The first A. F. Harvey engineering research prize from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET; Stevenage, England), which is a prize of £300,000, was awarded to Professor Ed S. Boyden of the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA), whose work in optogenetics has made international impact. To be awarded annually, the award honors an individual researcher for their outstanding achievements and promising future research, says IET.
Boyden is the Benesse Career Development Professor and Associate Professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute. There, he leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which develops optogenetic tools for controlling and observing neurons with light, to understand how cognition and emotion arise from brain network operation, as well as to enable systematic repair of intractable brain disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and chronic pain. His group's suite of optogenetic tools are now in use by hundreds of groups around the world.