Hoboken, NJ — February 18, 2026 — The Wiley Foundation is pleased to announce that the 24th annual Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences, which recognizes contributions that open new fields of research or advance concepts in a particular biomedical discipline, will be awarded to John White, Gerald Rubin, Sebastian Seung and Mala Murthy for reconstructing and interpreting connectomes, the anatomical wiring diagrams of neurons and synapses that underlie how the brain processes information and controls actions.
John White is an Emeritus Professor of Anatomy and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Gerald Rubin is a Senior Group Leader at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus. Sebastian Seung is the Anthony B. Evnin Professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science, and Mala Murthy is the Director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the Karol and Marnie Marcin '96 Professor of Neuroscience, both at Princeton University.
“Understanding a connectome is essential to understanding the nature and logic of a nervous system and hence how it functions to respond to stimuli in the environment and control behavior and other physiological outputs, how it develops and can be modified with experience and age, and how it might dysfunction in disease,” said H. Robert Horvitz, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the Wiley Prize awards jury.
“The Wiley Foundation honors scientists who are dedicated to solving complex biological mechanisms which result in seminal discoveries that open the door for future innovations,” said Deborah Wiley, Chair of the Wiley Foundation. “The work of the 24th Annual Wiley Prize recipients truly upholds this mission by helping us to understand how networks of neurons interact and communicate, offering a framework for diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson's, as well as psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia.”
The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences was first awarded in 2002. Among its many distinguished recipients, thirteen have gone on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and five have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This year’s award will be presented to the winners at the Wiley Prize lecture, delivered as part of The Rockefeller University Lecture Series at 3:30 pm EDT on April 10, 2026. A recording of the Wiley Prize Lecture will be available at the Wiley Foundation website.
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