Awards

SANS is pleased to recognize our members with four key awards each year.

2024 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 $599 USD) and complimentary registration to the 2024 conference in Toronto.
SANS DSA Rubric 2024

2024 Nomination Process

  • SANS Board to invite nominations and self-nominations for this honor.
  • The awardee is selected by a committee chaired by the SANS President.
  • The awardee must be an active member of the society
  • The awardee must attend the upcoming conference as they will be invited to give a keynote presentation.
  • The deadline for the Distinguished Scholar Award is January 16, 2024.
  • The following materials should be submitted for consideration to (please include “DSA” and the name of the candidate in the subject line:
    • 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, and outlines their current research
    • The candidates CV
Past Winners

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

2024 Mid-Career Award

As a way to better recognize our membership for their work, we have introduced the Mid-Career Award for 2024. The award recognizes an mid-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 prize, complimentary registration to the 2024 conference in Toronto, and be invited to give a short talk at the annual meeting.
SANS MCA Rubric 2024

2024 Nomination Process

Past Winners

2024 – ________

 

2024 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 prize, complimentary registration to the 2024 conference in Toronto, and be invited to give a short talk at the annual meeting.
SANS ECA Rubric 2024

2024 Nomination Process

Past Winners

2023 – Oriel FeldmanHall

2022 – Jon Freeman

2021 – Catherine Hartley

2020 – Emily Falk

2019 – Jamil Zaki

2018 – Leah Somerville

2024 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 2024

2024 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 January 16, 2024.
  • Finalists will be announced to the society before the annual meeting, where electronic voting will determine the winner.
  • The recipient of the award is 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 on 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 2022 or 2023.
  • At least one of the authors must be a current member of SANS 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

2023Lin, 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.