The prize is named for Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute Co-founder David Mahoney.
It honors individuals who have significantly increased public awareness about brain science and disorders of the nervous system.
2018 David Mahoney Prize
The 2018 David Mahoney Prize symposium and dinner, held in New York City on April 18, honored Steven Hyman, MD ’80, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
From 2001 to 2011, Hyman served as Provost of Harvard University, the university’s chief academic officer. As Provost, he had a special focus on the establishment of collaborative initiatives in the sciences and engineering spanning multiple disciplines and institutions. From 1996 to 2001, he served as Director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where he emphasized investment in neuroscience and emerging genetic technologies, and also initiated a series of large practical clinical trials that were a forerunner of comparative efficacy studies.
Hyman is president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, past president of the Society for Neuroscience, founding president of the International Neuroethics Society, and previously served as editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine where he serves on the Council. He chairs the Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), which brings together industry, government, academia, patient groups, and foundations, and serves on the Governing Board of the National Research Council, the operating arm of NASEM. Hyman is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. In 2016, he was awarded the Rhoda and Bernard Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health by the National Academy of Medicine.
The evening's program included a welcome from Edward F. Rover, JD ’64, chairman and president of The Dana Foundation and member of the Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute council, a conversation between Hyman and Nobel Laureate Eric R. Kandel, AB ’52, MD, the award presentation by Hildegarde E. Mahoney, and a dinner.
The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute hosts a public lecture series to continue its efforts to educate the public on the latest scientific discoveries in neuroscience and translate how these discoveries are relevant in our daily lives.
Since its founding in 1990, the Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute has helped advance neuroscience at Harvard Medical School by promoting public awareness of the importance of brain research and by helping to fund research at the School's Department of Neurobiology.