Edward Boyden wins BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Edward S. Boyden, a professor of media arts and sciences, biological engineering, and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, has won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine for his role in the development of optogenetics, a technique for controlling brain activity with light. Gero Miesenböck of the Oxford University and Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University were also honored with the prize for their role in developing and refining the technique. The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards are given annually for "outstanding contributions and radical advances in a broad range of scientific, technological, and artistic areas." The 400,000-Euro prize in the category of biomedicine will be shared among the three neuroscientists. "If we imagine the brain as a computer, optogenetics is a keyboard that allows us to send extremely precise commands," says Boyden, a faculty member at the MIT Media Lab with a joint appointment at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.