Oxford Professor Named Winner of Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences

Timothy Behrens, a leading figure in computational neuroscience at the University of Oxford, has been named the latest recipient of the Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University’s Neuroscience Institute announced today.

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.

Behrens is professor of computational neuroscience at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London, and the Oxford University Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. He is a Royal Society Faraday Fellow. His research focuses on how the brain learns, represents and uses knowledge to guide flexible behavior, combining computational modeling with experimental neuroscience across multiple levels of analysis — from neural circuits to behavior.

“Tim’s work connects biological discoveries about the brain with innovative theory from computational neuroscience and machine learning. Taking that approach, he has shaped our current understanding of how the brain represents abstract knowledge, makes decisions, and represents memories.” said David Badre, head of the Neuroscience Institute. “His work exemplifies the kind of transformative, cross- disciplinary science that the Carnegie Prize was created to honor.”

Throughout his career, Behrens has made groundbreaking contributions to understanding how the brain represents knowledge and supports flexible decision-making. His research has revealed that neural systems traditionally associated with physical navigation — including hippocampal–prefrontal circuits and grid-cell-based coding mechanisms — also organize abstract concepts and relationships, enabling the brain to build internal "mental maps" that guide behavior in complex environments. These discoveries have deepened understanding of learning, generalization and the neural principles that can inspire advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Behrens also pioneered noninvasive diffusion-weighted MRI techniques and developed software that has become a widely adopted standard for mapping brain connectivity, advancing both basic neuroscience research and clinical applications.

Behrens was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2020 and has received numerous honors for his research, including the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in Life Sciences. He said he was honored to win the prize.

“It’s particularly nice that the prize is awarded in cognitive neuroscience, hopefully reflecting how much progress towards mechanism we are making as a field at the moment,” he said.

At Carnegie Mellon, Behrens will deliver the Andrew Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Sciences Lecture, titled “How does the front of the brain work?”, on Oct. 8 at noon in Scott Hall, Room 6142. The program will also be livestreamed. He said he hopes people leave with an appreciation for the value of combining different research approaches to understand how the brain works.

“We can take big questions from cognitive science, like ‘How do we build models of the world?’ or ‘How do we compose plans?’ and start to think about how these things can actually be done in networks of neurons,” Behrens said.

The event will provide an opportunity for students, researchers and the broader Pittsburgh neuroscience community to engage directly with his work. The annual lecture is one of the Neuroscience Institute’s signature events, bringing internationally recognized scientists to campus to share cutting-edge discoveries.

As part of the award, Behrens will receive a commissioned work of art by neuroscientific artist Greg Dunn, reflecting the intersection of science and creativity that defines the prize.

The Neuroscience Institute also will award the Carnegie Prize Student Fellowship Sunreeta Bhattacharya, a Ph.D. student in the Program in Systems Neuroscience at CMU, who will have the opportunity to visit Behrens’ lab and engage in collaborative research. Bhattacharya is supervised by Ross Williamson, assistant professor of otolaryngology, neurobiology, & bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh. His interests range from animal behavior and psychology to building network models that explain emergent phenomena. He graduated with a dual BS-MS degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2022 in Biology.

“As an undergraduate student I was lucky to study neuroscience, animal behavior and signal processing, and I realized how fascinating it was to be able to explain so much of what we do, how we feel and reason about the world by looking at the activity of brain cells,” Bhattacharya said. “Through the fellowship I'm excited to meet Dr Tim Behrens and visit his lab to exchange ideas on how our brains make abstractions of the world to aid problem solving and generalization, a question that is very close to my heart.”