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The Pershing Square Foundation “Mind” Prize Awarded to Six Visionary Researchers

Published a day ago via Business Wire

Each Prize Winner to Receive $750,000 Over Three Years

The Pershing Square Foundation today announced the six winners of the “MIND” Prize (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery). Through the Prize, the Foundation strives to change the paradigm of neuroscience research by creating a community of next-frontier thinkers who can uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition. Breakthroughs in basic scientific and translational research will yield critical tools for and knowledge of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia, which affect millions of people worldwide.

The MIND Prize will catalyze novel interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work by facilitating collaborations across academic departments and institutions and amongst the academic, biomedical industry, philanthropic, and business communities. The 2025 Prize winners will each receive $750,000, distributed $250,000 per year for three years.

“The proverb—'the more I learn the less I know' —properly captures the spirit of how I have often felt about neurodegenerative research. Still, despite, and indeed due to the complexity surrounding Cognitive Disease Disorders; it is essential that we continue to dive deeper to uncover and reveal the cellular basis of Alzheimer’s Disease and her siblings as we move towards new insights and resolution,” said Pershing Square Foundation Co-Trustee Neri Oxman, PhD. “We are proud to present the 2025 MIND Prize awardees whose work run the gamut from salamanders to humans, from basic research to applied investigations and therapy, and from treatment to holy grail of long-term prevention. We look forward to following their work and research with Socratic fervor.”

  • Lucas Cheadle, PhD, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical Institute: The Cheadle lab proposes a therapeutic strategy focused on harnessing a class of poorly understood brain cells, oligodendrocyte precursor cells, to actively protect vulnerable synapses from elimination in an effort to counteract cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s Disease.
  • Katie Galloway, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Dr. Galloway is working on a two-step “Search and Rescue” strategy to address the challenges in advancing cell-based therapies for central nervous system repair. Induced pluripotent stem cells are first reprogrammed into microglia, which migrate to sites of injury, then converted into neurons to aid tissue repair and regeneration. This approach holds promise for slowing degeneration, repairing neural tissue, and restoring lost functions resulting from injury, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases.
  • X. Shawn Liu, PhD, Columbia University Irving Medical Center: Dr. Liu’s work focuses on a novel therapeutic strategy to permanently reduce expanded DNA repeats linked to neurodegenerative disorders. Targeted DNA methylation editing has successfully been used to contract repeats and functionally rescue disease abnormalities in neurons derived from ALS and Frontal Temporal Dementia patients. The Liu lab now aims to apply this strategy to other models of neurodegenerative disease, aiming to prevent or slow disease progression.
  • Michael Pacold, MD, PhD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine: Physician-scientist Dr. Pacold and his lab discovered that headgroup precursors of CoQ10—a crucial antioxidant for mitochondrial electron transport and reactive oxygen species neutralization—penetrate the blood-brain barrier. In his MIND Prize project, Dr. Pacold will investigate whether CoQ10 headgroup precursors can modify the progression of brain mitochondrial dysfunction in mouse models of aging and Alzheimer’s Disease.
  • Elizabeth Pollina, PhD, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis: Dr. Pollina’s lab seeks to uncover genome protection mechanisms that safeguard vulnerable cell types from aging and degeneration. They will investigate how environmental stimuli and lifestyle factors, such as diet and sleep, influence the cell-type-specific accumulation of DNA damage by mapping genomic damage across diverse cells and identifying new repair pathways in the brain.
  • Maria Antonietta Tosches, PhD, Columbia University: The Tosches lab explores brain resilience through the unique plasticity of salamanders, which can reversibly shift between states of low and high regenerative capacity based on environmental conditions. Her funded project will investigate how plasticity is triggered by environmental cues and how the brain undergoes structural and functional remodeling to support this plasticity, uncovering mechanisms that enhance resilience to injury and neurodegeneration.

“We are proud and inspired by the group of scientists representing our third year of the MIND Prize. Their projects are looking at creative new ways to understand the complexities of the human brain and neurodegeneration, and we look forward to seeing what comes next,” remarked Olivia Tournay Flatto, PhD, President of The Pershing Square Foundation. “We are grateful for our Scientific Advisory Board that guides our thinking as we aim to make an impact on fundamental science as well as disease prevention and therapy.”

As part of the selection process, the MIND Prize relied on the guidance of a highly accomplished scientific advisory board, including:

Paola Arlotta, PhD, Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University

Richard Axel, MD, Nobel Laureate; Co-director, Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University; University Professor, Columbia University; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Ed Boyden, PhD, Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT; MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Ali Brivanlou, PhD, Robert & Harriet Heilbrunn Professor, Head of Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology, and Synthetic Embryology, The Rockefeller University; Co-founder, Rumi Scientific Inc.

Navdeep Chandel, PhD, David W. Cugell Professor of Medicine & Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Moses Chao, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology, Physiology & Neuroscience, and Psychiatry, NYU Langone School of Medicine

Mikael Dolsten, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and President, Worldwide Research, Development and Medical, Pfizer, Inc.

Fred “Rusty” Gage, PhD, Professor, Laboratory of Genetics, Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Michael E. Greenberg, PhD, Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University

Richard Isaacson, MD, Director of Brain Health, Atria Institute; Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology, Weill Cornell Medicine

Dean Kamen, Founder, FIRST; President, DEKA Research & Development Corporation

Sergiu Pasca, MD, Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program, Stanford University

Gregory A. Petsko, PhD Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital; Tauber Professor Biochemistry and Chemistry, Emeritus, Brandeis University; Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University

James Rothman, PhD, Nobel Laureate; Sterling Professor of Cell Biology; Professor of Chemistry; Director, Nanobiology Institute, Yale University

Bernardo Sabatini, MD, PhD, Alice and Rodman W. Moorhead III Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

Scott A. Small, MD, Director, Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center; Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology, The Taub Institute, The Sergievsky Center; Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, Radiology, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Hermann Steller, PhD, Professor and Head of Laboratory, Laboratory of Apoptosis and Cancer Biology, The Rockefeller University

Beth Stevens, PhD, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Institute Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Lavine Family Research Chair, F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children’s Hospital

Bruce Stillman, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Richard Tsien, PhD, Founding Director, Neuroscience Institute; Druckenmiller Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology, NYU Langone Medical Center

Stacie Weninger, PhD, President, FBRI

George Yancopoulos, MD, PhD, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman, President and Chief Scientific Officer, Regeneron

Michael Young, PhD, Nobel Laureate; Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor, The Rockefeller University

Anthony Zador, MD, PhD, Alle Davis Harrison Professor of Neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Feng Zhang, PhD, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Core Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT; James and Patricia Poitras Professor in Neuroscience, MIT; Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering, MIT

About The Pershing Square Foundation:

The Pershing Square Foundation (PSF) is a family foundation established in 2006 to support exceptional leaders and innovative organizations that tackle important social issues and deliver scalable and sustainable global impact. PSF has committed more than $750 million in grants and social investments in target areas including health and medicine, education, economic development and social innovation. Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman are co-trustees of the Foundation. For more information, visit: www.pershingsquarefoundation.org.

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