Awards
SANS is pleased to recognize our members with four key awards each year.
2025 Distinguished Scholar Award
The Distinguished Scholar Award recognizes the broad scope and potentially integrative nature of scholarship in social and affective neuroscience. It honors a scholar who has made distinctively valuable research contributions across their career in areas by significantly advancing our understanding of the biological basis of social and affective processes or expanding the core of social and affective neuroscience discipline. The winner of this award will receive travel compensation (up to $500 USD), complimentary registration to the 2025 conference in Chicago as well as an invitation to be our distinguished scholar speaker at the conference.
SANS DSA Rubric 2025
2025 Nomination Process
- Board to invite nominations and self-nominations for this honor.
- The awardee is selected by a committee chaired by the President.
- The awardee must be an active member of the society.
- The awardee must attend the 2025 conference as they will be invited to give a 45-minute presentation.
- The deadline for the Distinguished Scholar Award is December 12, 2024.
The following materials should be submitted for consideration to
- At least three (3) articles that demonstrate their contribution to the larger academic community.
- A one-page (250 words max) statement specifying the nature and impact of the nominee’s contribution to the field, outlining their current research
- Candidate CV
Decision will be announced on February 17, 2025.
Past Winners
2024 – Mauricio Delgado
2023 – Matthew Lieberman
2022 – Eveline Crone
2021 – Uta & Chris Frith
2019 – Nancy Kanwisher
2018 – Betsy Murray
2017 – B.J. Casey
2016 – John Cacioppo
2015 – James J. Gross
2014 – Elizabeth Phelps
2013 – Ralph Adolphs
2025 Mid-Career Award
As a way to better recognize our membership for their work, we have included the Mid-Career Award for 2025. The award recognizes a mid-stage investigator who has made significant contributions to Social and Affective Neuroscience in terms of outstanding scholarship and service to the field. The winner of the award will receive a $500 honorarium, complimentary registration to the 2025 conference in Chicago, and deliver a short presentation.
SANS MCA Rubric 2025
2025 Nomination Process
- Candidates will be evaluated by a committee chaired by the Past President.
- To be eligible for the award, candidates must be an active member of the SANS society.
- Candidates must be within 14 years of completing their Ph.D. or 5 years post-promotion with tenure (or equivalent) at the time of the nomination.
- *Up to 2 years delay is allowed if the nominee has experienced significant caregiving, medical, or other hardship during the period in question.
- The candidate must not yet be promoted to full professor (or equivalent).
- The deadline for the Mid Career Award is December 12, 2024.
The following materials should be submitted for consideration to
- The first three items should be combined into a single PDF and emailed to the email address above with “MCA” and the name of the candidate in the subject line.
- The successful candidate must attend the 2025 conference and be prepared to give a 30-minute presentation.
Decision will be announced on February 10, 2025
Past Winners
2024 – Luke Chang
2025 Early Career Award
The Early Career Award recognizes an early-stage investigator who has made significant contributions to Social and Affective Neuroscience terms of outstanding scholarship and service to the field. The winner of the award will receive a $500 honorarium, complimentary registration to the 2025 conference in Chicago, and deliver a brief presentation.
SANS ECA Rubric 2025
2025 Nomination Process
- Candidates will be evaluated by a committee comprised of the Past and Current President.
- To be eligible for the award, candidates must be active members of the SANS society.
- Must be within 7 years of completing their Ph.D. OR within 5 years of starting a junior faculty position at the time of the nomination.
- *Up to 2 years delay is allowed if the nominee has experienced significant caregiving, medical, or other hardship during the period in question.
- The candidate must be untenured (or equivalent).
- The deadline for the Early Career Award is December 12, 2024.
The following materials should be submitted for consideration to
- The first three items should be combined into a single PDF and emailed to the email address above.
- The successful candidate must attend the 2025 conference and be prepared to give a 20-minute presentation.
Decision will be announced on February 10, 2025.
