A new researcher at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro) has been awarded a 2018 Sloan Fellowship, one of the most prestigious research fellowships in North America.
Stuart Trenholm studies the neuronal circuits that make vision possible. His lab uses the latest circuit-tracing and brain imaging techniques to better understand how we perceive objects in our environment. He helped develop new techniques during his postdoctoral work to understand how the wiring of neuronal circuits drives unique response properties in the cortex. He has also made seminal contributions to research demonstrating the roles of horizontal cells in modulating feedback to photoreceptors. Ultimately, he aims to contribute to new therapies that can improve the quality of life of visually impaired people.
“Trenholm is an example of the talent level we have attracted to the institute over the past couple of years,” says Dr. Guy Rouleau, director of The Neuro. “His research will no doubt make an important contribution to our understanding of the human visual system.”
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has been awarding fellowships yearly since 1955, to honour early-career scholars in the United States and Canada whose achievements mark them as among the very best scientists working today. Past Sloan Research Fellows include renowned physicists Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann, and game theorist John Nash.
“Receiving a Sloan Research Fellowship is a great honour, especially considering the list of amazing scientists who have won it in the past,” says Trenholm, who became an assistant professor at The Neuro in 2017. “The fellowship will help me establish my lab at The Neuro, funding experiments that will reveal the neuronal processes that underlie vision.”
“The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best science has to offer,” says Sloan President Adam Falk, “The brightest minds, tackling the hardest problems, and succeeding brilliantly—Fellows are quite literally the future of twenty-first century science.”
Trenholm is one of two McGill researchers to receive a Sloan Fellowship this year, the other being Hamed Shateri Najafabadi, the lead researcher in McGill’s Computational and Statistical Genomics Lab. He is also the third faculty member at The Neuro to ever receive a Sloan Fellowship, the others being Peter McPherson and Christopher Pack. The Sloan Fellowship provides $65,000 per researcher over two years.
