The Pershing Square Foundation today announced the opening of applications for the 2026 MIND (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery) Prize. Since the Prize launched in 2023, it has been awarded to 20 multidisciplinary investigators from institutions across the country. The annual prize awards $250,000 per year for three years ($750,000 total) to at least six scientists looking to uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition, with a lens on Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementias. The Prize is meant to enable the most talented early-to-mid-career investigators to pursue bold, creative projects that could have transformative impacts on the field of brain research.
Applicants must have between one and eight years of experience running their own laboratories by the award start date (May 2026), hold a PhD, MD, or MD-PhD (or degree equivalent), and be affiliated with a nonprofit research institution in the United States of America. Applicants may apply for the MIND Prize a total of three times. The deadline to submit a Letter of Intent is Monday, September 29th, 2025, by 5:00pm ET. For more details on the MIND Prize and the application process, including the full eligibility criteria, a link to FAQs, and a link to the application submission platform, please visit: https://pershingsquarephilanthropies.org/initiatives/programs/mind-prize.
“We continue to be inspired by the scientists who approach neuroscience with fearless curiosity and a drive to push boundaries,” said Olivia Tournay Flatto, PhD, President of The Pershing Square Foundation. “The MIND Prize was created to unlock new thinking in brain science, and each application cycle reminds us just how much untapped potential exists when bold ideas are met with the right support.”
The highly competitive MIND Prize catalyzes novel and daring interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work by facilitating collaborations across academic departments and institutions and amongst the academic, biomedical industry, philanthropic, and business communities. These breakthroughs in basic, fundamental research will help augment the toolkit for, and knowledge of, neurodegenerative and neurocognitive disorders. Projects may range from the invention of novel tools, techniques, and technologies for mapping and analyzing the brain, to bold approaches that demonstrate extraordinary therapeutic potential.
“My project pursues a really bold vision that other funding mechanisms would consider too risky, but that’s generally where the exciting work happens,” said 2025 MIND Prize winner Katie Galloway, PhD, Assistant Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The MIND Prize allows us to take those risks and to envision a future that’s different.”
“The MIND Prize grant—because it's a mechanism that funds extremely innovative ideas, but at early stages in their development where the funding is really needed—is the reason we're able to pursue our interest in understanding the possible ramifications of oligodendrocyte precursor cell biology for neurodegeneration,” 2025 MIND Prize winner Lucas Cheadle, PhD, Assistant Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory remarked. “Without this funding, we probably wouldn't be able to do any of these experiments.”
The MIND Prize is proud to rely on the guidance of a highly accomplished Scientific Advisory Board:
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, Former 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, 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 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. Pershing Square Philanthropies, which includes The Pershing Square Foundation, has committed more than $930 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: http://pershingsquarephilanthropies.org.
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