Catherine Peña, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, has received the Society for Neuroscience’s 2024 Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Young Investigator Award. Established in 1983, the Young Investigator Award recognizes the scholarship and achievements of exceptional early career neuroscientists.

“Early career researchers are often the ones who bring fresh ideas and perspectives to the field,” said Marina Picciotto, Ph.D., president of the Society for Neuroscience. “These awardees and their novel approaches to microscopy, machine learning, circuits and behavior will drive neuroscience forward for many years to come” Picciotto said.

As part of this recognition, Peña will share the $25,000 prize with co-recipient Nicholas Bellono, Ph.D. (Harvard University), and receive complementary travel to the forthcoming Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Chicago, where they will be presented with the award by the society’s president.

Peña earned her Ph.D. at Columbia University in the lab of Frances Champagne, Ph.D., followed by postdoctoral research in the lab of Eric Nestler, M.D., Ph.D. at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Her research at Princeton focuses on how early-life stress alters brain development and increases vulnerability to future stress. By studying how stress affects a mouse’s brain through cellular, genetic, and hormonal changes, Peña and her lab aim to better understand how childhood trauma leads to high instances of anxiety, depression, and other clinical disorders in adulthood.

“I am deeply honored to receive this award,” Peña said. “And I’m incredibly proud of the hard work my team has put in to pursue these important questions.” 

Peña is the first Princeton faculty member to earn the honor, and joins a distinguished list of past recipients, including Nobel laureate Ardem Patapoutian, Ph.D., popular science writer Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D., and optogenetics inventor Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., among many other trailblazing researchers.