Misha Tsodyks Receives Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience

Misha Tsodyks, C.V. Starr Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, has been announced as the recipient of the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience by the Society of Neuroscience (SfN) as part of their 2023 Outstanding Career and Research Achievements awards.

The prize, endowed by the Swartz Foundation, is awarded annually to an individual whose activities have produced a significant cumulative contribution to theoretical models or computational methods in neuroscience or who has made a particularly noteworthy recent advance in theoretical or computational neuroscience. 

Tsodyks is described as having "profoundly impacted the quantitative understanding of learning and memory, from the synapse to the systems levels. His work has revealed the importance of sparsity in neural networks, mechanisms of short-term synaptic plasticity, and insights into the storage and retrieval of information from long-term memory. He has propelled the field forward, publishing many ground-breaking papers that overturned the dominant thinking of the time. Multiple models he proposed are now standard in the field."

Tsodyks will be presented with the award during Neuroscience 2023, SfN’s annual meeting, scheduled to take place between November 11–15 in Washington DC.