Two Mount Sinai Neuroscientists Named 2019 Sloan Research Fellows
Kanaka Rajan, PhD, and Daniel Wacker, PhD, receive early-career fellowships
Two faculty members of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai were recently named recipients of the 2019 Sloan Research Fellowships, a prestigious honor for early-career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the most promising researchers in their fields. Kanaka Rajan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Daniel Wacker, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, will each receive a two-year, $70,000 fellowship to further their research.
Drs. Rajan and Wacker are among 126 scientists who represent 57 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada. The fellowships, granted annually by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955, are awarded in close coordination with the scientific community. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his or her field.
“Drs. Rajan and Wacker are outstanding scientists who are making significant contributions early in their careers,” says Paul J. Kenny, PhD, Ward-Coleman Professor and Chair of the Arthur M. Fishberg Department of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "We are thrilled that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has recognized their excellence and has chosen to provide them with this prestigious honor and the flexible research support that will enable them to advance their work.”
Dr. Rajan’s innovative research uses advanced mathematical approaches and artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to discover how the brain functions in both health and disease. In the lab, she builds network models that simulate the activity of neurons in animal and human brains and writes integrative theories that explain how such activity drives behavior and cognition.
Dr. Wacker’s research is focused on a comprehensive, mechanistic understanding of important drug targets involved in human health and disease, using structural and pharmacological methods. He is particularly interested in the structure and function of serotonin receptors and transporters involved in maintaining normal brain function and will aim to design novel, target-selective compounds that help delineate the role of these proteins in mental illness and other pathologies. His lab uses pioneering technologies in structural and molecular pharmacology, including membrane protein crystallization, cryo electron microscopy, quantitative pharmacology and structure-based drug design.
“Sloan Research Fellows are the best young scientists working today,” said Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “Sloan Fellows stand out for their creativity, for their hard work, for the importance of the issues they tackle, and the energy and innovation with which they tackle them. To be a Sloan Fellow is to be in the vanguard of twenty-first century science.”
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