Caltech Assistant Professor of Biology Yuki Oka Receives McKnight Award

Yuki Oka, assistant professor of biology, has been named one of six recipients of the 2016 McKnight Scholars Award. The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience awards $75,000 per year for three years to support young scientists who are establishing their own laboratories and research centers. The award is only available to researchers in the first four years of a tenure-track faculty position.

“A McKnight Scholar Award is one of the most prestigious early-career honors that a young neuroscientist can receive,” said Anthony Movshon, chair of the awards committee and professor at New York University, in a press release. “This year’s Scholars are a superbly talented group, with as much promise as any selected in the past. … Their work will help us to understand the brain’s function in health and in disease, and will shape the neuroscience of the future.”

Oka studies the neural mechanisms controlling thirst. These mechanisms help the body maintain a healthy balance of water and salt. He is attempting to isolate exactly which circuits in the brain regulate thirst and to determine how those circuits are triggered by external signals. Understanding these key brain functions may lead to new treatments for appetite-related disorders.

The McKnight Foundation of Minneapolis, Minnesota has supported neuroscience research since 1977. It created the Endowment Fund in 1986 in honor of William L. McKnight, an early leader of the 3M Company who had a personal interest in neurological diseases and wanted his legacy to help find cures. Previous awardees from Caltech include Athanossios Siapas, professor of computation and neural systems, and Kai Zinn, professor of biology.