News: Emery N. Brown wins 2018 Dickson Prize in Science

Carnegie Mellon University announced Dec. 5 that Emery N. Brown, the Associate Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School, and anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, has won the 2018 Dickson Prize in Science.

“Dr. Brown is one of the world’s leading physician-scientists,” Carnegie Mellon said in announcing the award. “Dr. Brown’s outstanding achievements have earned him the distinction of being one of only 21 people elected to all three branches of the National Academies of Science. He is considered the ‘world’s expert on statistical analysis of neuronal data,’ according to CMU faculty member Robert E. Kass, and his research on anesthesia has been ‘truly transformative’ to that field.”

He directs an interdisciplinary team comprised of anesthesiologists, neuroscientists, bioengineers, mathematicians, neurologists, and a neurosurgeon from MGH, MIT and Boston University that is deciphering the neuroscience of general anesthesia, CMU’s announcement noted. Brown also directs the Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory at MGH and MIT where the research develops statistical methods and signal processing algorithms to analyze data collected in neuroscience experiments.

Carnegie Mellon’s Dickson Prize in Science is awarded annually to the person who has been judged by the University to have made the most progress in the scientific field in the United States for the year in question. At Carnegie Mellon, the field of science is interpreted to include the natural sciences, engineering, computer science or mathematics. The first Dickson Prize in Science was awarded in 1970.

In accepting the award, Brown credited the many people he has worked with at MIT, MGH, BU, and Harvard.

“I am extremely honored to receive the 2018 Dickson Prize in Science and to join the esteemed ranks of its past recipients,” he said. “I am especially grateful to all of the many students, post-docs and colleagues whose successful collaborations have led to this recognition.”