Jonathan Fisher receives Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists

Jonathan Fisher, a postdoctoral fellow in James Hudspeth’s Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at Rockefeller, has been given the Blavatnik Award, a distinction for early-career scientists. The award is sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and given to researchers under the age of 42 who demonstrate impactful accomplishments in the life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Fisher is one of two postdoctoral winners of this year’s prize, which is given to faculty and postdocs in the tri-state area, and comes with a $30,000 prize for postdocs. There are five faculty winners. All prizes are awarded as unrestricted funds made possible by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

“This award recognizes Jonathan’s dedication to excellent research in the auditory system and is a well-deserved honor,” says Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Rockefeller’s president. “As a postdoc, you are taking responsibility for a significant portion of a lab’s work and, at the same time, establishing an independent focus, with an eye toward your first faculty appointment. The encouragement provided by the Blavatnik Awards can be extremely helpful in advancing an investigator’s career at this critical junction.”

Fisher’s research looks at the biophysics and neurophysiology of the auditory system. He is also interested in the development of new neuroimaging techniques in biomedical optics and auditory processing. Fisher received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, after which he joined the Laboratory of Sensory Neuroscience at Rockefeller.

Past Rockefeller recipients include postdocs Andrey Feklistov and Nicholas Stavropoulos in 2012, professor Shai Shaham and postdoc Sreekanth H. Chalasani in 2009, former Tom W. Muir in 2008 and Robin Chemers Neustein Professor Leslie B. Vosshall in 2007. Past finalists from Rockefeller have included postdoc Agnel Sfeir in 2010; three postdocs in 2008: Valerie Horsley, Andreas Keller and Matthew Evans; and Pels Family Professor Tarun Kapoor in 2007.