Mackenzie and Alexander Mathis Awarded 2024 Robert Bing Prize
Professors Mackenzie and Alexander Mathis. Credits: SNSF (M. Mathis), Wikimedia Commons (A. Mathis)
EPFL Professors Mackenzie and Alexander Mathis have been honored with the 2024 Robert Bing Prize by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) for their groundbreaking contributions to the intersection of neuroscience and machine learning.
The Robert Bing Prize, bestowed every two years by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS), was founded by a generous bequest of Basel neurologist Robert Bing (1878 – 1956). In accordance with the donor’s will, the Prize is awarded “to researchers who have done outstanding work to improve the recognition, treatment and cure of diseases of the nervous system.” The Bing Prize, valued at CHF 30,000, underscores the recipients’ innovative achievements in addressing complex neurological challenges.
This year, the Bing Prize has been awarded to three neuroscientists, among whom are Mackenzie Mathis and Alexander Mathis at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences (Brain Mind Institute).
Mackenzie Mathis, who holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair of Integrative Neuroscience at EPFL, researches sensorimotor learning and adaptive intelligence, using systems neuroscience and deep learning to advance understanding of motor control and develop potential therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.
Alexander Mathis studies the neural mechanisms of proprioception and motor control, combining computational models and machine learning to decode how the brain generates complex behaviors. He also devlops methods for behavioral anlaysis.
Together, they have developed DeepLabCut, which is an open-source tool that enables life scientists to develop tailored deep neural networks to track animals non-invasively in videos. This was the first tool that enabled this, and it was first published in 2018 in Nature Neuroscience. DeepLabCut is regarded as a breakthrough in life sciences and is used in over 1,000 leading companies, Institutes and Universities around the world with over 750,000 downloads of the software to date.
Since joining EPFL in 2020 they have further developed this tool to run in real-time to enable closed-loop experiments (eLife, 2020), re-identify animals in videos and track multiple animals in complex scenes (Nature Methods 2022), and provide deep learning models that work broadly across conditions (Nature Communications 2024).
Furthermore, they have developed state of the art methods for pose estimation in crowded scenes (International Conference of Computer Vision 2023). They actively use these tools to study proprioception and motor adaptation (bioRxiv).
Alongside Mackenzie and Alexander Mathis, Professor Susanne Wegener, a senior physician and associate professor at the University of Zurich, has also received the 2024 Robert Bing Prize for her groundbreaking translational work on stroke pathophysiology and treatment. Her research, which spans both basic and clinical approaches, aims to improve therapeutic outcomes for stroke patients.