This year, Rigshospitalet is honouring Professor Russell A. Poldrack from Stanford University in the USA with the prestigious KFJ Award for 2024. The American professor leads the Center for Open and Reproducible Science at Stanford University and is receiving the award in recognition of his long-standing contributions to neuroscience, data sharing, and open science, as well as his extensive collaboration with researchers at Rigshospitalet.
Russell A. Poldrac expressed his gratitude for the award during a ceremony at Rigshospitalet. Photo: Jacob Gyldenløve Aaen
It was Gitte Moos Knudsen, professor at the Neurobiology Research Unit at Rigshospitalet, who nominated Russell A. Poldrack for the KFJ Award, which is given annually to the most outstanding foreign researchers who collaborate with Rigshospitalet.
- Russell A. Poldrack is one of the world's leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience and data analysis. He has contributed significantly to our understanding of how the brain makes decisions and, for example, plans, solves problems, or controls impulses. At the same time, his work on data structures and analyses has had enormous significance in ensuring robust and generalisable scientific results," says Gitte Moos Knudsen.
On receiving the award, Russell A. Poldrack says:
- It's a great honor for me to win this award. I have long cherished my collaborations with my colleagues in Copenhagen, and to be honored by them in this way is absolutely thrilling. The award will support the further development of our collaboration, which will improve the accessibility of neuroscience data that can help accelerate discoveries regarding brain function and brain diseases, says Russell A. Poldrack.
Standardised Data on Brain Scans
The collaboration between Russell A. Poldrack and Rigshospitalet researchers has been particularly fruitful in projects such as OpenNeuroPET, an initiative that promotes the scientific sharing of brain scan data. In this project, researchers from Rigshospitalet work closely with Russell A. Poldrack and his team at Stanford University. One of the key areas of this collaboration is the development of a platform to ensure standardised and reproducible data analyses across research centres, which has significant potential to strengthen both Danish and international neuroscience research.
The American professor's contributions extend far beyond neuroscience and have set new standards for how research data can be shared and analysed globally. His research group has, among other things, developed several open-source tools that are widely used in scientific communities around the world. Russell A. Poldrack himself explains the value of the collaboration with Rigshospitalet:
- Our collaboration has focused on making neuroscience data more accessible and more useful. My colleagues from Rigshospitalet bring expertise in the processing and sharing of positron emission tomography (PET) data, which complements the expertise of my group in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Together we have worked to develop a new scheme for the organization of shared PET data, as part of the Brain Imaging Data Structure project. We are also working together to create new open-source analysis tools that will help process PET data in a more robust and reproducible way. Together I hope that we can bring a new level of transparency and rigor to neuroscience research that uses these brain imaging methods, says Russell A. Poldrack.
He has been an important partner in several major projects at Rigshospitalet, including an international project on reliable predictions of brain dynamics in depression. His expertise in AI tools for analysing brain scans will also strengthen research efforts at Rigshospitalet, including collaborations with several of the hospital's research centres and professors.
The award was presented to Russell A. Poldrack at a ceremony at Rigshospitalet on 7 November 2024.
Previous recipients of the KFJ Award
2023: Kaj Blennow, Professor at Gothenburg University og leader of Clinical Neuochemistry Lab at Salgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden.
2022: Mark Febbraio, professor and head of the Cellular & Molecular Metabolism Laboratory within Drug Discovery Biology at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
2021: Elie Azoulay, Professor at the Paris Diderot University and head of the critical care department at St. Louis Hospital in Paris, France.
2020: John McMurray, Professor at University of Glasgow, Scotland.
2019: Kári Stefánsson, professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland, CEO and founder of deCODE genetics.
2018: Jorma Toppari, professor in physiology at Turku University, Finland.
2017: Tom Eirik Mollnes, senior researcher at Nordland Sykehus in Bodø, Norway, professor in immunology at Oslo and Tromsø universities and professor at the Centre of Molecular Inflammation Research (CEMIR) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
2016: John E. Dick, professor and senior researcher at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre at the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada.
2015: John C. Burnett, professor and cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
2014: Mary Relling, pharmacist at the Pharmaceutical Department, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
2013: Søren Bentzen, professor in epidemiology and radiotherapy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA
2012: Tomas Olsson, professor in neurology at the Center for Molecular Medicine and the Department of Neurology at Karolinska Sjukhuset in Stockholm, Sweden
2011: Bruce R. Rosen, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA.