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Jon Driver Prize

To honour the memory of Jon Driver, an annual Prize is awarded to outstanding young neuroscientists from UCL.

2021 Update

Each year UCL Neuroscience awards the Early Career Neuroscience Prize and the Jon Driver Prize, which recognise the outstanding work undertaken by early career UCL neuroscientists. Given the impact that the pandemic has had on research, the committee has decided that the timetable for these prizes will be revised, with a new deadline of Wednesday 1 September. A Neuroscience Early Career Prize Winners event will be held in the autumn. Further details will be provided after Easter.

Key information

Eligibility

PhD students within the Neuroscience Domain at UCL (registered at the time of the application deadline).

Deadline

Applications for 2021 will open shortly, the deadline will be Wednesday 1 September.

Requirements

  • 2 page CV with publication list
  • Motivation statement (500 words)
  • 1-page abstract describing work to be considered (SFN abstract format)
  • Supporting statement from supervisor / sponsor
  • 50-word biography
  • Proposed title for talk at Neuroscience Symposium if selected
  • High-resolution photograph of yourself

Award

£500. Up to 4 awards may be made per year (at the discretion of the committee).

A Neuroscience Early Career Prize Winners event will be held in the autumn. Further details will be provided after Easter. Winners will be asked to give a short presentation of the work that the award was given for. 

Committee

  • Sven Bestmann
  • Francesca Cacucci
  • Ray Dolan
  • Michael Hausser
  • Tamar Makin

Apply

For applications and information, please email: jondriverprize@gmail.com

FAQs

Follow the Jon Driver Prize Twitter account to be the first to hear when submissions open, deadlines and further information.

Previous winners

2020 Winners

Pablo Izquierdo UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology 
Synapse development is regulated by microglial THIK-1 K+ channel

Yunzhe Liu Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research
Neural replay in abstraction and inference

Max Rollwage Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research 
Cognitive and neural mechanism underlying confirmation bias

2019 Winners

Sean Cavanagh, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
The role of neuronal timescales in cognition

2018 Winners

Andrea Banino, CoMPLEX, UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, and DeepMind
Neuroscience and AI: modelling the brain using deep neural networks

Dr Ruben Duque do Vale, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour
Spatial navigation during escape behaviours in mice

2017 Winners

Christin Kosse, Denis Burdakov Lab, The Francis Crick Institute

Amy McTague, Manju Kurian Lab, Great Ormond Street Hospital

Federico Rossi, Matteo Carandini Lab, UCL Institute of Opthalmology

About Jon Driver

Jon Driver Prize

Jon Driver (1962 - 2011) was a highly influential cognitive neuroscientist whose work had a major impact world-wide, and who played a leading role in the neuroscience community at UCL.

He was Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL and was Director of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN) from 2004 to 2009.

His work was widely recognized - by numerous prizes; by his election to the fellowship of the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences; and by the award of a Royal Society Research Professorship. He trained many of the top people in the field, who are now in leading positions around the world.

Jon was a dynamic and highly respected figure at UCL: he played a key role in the team that attracted the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre to UCL, and in the establishment of the UCL Neuroscience Domain.

For more information about Jon Driver and his work, please see his Wikipedia page. You an also consult the collection of articles published by Nature Neuroscience or view the tribute page.