Kia Nobre awarded prestigious Heineken Prize

Kia Nobre, Catz Fellow and Professor of Translational Cognitive Neuroscience, has been awarded one of the Netherlands’ most prestigious international science prizes.

The award, the CL de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science 2022, was presented to Kia in recognition of her innovative approach to imaging and understanding the human brain.

The judging panel for the awards also praised Kia for the impacts that her work have on numerous subfields of cognitive neuroscience, including attention, working memory, long-term memory, and language.

Kia’s commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion, and her exceptional mentoring and leadership skills, were also highlighted by the jury, who called her ‘a role model for women scientists’.

Last year she contributed to the College’s celebrations for International Women’s Day, offering advice and inspiration to aspiring women academics.

Commenting, Kia said: ‘I’m deeply humbled and over the moon to receive the CL de Carvalho-Heineken Prize for Cognitive Neuroscience. I feel beyond lucky to be at the confluence of so many inspirations, influences, perspectives, ideas, methodological know-how, and empirical investigations of so many talented and generous people.

‘Thank you to my wonderful mentors, students, research fellows, and colleagues.’

The award forms part of the Heineken Prizes, which are awarded by Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences every two years, to five researchers from across the world.

Find out more and see the other recipients of this year’s prizes on the Heineken Prizes website.

Image of Kia Nobre: Bram Belloni