• , professor of neurobiology and biophysics, and adjunct professor of applied mathematics
• , Arthur B. McDonald Professor of Physics and director at the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics

Fairhall and Hertzog are among 120 new members and 30 international members elected 鈥渋n recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research,鈥� . Chartered in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences provides policy advice and input to governmental, nonprofit and private organizations.

develops theoretical approaches to understand how nervous systems process information. She collaborates with experimental labs across the UW, examining information processing in systems that range from single neurons 鈥� nerve cells that receive and conduct signals 鈥� to neural networks. She鈥檚 studied how mosquitoes use heat and chemical cues to forage, and how neural inputs drive muscle activation and biomechanics in hydra 鈥� tiny, tentacled invertebrates that live in water.

Fairhall grew up in Australia. She completed her master鈥檚 and Ph.D. in physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. She was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University before joining the 91探花School of Medicine faculty in 2004. Among Fairhall鈥檚 honors and awards are a Sloan Fellowship, a Burroughs Wellcome 鈥淐areers at the Scientific Interface鈥� Fellowship and a McKnight Scholar Award. She was named an Allen Institute Distinguished Investigator. In 2022, she was Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair at the 脡cole Normale Sup茅rieure in Paris.

Hertzog leads the 91探花, a research group that has designed and constructed detectors for high-precision experiments with muons 鈥� similar to electrons, but about 200 times more massive 鈥� conducted at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. The 91探花team also has led efforts to analyze the massive amounts of data produced in that experiment, known as the聽.

The overarching goal is to test the 鈥� a theory to describe how the universe works at its most fundamental level.聽Studying the behavior of muons may help determine whether muons are interacting solely with known particles and forces, or if unknown particles or forces exist.

Hertzog completed his Ph.D. in physics at The College of William & Mary. Following time at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Illinois, he joined the 91探花as a professor in 2010. He鈥檚 served on numerous scientific advisory committees and panels and is coauthor of more than 200 papers and technical reports. He has mentored or co-mentored more than 20 Ph.D. students and 15 postdoctoral researchers.

With this year鈥檚 additions, the National Academy of Sciences now has 2,662 active members and 556 international members.

“This award is a recognition of what is happening here at the 91探花in theoretical neuroscience research,” said , a 91探花associate professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. “It is an invitation to join the community of other Swartz-supported institutes that are advancing this field, as well as an opportunity to bring together different researchers and fields here at the UW.”

As the 12th to receive support from the Swartz Foundation, 91探花will join the ranks of Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities, as well as Caltech and the Salk Institute. The grant will support postdoctoral fellows to pursue research with faculty across the disciplines spanning computational and theoretical neuroscience, as well as collaborate with researchers at other Swartz-funded institutions.

“We want to bring in brilliant young thinkers at the interface of biology, physics and mathematics and to let those fellows identify opportunities to bring together research underway in multiple laboratories,” said 91探花associate聽professor of applied mathematics .

The UW’s national standing in this area sparked the interest of the Swartz Foundation, founded in 1994 by physicist and engineer , last year when Fairhall, along with the , hosted a meeting of Swartz fellows at the UW. With the new and the UW-based , the Swartz Foundation noted the UW’s strong institutional investment in this domain and invited Fairhall and Shea-Brown to draft a proposal outlining how the 91探花could contribute to the foundation’s mission.

“The Swartz Foundation funds the most innovative mathematical and theoretical approaches to understanding brain function 鈥� trying to find the underlying algorithms and principles involved,” said Fairhall. “The 91探花has such excellent faculty, both in neuroscience and the theory of neuroscience, that fellows here will have lots of options for interactions.”

Fairhall and Shea-Brown intend for researchers supported by the Swartz Foundation to have the freedom to explore a variety of projects and unique collaborations to address outstanding questions in computational neuroscience. For example, scientists are trying to understand the mathematical and statistical processes through which neural circuits create and evaluate new behaviors. Computational neuroscientists are also trying to learn how neurons in the brain 鈥� structurally and mathematically 鈥� encode, store and access information.

Fairhall and Shea-Brown hope this support from the Swartz Foundation will kindle further growth in this area over time, foster new collaborations and train the next generation of computational neuroscientists. The federal has specifically noted a need for theoretical and computational models to understand brain function. 91探花efforts in this area are strengthened by collaborative interactions with the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Google and Microsoft on large-scale brain models and brain-inspired computation, Fairhall said.

“Among the people who are leaders in this field today, many have passed through these Swartz-funded centers,” said Fairhall. “We would love to do that same thing and provide a launching base for new people to come in and succeed.”

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For more information, contact Fairhall at 206-616-4148 or fairhall@uw.edu and Shea-Brown at 206-685-6635 or etsb@uw.edu.