(Left to Right) Life Sciences Laureate Cigall Kadoch from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Len Blavatnik, Founder of Access Industries and the Blavatnik Family Foundation; Chemical Science Laureate Markita del Carpio Landry from the University of California, Berkeley; Physical Sciences & Engineering Laureate Britney E. Schmidt from Cornell University
The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences honored three rising stars in their fields at the 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists ceremony on October 1, 2024. The event was held at the American Museum of Natural History, where it has been held annually since 2014.
Christina Paxon, PhD, President of Brown University and renowned American economist and public health expert, served as the ceremony presenter. Over 150 guests attended the ceremony, including leading figures in academia, science, and business. Distinguished guests included George Daley, MD, PhD, Dean of Harvard Medical School; Maurie McInnis, PhD, President of Yale University; Nancy Brown, MD, Dean of Yale Medical School; Richard Lifton, MD, PhD, President of The Rockefeller University; Doug Clark, PhD, Dean of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley; Krystyn J. Van Vliet, PhD, Vice President of Research and Innovation at Cornell University; Walter Massey, PhD, chairman of the board overseeing construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory; Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group; Lincoln Benet, CEO of Access Industries; Peter Thorén, EVP of Access Industries; and Len Blavatnik, Founder of Access Industries and the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
During her remarks, Paxson encouraged the evening’s honorees to use their unrestricted prize to bring their discoveries to fruition: “… you are being given a rare and marvelous gift – generous financial support for the ground-breaking research that you have demonstrated you’re capable of doing. Your challenge now is to supply the intellectual curiosity and the persistence that is needed for your ideas to be realized.”
Nicholas B. Dirks, President, and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences, spoke about the impact of Blavatnik Awards honorees’ achievements on science and society: “Honorees have continued to make paradigm-shifting fundamental discoveries, at the same time, they have applied these breakthroughs to the development of applications that regularly make the world a better place.”
Blavatnik National Awards
Paxson introduced the 15 National Finalists – five in each category of Physical Sciences & Engineering, Chemistry, and Life Sciences – who were selected by a prestigious jury of leading expert scientists from a pool of 331 nominations representing 172 institutions from 43 U.S. states; each Finalist was awarded $15,000. The ceremony then spotlighted the three talented young scientists recognized as Laureates of the 2024 Blavatnik National Awards. When introducing the Laureates, Paxson remarked, “It gives me great pleasure to note that for the second time in this event’s history, all three of our National Laureates are women!” Three National Laureates were awarded $250,000, the largest prize for early-career scientists. After receiving their medal, each scientist showcased their prize-winning research.
2024 National Laureates
Cigall Kadoch, PhD (Life Sciences) from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Kadoch is working to discover and characterize chromatin remodeling complexes to understand how their disruption leads to human disease, including cancer, and to develop a new class of therapeutics.
Markita del Carpio Landry, PhD (Chemical Sciences) from the University of California, Berkeley. Landry spoke about developing novel nanoscale chemical tools to address disparate challenges in human health and sustainability.
Britney E. Schmidt, PhD (Physical Sciences & Engineering) from Cornell University. Schmidt highlighted her advances in climate science and planetary habitability studies through her groundbreaking research on ice-ocean interactions and innovative exploration of Earth’s polar regions and icy planetary bodies using Icefin, a hybrid, remote, under-ice, robotic vehicle developed by Schmidt and her research team.
Blavatnik Regional Awards
Nine Regional Finalists – three in each category – were each awarded $10,000 by the 2024 Blavatnik Regional Awards. Three Regional Laureates were selected from 134 outstanding nominees representing 24 New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut academic institutions. Each Regional Laureate was awarded $30,000.
2024 Regional Laureates
Shira Weingarten-Gabbay, PhD (Life Sciences), nominated by The Rockefeller University, has uncovered thousands of novel microproteins encoded in the “dark matter” of viral genomes, exposing previously unknown immune targets for vaccines.
Arnaud Vanden-Broeck, PhD (Chemical Sciences), nominated by The Rockefeller University has led groundbreaking work in uncovering the intricate processes behind human ribosome assembly. This work is laying the foundation for treating cancers and diseases related to ribosome dysfunction.
Raghavendra Pradyumna Pothukuchi, PhD (Physical Sciences & Engineering), nominated by Yale University, has made unprecedented advances in creating a “brain-memex,” a system that interfaces computers with the human brain and could fundamentally shift our ability to understand neurological characteristics.
The ceremony concluded with the traditional “Toast to Science,” a hallmark of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists celebrations.
