During National Postdoc Appreciation Week, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences are proud to announce the three Laureates and six Finalists of the 2025 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists, the Blavatnik Awards’ flagship prize that honors outstanding postdoctoral scientists from academic research institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. 

The 2025 Blavatnik Regional Awards Laureates are:

 

Life Sciences: Veena Padmanaban, PhD, nominated by The Rockefeller University

Recognized for discovering a molecular mechanism allowing sensory neurons to communicate with breast cancer cells to drive metastasis and uncovering novel actionable therapeutic targets.

Physical Sciences & Engineering: Valentin Crépel, PhD, nominated by the Flatiron Institute

Recognized for advancing theories describing stacked, single-atom-thick materials, enabling easier control of their behaviors for applications in quantum technology and opening up new avenues for developing materials useful in novel quantum computing platforms.

 

Chemical Sciences: Xiao Xie, PhD, nominated by Princeton University

Recognized for pioneering chemical biology tools to map protein phase separation and copper signaling, which uncover molecular mechanisms underlying cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Xie is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of 2015 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate, Christopher Chang, PhD.

The Finalists are:

LIFE SCIENCES

Maria Cecilia Campos Canesso, PhD, nominated by The Rockefeller University

Recognized for advancing our understanding of food allergies and inflammatory bowel disease by developing new tools to uncover how immune cells communicate in the intestine, laying the foundation for more effective treatments.

 

Ipshita Zutshi, PhD, nominated by New York University

Recognized for discovering how the brain integrates dynamic goals with sensory inputs (sound, vision) to guide memory and decision-making — providing a framework for understanding cognitive dysfunction in psychiatric disorders.

 

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & ENGINEERING

Ore Gottlieb, PhD, nominated by the Flatiron Institute

Recognized for shifting the paradigm describing neutron star mergers, giving scientists a roadmap for finding and studying these rare events.

 

Viraj Pandya, PhD, nominated by Columbia University

Recognized for groundbreaking discoveries on early galaxy evolution, reshaping our understanding of how galaxies formed and challenging longstanding theories of the early universe.

 

CHEMICAL SCIENCES

Lucien Dupuy, PhD, nominated by Rutgers University, Newark

Recognized for developing quantum-classical and machine learning simulations that elucidate how molecules respond to light, crucial to understanding diverse topics like DNA stability, photocatalysis, and energy conversion. Dupuy is the first Blavatnik Awards honoree from Rutgers University, Newark, NJ.

 

Yunjia Lai, PhD, nominated by Columbia University

Recognized for pioneering mass spectrometry innovations to map and screen environmental exposures and biological changes that drive neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Southern University of Science and Technology have developed a novel deep learning neural network, Electrode Net. By introducing signed distance fields and three-dimensional convolutional neural networks, this method can significantly accelerate electrode design while maintaining high accuracy. It is widely applicable to fuel cells, water electrolyzers, flow batteries, etc.

The first ab initio calculation of the rarest electromagnetic transition in atomic nuclei, the hexacontatetrapole E6 transition in ⁵³Fe, has been performed. Using the valence-space in-medium similarity renormalization group (VS-IMSRG) methods with realistic nuclear force and bare nucleon charges, the study has successfully explained both the excitation energies and electromagnetic decay rates of the unique T_1/2 = 2.54-minutes J^π = 19/2^- isomer at 3.0 MeV. This study provides unprecedented insights into nuclear structure under extreme conditions and validates ab initio approaches for describing the high-multipole electromagnetic transitions in atomic nuclei. The research demonstrates that the formation of 19/2^- isomer arises from the pure 0f_7/2 orbital configuration.

The study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, shows that the balance between two types of inhibition regulates how brain rhythms communicate, enabling flexible and efficient information routing. The research was carried out by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC UIB-CSIC), the Institute for Neurosciences (IN CSIC-UMH), and Aix-Marseille University (France).

Wheat is one of the world's most important staple foods, especially in the form of bread. A joint study by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (LSB) and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) now shows that extremely dwarf wheat has a less favorable gluten composition than semi-dwarf, dwarf, or tall wild type wheat, and therefore produces flour with poorer baking properties.