ICTP Prize 2017

ICTP has awarded its 2017 ICTP Prize to Emilio Kropff, a neuroscientist from Argentina affiliated with that country’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council’s (CONICET) Instituto de Investigeciones Bioquimicas de Buenos Aires (IIBBA), Leloir Institute.

The ICTP Prize recognises Kropff’s outstanding contributions to neuroscience. His works address several aspects of memory and spatial cognition, combining both experimental and theoretical approaches. His theoretical work shows how the hexagonal geometry of spatial maps encoded in grid cells—the positioning system of the brain—can emerge from self-organization in networks of neurons.

The 2017 ICTP Prize honours Daniel J. Amit, a theoretical physicist who pioneered statistical mechanics approaches to neural networks and was one of the founding fathers of modern theoretical and computational neuroscience.