Ed Boyden wins prestigious Wilhelm Exner Medal

The Austrian Association of Entrepreneurs has declared that Edward S. Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT, has been awarded the 2020 Wilhelm Exner Medal.

Named immediately after Austrian businessman Wilhelm Exner, the medal has been awarded yearly considering that 1921 to experts, inventors, and designers who are “promoting the overall economy instantly or indirectly in an superb way.” Earlier honorees contain 22 Nobel laureates.

“It’s a good honor to obtain this award, which acknowledges not only the primary science impact of our group’s work, but the impact of the work in the industrial and startup worlds,” suggests Boyden, who is a professor of organic engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.

Boyden is a foremost scientist whose work is broadly utilised in marketplace, equally in his individual startup providers and in existing providers. Boyden is also a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Investigate, Media Lab, and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Investigate.

“I am so thrilled that Ed has received this honor,” suggests Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute. “Ed’s work has reworked neuroscience, by optogenetics, growth microscopy, and other findings that are pushing biotechnology forward far too.”

He is intrigued in understanding the brain as a computational method, and builds and applies equipment for the evaluation of neural circuit construction and dynamics, in behavioral and ailment contexts. He performed a significant part in the development of optogenetics, a innovative software where by the activity of neurons can be controlled applying light-weight. Boyden also led the workforce that invented growth microscopy, which offers an unparalleled watch of the nanoscale buildings of cells, even in the absence of exclusive tremendous-resolution microscopy tools. Exner Medal laureates contain notable luminaries of science, together with Robert Langer of MIT. In addition, Boyden has started a selection of providers dependent on his innovations in the chaotic biotech hub of Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These contain a startup that is trying to get to use growth microscopy to clinical challenges.

Boyden will produce his prize lecture at the Exner symposium in November 2020, during which economists and experts come jointly to listen to about the winner’s investigate.