficiency of plants, mathematical equations that are transforming how we approach large data sets, and the different strategies that SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses use to hijack cells.
On-Demand: Discover, Design, and Diagnose: 9 Young Scientists Transforming Our World
This symposium features a series of short talks from nine brilliant young scientists recognized as the Laureates and Finalists of the 2022 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom. Their multidisciplinary, award-winning research is transforming our understanding of the human brain, how to predict the future of climate change, the creation of new materials with innovative properties, the design of sustainable chemistry, and the optimization of chemical reactions critical to new drug development. The lectures and discussion are intended for science enthusiasts of all ages – from high schoolers to adults.
Tata Transformation Prize
Supporting breakthrough, innovative technologies that address India’s greatest challenges.
By recognizing and supporting the implementation at scale of high-impact research, the Prize drives innovation in scientific disciplines of importance to India’s societal needs and economic competitiveness.
The Tata Transformation Prize leverages the exceptional potential of scientists in India to address critical national challenges in three categories—Food Security, Sustainability, and Healthcare—and generate improved quality-of-life outcomes across India and beyond.
The Tata Transformation Prize recognizes one Winner in each of the three categories, with INR 2 crores (approximately US$215,000).
Important Dates
- Applications open: April 27, 2026
- Applications close: May 29, 2026 (11:59 PM IST)
- Letters of Reference due: June 3, 2026 (11:59 PM IST)
- Tata Transformation Prize Ceremony: December 4, 2026
Bold Innovation for India and Beyond
View highlights from the 2024 Tata Transformation Prize Ceremony
“The Tata group has been in the forefront of creating impact in society for more than 150 years. In fact, our founder Jamsetji Tata said that the very purpose of business is the society. The Tata Transformation Prize is one small way in which we will promote science and scientists to solve India’s national problems.”
N. Chandrasekaran
Chairman
Tata Sons
“Pathbreaking research takes place in India, resulting in important advances in science around the world. This prize is focused not only on science, but on innovative discoveries that put science to work for the betterment of society.”
Nicholas B. Dirks
President & CEO
The New York Academy of Sciences
Scientific Advisory Council
Members of the Scientific Advisory Council serve as ambassadors of the Tata Transformation Prize, invited by Tata Sons and The New York Academy of Sciences to reach a broad and diverse pool of applicants and advise on Prize policies.
Winners are selected by a confidential jury, independently chosen by The New York Academy of Sciences, comprising world-leading topical experts from academia, industry, government, and beyond.
M. Lakshmi Kantam, PhD
Professor, Institute of Chemical Technology
Prabhu L. Pingali, PhD
Professor, Cornell University
Chair, ICRISAT Governing Board
K. Srinath Reddy, MD, DM(Card)
Former Head of Cardiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences
Former President, Public Health Foundation of India
Karen C. Seto, PhD
Professor, Yale University
Soumya Swaminathan, MD
Chairperson, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation
Former Chief Scientist, World Health Organization
K. VijayRaghavan, PhD
Emeritus Professor, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Former Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India
Meg Wirth
Founder & President, Maternova
Contact Us
Mamta Tahiliani, PhD
Program Manager, Awards
tatatransformation@nyas.org
+1 (212) 298-3742 (M–F, 9 AM – 5 PM ET)
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Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists
Driving the Next Generation of Scientific Innovation
Considered the largest unrestricted prize ever created for early-career scientists, the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists were established in 2007 by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and are independently administered by The New York Academy of Sciences. The Blavatnik Awards seek to identify and honor exceptional young scientists and engineers 42 years of age and younger. Honorees are selected based on the quality, novelty, and impact of their research and their potential for further significant contributions to science.
Focus on Promising Young Scientists
Unlike lifetime achievement awards that honor scientists at a later stage in their career, the Blavatnik Awards aim to identify and encourage promising young scientists early on, when they are most in need of funding and recognition.
Founded and Supported by
“Our goal is to recognize exceptional young scientists, and to showcase their work as examples of what the next generation of young scientists should strive to achieve. The Blavatnik Family Foundation provides critical support to fuel the kind of innovative science and technology research that addresses society’s most pressing global problems.” Len Blavatnik
Three Disciplinary Categories
Blavatnik Awards honorees are recognized in three disciplinary categories:
Chemical Sciences
Physical Sciences & Engineering
Life Sciences
Four Awards
The Academy administers the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists as four separate Awards programs:
$20M in Unrestricted Funding Awarded
Boosting Careers & Economic Growth
Awards
Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists
The largest unrestricted prize ever created for early-career scientists, these awards seek to honor exceptional scientists and engineers 42 years of age and younger.
Tata Transformation Prize
This prize supports breakthrough, innovative technologies in scientific disciplines of importance to India’s societal needs and economic competitiveness.
2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists Honorees Announced
The Awards honor postdoctoral scientists from tri-state academic and research institutions in chemistry, physical sciences & engineering, and life sciences.
New York, NY | August 9, 2023 – The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences today announced the three Laureates and six Finalists of the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists. The Awards honor outstanding postdoctoral scientists from academic research institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in three disciplinary categories: Chemistry, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Life Sciences.
The Blavatnik Regional Awards jury, consisting of distinguished scientists and engineers from across the New York Tri-State region, selected one Laureate in each of the three categories who will receive a $30,000 unrestricted prize and two Finalists in each category who will be awarded $10,000 each. In the 2023 competition, there were 121 outstanding nominations from 28 academic institutions in the New York metropolitan region (Tri-State Area). The 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureates and Finalists will be honored during National Postdoctoral Appreciation Week, which recognizes the significant contributions that postdoctoral scholars make to U.S. research and discovery. The 2023 Ceremony of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, will take place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on September 19, 2023.
