Oct 15, 2025

Amy Bastian to Receive Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences

PITTSBURGH — Amy Bastian, professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has been named the next recipient of the Andr ew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences. Established by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of its centennial celebration, the prize honors trailblazers in brain and behavioral sciences whose research has transformed the field and its applications. Bastian will receive the award during a hybrid event on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, at 12:00 p.m. in the Bosch Spark Conference Room (Scott Hall 5201) at Carnegie Mellon University and via Zoom.

Each year, the prize winner visits CMU to deliver a scientific lecture and receives an original artwork commissioned from artist Greg Dunn. This year, Timothy Verstynen, interim director of CMU’s Neuroscience Institute, will present the award.

“This is one of the Neuroscience Institute’s most anticipated events for the Pittsburgh neuroscience community,” said Verstynen. “The lecture brings the world’s top scientists to CMU, giving trainees and faculty the chance to engage with their work firsthand. Dr. Bastian’s research into how the brain coordinates movements and how that breaks down from disease resonates with many of our labs, making her visit especially exciting.”

Bastian is chief science officer of Kennedy Krieger Institute and a neuroscientist and physical therapist. Her work focuses on the neural control of human movement, with a special emphasis on stroke, cerebellar motor disorders and childhood motor development. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her groundbreaking research on how people with and without neurological damage control movement and learn new motor patterns.

At CMU, she will deliver the lecture: Learning and Relearning Human Movement.

Anjuli Niyogi posing outside smiling and having trees in the background. — *Anjuli Niyogi*

In conjunction with the award, the Neuroscience Institute will also present the Carnegie Prize Student Fellowship to Anjuli Niyogi, a Ph.D. student in Cognitive Neuroscience at CMU supervised by Jonathan Tsay, assistant professor of psychology. Niyogi studies the intersection of cognition and action, using computational modeling to investigate action selection and psychophysical methods to examine the role of time in motor memory formation. She completed her undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley.

“I am honored to receive this fellowship,” said Niyogi. “There is a strong synergy between my research interests and Dr. Bastian’s pioneering research in motor learning and cerebellar function. I am excited for the opportunity to visit her lab and learn from the brilliant scientists there.”