The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre is delighted to announce the winners of our 2026/27 Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series (ENSS). The prestigious ENSS competition spotlights aspiring leaders who are advancing systems neuroscience research.

Selected from a highly competitive group of applicants, this year’s speakers will showcase cutting-edge neuroscience from around the globe. 

The 2026/27 SWC ENSS winners are:

• Lucas Tian, Postdoctoral Fellow at Rockefeller University, who will present: “A primate frontal area that enables grammar-based recombination” on 8 October 2026.
• Matteo Guardamagna, Solberg Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, who will present: “On the origin of our sense of space: toroidal manifolds in grid-cell networks emerge before navigational experience” on 26 November 2026.
• Eddy Albarran, Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University, who will present: “How does reinforcement learning shape the synaptic landscape?” on 21 January 2027.
• Krithika Mohan, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who will present: “Neural mechanisms of episodic experience and memory in the primate brain” on 25 February 2027.

ENSS winners 2026/27, clockwise from top left: Krithika Mohan, Matteo Guardamagna, Lucas Tian, Eddy Albarran.

Kris Jensen, ENSS committee member and Senior Research Fellow at SWC, expressed his excitement for the upcoming series:

“I enjoyed reading all of the ENSS applications this year, and I am very excited to hear the selected presentations. The speakers are doing some of the most exciting neuroscience research happening anywhere in the world, and it will be a pleasure to host them at SWC!”

SWC is committed to fostering innovation and collaboration in neuroscience, and the ENSS provides a platform for early career neuroscientists to share their research and engage with the London neuroscience community. We eagerly await the talks of this year’s winners and the stimulating conversations that will follow.

Full details of the upcoming seminars will be announced on our Events page over the coming months. If you are interested in finding out more and applying for next year’s ENSS, please look out for the announcement of the application process in late spring 2027.

About SWC ENSS

SWC ENSS first launched in 2018 with the aim of fostering scientific exchange and collaboration with the global neuroscience community. Each year, SWC hosts four exceptional early career neuroscientists giving them the opportunity to present, as part of the regular SWC seminar series, and discuss their science with SWC faculty, postdocs and students. To find out more about our previous winners, please visit the Emerging Neuroscientists Seminar Series page.

The SWC ENSS Committee 2026

•    Kris Jensen
•    Michael Bukwich
•    Albert Albesa Gonzalez 

Contact:

Alison Cranage
Research Communications and Engagement Manager, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre
a.cranage@ucl.ac.uk