“Congratulations to this year’s Regional Awards Laureates and Finalists. We look forward to their future significant discoveries,” said Len Blavatnik, Founder and Chairman of Access Industries, head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
Nicholas B. Dirks, The New York Academy of Sciences’ President and CEO, said, “Congratulations to the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureates and Finalists. This year’s Regional honorees are driving cutting-edge research, making important contributions to the area’s current and future scientific excellence. Many are publishing research at rapid speed, taking creative risks in their research, while actively working to create a more diverse STEM workforce. These are the young scientific superstars we should be watching.”
The 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureates in the three award categories are:
Chemistry
Joonho Lee, PhD, (quantum chemist) nominated by Columbia University— was recognized for the development of state-of-the-art quantum chemistry algorithms for classical and quantum computers. Lee’s work aims to provide a microscopic understanding of emergent functional materials, including solar cells, electrocatalysts for the hydrogen economy, and optoelectronics. Lee has recently joined the faculty at Harvard University.
Physical Sciences & Engineering
Zoe Yan, PhD, (physicist) nominated by Princeton University — was recognized for developing the first quantum gas microscope on single, ultracold molecules and applying this technique to explore important phenomena relevant to high-temperature superconductors and other quantum materials. Yan’s work opened a new venue to study complex quantum phenomena previously inaccessible by other instruments and holds great potential in future quantum technologies. Yan has recently joined the faculty at The University of Chicago.
Life Sciences
Yanxiang Deng, PhD, (biomedical engineer) nominated by Yale University — was recognized for developing a novel microfluidic method for “spatial-omics” to profile expression of RNA, proteins, and epigenetic markers across spatially organized groups of cells in tissues. Deng’s work has allowed us to construct a map of how RNA, proteins, and epigenetic markers are expressed across groups of cells with respect to cells’ relative positions. This work provides critical insight about how cells in different regions change their behavior during processes like development and disease. Deng has recently joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.
The following postdoctoral researchers have been named Finalists in their respective categories:
Chemistry
Elena Meirzadeh, PhD, (materials chemist), nominated by Columbia University — was recognized for synthesizing a molecular two-dimensional form of carbon that has opened up a new class of materials with enormous potential applications in energy storage and tunable optoelectronics. Her new carbon crystals are formed from superatoms—large molecules made from many atoms—and they have a higher thermal conductivity than other forms of molecular carbon, making them uniquely able to dissipate heat. Meirzadeh has recently joined the faculty at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
Brittany M. White-Mathieu, PhD, (chemical biologist) nominated by Cornell University—
was recognized for advancing the field of chemical imaging to further our understanding of lipids and their role in cellular function and disease, including cancer. She has created a revolutionary method, Lipid Expansion Microscopy, that enables super-resolution imaging of lipids within cells using widely available instrumentation. White-Mathieu’s work enables direct study of these compounds in cellular membranes where critical cell signaling events and nutrient exchange occur. White-Mathieu will begin a new faculty position at the University of New Hampshire in late August 2023.
Physical Sciences & Engineering
Micah Goldblum, PhD, (computer scientist) nominated by New York University — was recognized for substantial contributions to various aspects of deep learning—a leading technique of artificial intelligence. His work has not only transformed our understanding of the foundations of deep learning, but also improved its data security. Goldblum also broadened the application of deep learning in data-scarce situations, such as leveraging large volumes of diagnostic data for common diseases to improve diagnoses on rare ones.
Adam Overvig, PhD, (applied physicist) nominated by CUNY Graduate Center — was recognized for developing a new paradigm for manipulating light and thermal radiation using metasurfaces—surfaces of artificial materials with nanoscale structures. Overvig’s metasurface designs enable new ways to control the behavior of light with unprecedented precision and efficiency, and are promising for a wide range of applications including electronic communications, medical imaging, quantum computing, and more.
Life Sciences
Valerie A. Tornini, PhD, (developmental biologist) nominated by Yale University — was recognized for identifying roles for novel micropeptides hidden in the vertebrate genome and chromatin regulators that tell early brain cells which kind of cell to become, to then regulate behavior of the whole organism. Tornini showed that these micropeptides and chromatin regulators have crucial roles in early neurodevelopment using zebrafish models. Furthermore, Tornini identified links between mutations in chromatin modifier genes, the resulting behaviors, and autism, informing our understanding of how to therapeutically manipulate these behaviors to treat developmental disorders.
Qiancheng Zhao, PhD, (neuroscientist) nominated by Yale University — was recognized for exploring how our brain senses internal states, such as blood pressure fluctuations, food digestion, and breathing rhythms in a process called interoception. Zhao has characterized the vagal sensory neurons, a key body-brain axis in interoception, responsible for sensing numerous and diverse body signals and relaying them to the brain with incredible precision. Zhao’s work has demonstrated that vagal sensory neurons employ a combinatorial strategy to code the essential features of an interoceptive signal, including the ‘visceral organ’, ‘tissue layer’, and ‘sensory modality’, thus facilitating effective body-to-brain communications.
About the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in 2007 and independently administered by The New York Academy of Sciences, began by identifying outstanding scientific talent in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In 2014, the Blavatnik National Awards were created to recognize faculty-rank scientists throughout the United States. In 2017, the Awards were further expanded to honor faculty-rank scientists in the United Kingdom and Israel. For updates about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, please visit www.blavatnikawards.org or follow us on Twitter and Facebook @BlavatnikAwards.
About the Blavatnik Family Foundation
The Blavatnik Family Foundation supports world-renowned educational, scientific, cultural, and charitable institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and across the globe. Led by Len Blavatnik, founder and chairman of Access Industries, the Foundation advances and promotes innovation, discovery, and creativity to benefit the whole of society. Over the past decade, the Foundation has contributed more than $1 billion to over 250 organizations. See more at www.blavatnikfoundation.org.