Early Career Award
The Early Career Award recognizes exceptional early career researchers who have made foundational and transformative contributions to the field of social neuroscience through the development of innovative approaches or paradigms, or through advancing interdisciplinary research that deepens our understanding of social cognition and behavior across multiple areas of neuroscience. Two awards are presented each year—one for human research and one for non-human animal research. The award is open to independent investigators within 10 years of receiving their PhD or within 5 years of beginning a faculty position, with allowances for career breaks. Applications are evaluated based on the novelty and creativity of the research, its potential to shape future directions in social neuroscience, the rigor and interdisciplinarity of the methods used, and the broader impact of the work across related fields.
On this page, you can find more information about the society’s Early Career Award and previous awardees. The award is presented at the society’s annual meeting.
Open & Reproducible Science Award was previously awarded in 2021-2024 and has been discontinued.
Applications for the 2026 Early Career Awards are Open! Apply by April 17, 2026!
We are inviting applications for this distinguished award recognizing the formation of new approaches or paradigms within the field of social neuroscience, and/or the development or advancement of research that cuts across multiple fields of neuroscience to understand social cognition and behaviour. Two awards will be given, one for human research and one for non-human animal research. We encourage applications representing the diversity of our membership in terms of geography, gender and protected characteristics. Please also include information on whether and how you have included open science practices in your research (e.g. date, code and resource sharing, pre-printing manuscripts).
More information on eligibility and nomination materials here: https://forms.gle/xZbjfquWEzWWK3R37
Previous Early Career Award winners
2025
Vikram Gadagkar, Ph.D., Columbia University, USA
Carolyn Parkinson, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, USA
2024
Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Ph.D., University of Florida, USA
Emilie Caspar, Ph.D., Ghent University, Belgium
2023
None
2022
Monique Smith, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, USA
Irene Perini, Ph.D., Linköping University, Sweden
2021
Leah Mayo, Ph.D., Linköping University, Sweden
Michael Yartsev, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, USA
2020
Olga Dal Monte, Ph.D., University of Torino, Italy
Oriel FeldmanHall, Ph.D., Brown University, USA
2019
Patricia Lockwood, Ph.D., University of Oxford, UK
Weizhe Hong, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, USA
2018
Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Ph.D., University of California, Davis, USA
Matthew Apps, Ph.D., University of Oxford, UK
2017
Jonathan B. Freeman, Ph.D., New York University, USA
Oren Forkosh, Ph.D., Max Planck Institute, Germany
2016
Jamil Zaki, Ph.D., Stanford University, USA
Steve Chang, Ph.D., Yale University, USA
2015
Molly J Crockett, Ph.D., University of Oxford, UK
Teruhiro Okuyama, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
2014
Gül Dölen, M.D., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, USA
Olga Klimecki, Ph.D., University of Geneva, Switzerland
2012
Jay Van Bavel, Ph.D., New York University, USA
Zoe Donaldson, Ph.D., Columbia University, USA
2011
Lauren O’Connell, Ph.D., Stanford University, USA