The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences honours Joint SWC/GCNU Group Leader with prestigious prize for the second time

Professor Andrew Saxe, a Joint SWC/GCNU Group Leader at UCL, has been announced as a 2025 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom Finalist in Life Sciences. This is the second time Professor Saxe has been named a Finalist after he was first recognised in the 2023 Blavatnik Awards.

In the 2025 Blavatnik Awards, Professor Saxe was recognised for his development of mathematical analyses illuminating learning mechanisms in artificial and biological systems, advancing AI understanding and insights into memory-related neurological diseases. “Discovering fundamental mathematical rules that shape how both machines and living creatures learn could have transformative impacts on society, addressing one of science's most profound contemporary challenges. I'm grateful for the recognition of our work in this field,” commented Professor Saxe. 
 

The Saxe Lab uses mathematics to understand artificial deep learning, a foundation of modern AI. By elucidating how neural networks learn, the team have developed mathematical theories that apply to both artificial neural networks and neurobiological systems. Professor Saxe’s work successfully models complex behaviour such as how children acquire knowledge, how and when neural networks generalise knowledge to new scenarios, and how long-term memories are formed, advancing our knowledge of the brain and how to build artificial intelligence. 

The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom recognise scientific advances by UK researchers across Life Sciences, Chemical Sciences, and Physical Sciences & Engineering. This year’s Finalists were selected by an independent jury of expert scientists, from a pool of 94 nominees representing 45 academic and research institutions across the UK. 

In addition to Professor Saxe, the Life Sciences Finalists include Nicholas R. Casewell, PhD - Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Christopher Stewart, PhD - Newcastle University. The Chemical Sciences Finalists include Liam T. Ball, PhD - University of Nottingham, Brianna R. Heazlewood - University of Liverpool, and Chunxiao Song, PhD - University of Oxford. The Physical Sciences & Engineering Finalists include Benjamin J.W. Mills, PhD - University of Leeds, Hannah Price, PhD, University of Birmingham, and Filip Rindler, DPhil – The University of Warwick.

“We created the Blavatnik Awards to support the creative and novel research of promising scientists early in their careers, recognising their achievements and accelerating the trajectories of beneficial scientific breakthroughs and innovations,” said Sir Leonard Blavatnik, Founder of Access Industries and Head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation. 

On Wednesday, 4 March 2025, at Kensington Palace, Professor Shitij Kapur, FMEDSCI, Vice-Chancellor & President, King’s College London, will announce the three 2025 Laureates of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom at a gala dinner and awards ceremony. 

The three Laureates will each receive an unrestricted award of £100,000. The remaining Finalists will each receive £30,000. 

Professor Nicholas B. Dirks, President and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences and Chair of the Awards’ Scientific Advisory Council, noted, “I wish these nine Finalists a hearty congratulations and best of luck. They demonstrate great promise and potential through their bold, scientific research. Their work lays the foundation for treatments and discoveries that can help people, our planet, and the pursuit of science itself.”

The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists are the largest unrestricted prizes available to UK scientists aged 42 or younger. Since launching in 2017, UK scientists honoured by the Blavatnik Awards have received more than £3 million in prize money.  Internationally recog-nised by the scientific community, the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists are instrumental in expanding the engagement and recognition of young scientists and providing the support and encouragement needed to drive scientific innovation for the next generation.

The Blavatnik Awards in the UK sit alongside their global counterparts, the Blavatnik National Awards and the Blavatnik Regional Awards in the United States, and the Blavatnik Awards in Israel, all of which honour and support exceptional early-career scientists. By the close of 2025, the Blavatnik Awards will have awarded prizes totalling nearly $20 million.

Blavatnik Awards scholars are driving economic growth by embarking on new scientific trajectories to pursue high-risk, high-reward scientific research. To date, Blavatnik Awards honourees have founded 74 companies. After recognition by the Blavatnik Awards, 30% of past honourees obtained a patent or filed a patent application, 75% have started a new research direction, and 11% have started a new collaboration with another Blavatnik Awards honouree. 

Members of the public interested in learning more about the research of this year’s honourees may register to attend a free public symposium entitled “Imagining the Impossible: UK Scientists Changing Our World,” at the Royal Academy of Medicine on 5 March 2025 from 11:00 to 16:00 GMT. Register to attend this FREE public symposium.

About Professor Andrew Saxe 

Andrew Saxe is a Professorial Research Fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit and Sainsbury Wellcome Centre. He was previously an Associate Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He completed a Swartz Postdoctoral Fellowship in Theoretical Neuroscience at Harvard University with Haim Sompolinsky,and completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, advised by Jay McClelland, Surya Ganguli, Andrew Ng, and Christoph Schreiner. His dissertation received the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society. His research focuses on the theory of deep learning and its applications to phenomena in neuroscience and psychology. He was awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society, and the Wellcome-Beit Prize. He is also a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in the CIFAR Learning in Machines & Brains programme. To find out more about Professor Saxe and his research, please visit the Saxe Lab page

About the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists 

The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in 2007 and independently administered by The New York Academy of Sciences, began by identifying outstanding scientific talent in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In 2014, the Blavatnik National Awards were created to recognise faculty-rank scientists throughout the United States. In 2017, the Awards were further expanded to honour faculty-rank scientists in the UK and Israel. For updates about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, please visit www.blavatnikawards.org or follow us on X and Facebook @BlavatnikAwards.

 About the Blavatnik Family Foundation 

The Blavatnik Family Foundation provides many of the world’s best researchers, scientists, and future leaders with the support and funding needed to solve humankind’s greatest challenges. Led by Sir Leonard Blavatnik, founder and chairman of Access Industries, the Foundation advances and promotes innovation, discovery, and creativity to benefit the whole of society. Over the past decade, the Foundation has contributed over US$1 billion to more than 250 organisations. See more at www.blavatnikfoundation.org.

About The New York Academy of Sciences 

The New York Academy of Sciences is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that, since 1817, has been committed to advancing science for the benefit of society. With more than 20,000 members in 100 countries, the Academy advances scientific and technical knowledge, addresses global challenges with science-based solutions, and sponsors a wide variety of educational initiatives at all levels for STEM and STEM-related fields. The Academy hosts programs and publishes content in the areas of life and physical sciences, the social sciences, nutrition, artificial intelligence, computer science, and sustainability. The Academy also provides professional and educational resources for researchers across all phases of their careers. The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists is part of a series of prominent awards and scholarship programs that the Academy and its partners present each year to accomplished early-career and established scientists worldwide. These initiatives, along with education and professional development programs for students and young scientists, reflect the Academy’s broader commitment to strengthening and diversifying the pipeline for skilled and talented scientists globally. Please visit us online at nyas.org.