Salk Professor and neuroscientist Kay Tye has been named one of three winners of the prestigious Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Tye, the laureate in the Life Sciences category, will receive $250,000 for her trailblazing work in studying the neural circuits and behaviors related to anxiety and social interaction.

Tye, who is a professor in Salk’s Systems Neurobiology Laboratory and holds the Wylie Vale Chair, seeks to understand the neural circuit basis of emotion that leads to motivated behaviors such as social interaction, reward-seeking and avoidance. Her lab’s findings may help to inform treatments for conditions such as anxiety, depression, addiction and impairments in social behavior.

The 2020 and 2021 Blavatnik National Laureates and Finalists will be honored at an awards ceremony on September 28, 2021, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Tye is the second Salk Blavatnik Life Sciences Laureate, the first being Salk Professor Janelle Ayres, who won the award in 2018.

The Blavatnik Family Foundation founded The Blavatnik Awards in 2007, and since that time has awarded more than $11.9 million and recognized 359 young scientists and engineers from 47 countries, working in 36 scientific and engineering disciplines.