Dr. Maria Antonietta Tosches has received the McKnight Scholar Award, a competitive award granted by the McKnight Foundation to assistant professors in neuroscience. This award offers three years of support, $75,000 each year. The Knight Foundation has been supporting young neuroscientists since 1977, and awards on average six McKnight Scholar Awards every year.
The Tosches lab aims at understanding evolutionarily conserved principles underlying the organization and function of the cerebral cortex. To that aim, the lab is starting new research on the simple brain of a new animal model, a salamander called the Spanish ribbed newt.
The project supported by the McKnight Foundation will elucidate the molecular and functional evolution of an ancient class of neurons, the inhibitory GABAergic neurons.