Past Winners
2024 – Justin Minue Kim
2023 – Oriel FeldmanHall
2022 – Jon Freeman
2021 – Catherine Hartley
2020 – Emily Falk
2019 – Jamil Zaki
2018 – Leah Somerville
2025 Innovation Award
The SANS Innovation Award recognizes a particular article authored by a SANS member and published in a scholarly outlet that makes a contribution likely to generate the discovery of new hypotheses, new phenomena, or new ways of thinking about the discipline of social and affective neuroscience. Any kind of innovative contribution (including developments of new theory or methods, including analytic methods; innovative applications of existing methods; and creative application of methods from other fields) is eligible. Contributions may be judged innovative and generative even before they have generated substantial empirical findings. The award selection will focus on a contribution’s conceptual innovation and potential to motivate new research and further conceptual investigation.
SANS IA Rubric 2025
2025 Nomination Process
Nominations for the Innovation Award will be evaluated by a committee led by the Vice President and up to two Directors-at-Large. Applications are due by December 12, 2024.
- Finalists will be announced to the society before the annual meeting, where electronic voting will determine the winner.
- The award is intended for all authors but should be accepted at the Conference by the first author.
- Current members of the executive committee are ineligible to receive the award. If a member of the award committee is an author of any nominated paper, they will recuse themselves and be replaced with another executive committee member.
- Nominations include the article and a 200-word statement specifying the nature and impact (or likely impact) of the article’s contribution sent to .
- Individuals may self-nominate or be nominated by others.
- The Award Nomination Panel also reserves the right to nominate potential recipients for this award.
- Articles must have been published in 2023 or 2024.
- At least one of the authors must currently be a member in good standing (at the time the selection occurs).
- Award is given with no requirement to attend the annual conference, however, nominees are encouraged to attend as the winner will be selected by vote and announced during the conference.
Past Winners
2023 – Lin, C., Keles, U. & Adolphs, R. Four dimensions characterize attributions from faces using a representative set of English trait words. Nat Commun 12, 5168 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25500-y
2022 – Lockwood, P., Apps, M. & Chang, S.W.C (2020). Is There a ‘Social’ Brain? Implementations and Algorithms. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(10), 802-813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.06.011
2021 – Dal Monte, O., Chu, C., Fagan, N.,and Chang, S (2020). Specialized medial prefrontal–amygdala coordination in other-regarding decision preference. Nature Neuroscience, 2020 April 23(4): 565-574.
2019 – FeldmanHall, O., Dunsmoor, J. E., Tompary, A., Hunter, L. E., Todorov, A., & Phelps, E. A. (2018). Stimulus generalization as a mechanism for learning to trust. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(7), E1690-E1697.
2018 – Parkinson, C., Kleinbaum, A.M. & Wheatley, T. (2017). Spontaneous neural encoding of social network position. Nature Human Behavior, 1(5), 0072.
2017 – Lockwood, Patricia L., Apps, M.A.J., Valton, V., Viding, E., Rosier, J.P. (2016). Neurocomputational mechanisms of prosocial learning and links to empathy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 9763-9768.
2017 – Stolier, Ryan M. & Freeman, J.B. Neural pattern similarity reveals the inherent intersection of social categories. Nature Neuroscience, 19, 795-797.
2016 – Jack, Rachael. E., , Garrod, O.G.B., Schyns, P.G. (2014) Dynamic facial expressions of emotion transmit an evolving hierarchy of signals over time. Current Biology, 24, 187-192.
2015 – Preston, Stephanie D. (2013). The origins of altruism in offspring care. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 1305-1341.
2014 – McKell Carter, R., Bowling, D. L., Reeck, C., & Huettel, S. A. (2012). A distinct role of the temporal-parietal junction in predicting socially guided decisions. Science, 337, 109-111.
2013 – Yarkoni, T., Poldrack, R. A., Nichols, T. E., Van Essen, D. C., & Wager, T. D. (2011). Large-scale automated synthesis of human functional neuroimaging data. Nature Methods, 8, 665-670.