US-based researchers win $1 million prize for their work on face recognition

LISBON, Portugal — Four researchers working in the United States are sharing a $1 million prize from a Portuguese foundation for their work on how the human brain distinguishes faces, shapes and colors.

Americans Margaret Livingstone of Harvard Medical School, Nancy Kanwisher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Doris Tsao of the University of California, Berkeley, and Germany’s Winrich Freiwald of Rockefeller University won the Champalimaud Foundation’s Vision Award 2024, a statement said Wednesday.

Their collective work has driven significant progress in the field of visual neuroscience, the statement said, bringing new understanding of facial recognition processes as well as new approaches to vision disorders.

Their research has paved the way for the treatment of such visual problems as dyslexia, and improves understanding of how to combat cognitive decline, including dementia, according to the foundation.