Posted on August 21, 2026 in Neuroscience Initiative
The CUNY ASRC Neuroscience Initiative director receives the 2026 Landis Award, recognizing a career distinguished by scientific innovation and developing the next generation of researchers.
Patrizia Casaccia, founding director of the Neuroscience Initiative at the CUNY ASRC and Einstein Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at the CUNY Graduate Center, has received the 2026 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship in Neuroscience, adding a third major NINDS honor to a career built on ambitious science and mentorship.
The $100,000 Landis prize recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to training and career development in neuroscience. It joins two earlier NINDS honors for Casaccia: a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, received in 2012, and a Research Program Award, or R35, received in 2019.
“Receiving the Landis Award is especially meaningful to me because mentoring has always been inseparable from my work as a scientist,” Casaccia said. “Scientific discoveries are exciting, but one of the greatest rewards of an academic career is helping young researchers gain confidence, become independent thinkers and find the path where they can make their own contributions.”
Together, the three awards reflect both sides of Casaccia’s career.
She is known for her research on glial cells, including the cells that produce myelin (the protective coating around nerve fibers), and for studying how environmental factors can influence brain health and neurological disease. Her trainees, meanwhile, have gone on to careers across universities, medicine, biotechnology, and industry. Several have earned competitive NINDS predoctoral fellowships, including recent alumnus Sami Sauma (Ph.D. ’23, Biology), whose work on the metabolism of myelin-forming cells contributed to research published this year in Nature Neuroscience.
“As my doctoral mentor, Patrizia gave me both the tools and the discipline for thorough science,” said Sauma, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zurich’s Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology. “She fostered my growth in neurobiology, and she welcomed my enthusiasm for new approaches and perspectives rather than steering me back toward safer ground. That combination of rigor and openness is rare. Her dedication helped me secure a top postdoctoral appointment, and it gave me a clear sense of what a successful trajectory in academic science requires.”
Casaccia, who has dedicated her career to supporting the development of young scientists toward independence, describes mentorship as an individualized process that changes as researchers advance. With students, that can mean close work on reading scientific literature, designing experiments and writing. With senior postdocs and junior faculty, conversations broaden to managing a lab, building budgets, teaching, leadership, and career strategy.
“Patrizia has always made mentorship deeply personal,” said Jia Liu, research associate professor in the Neuroscience Initiative and director of the CUNY ASRC Epigenetics Facility. “My current research is rooted in the postdoctoral work I pursued in her lab, and she provided me with unwavering support during my transition to independence. Her mentorship extends beyond the lab, demonstrating a level of caring and understanding that, at times, felt like that of a trusted friend, while always maintaining a clear focus on my professional growth.”
Casaccia has also helped build mentorship structures beyond her own lab, including committees for junior faculty and efforts to strengthen postdoctoral training and mentoring practices across CUNY.
“She has been a great mentor throughout my Ph.D. training, and her advice extended far beyond the next experiment,” said David Dansu (Ph.D. ’23, Biochemistry), now a postdoctoral fellow at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. “She recognized my potential despite my limited hands-on bench experience and gave me the opportunity to train in her lab. Her guidance encouraged me to think carefully about my scientific trajectory and appreciate that a research career can take many forms and follow many different paths.”
For Casaccia, mentorship does not end when a trainee leaves the lab. “One of the greatest rewards of mentoring is remaining connected with former trainees and celebrating their accomplishments,” she said of her approach.
The Landis Award recognizes that long-term commitment alongside the scientific accomplishments NINDS has honored throughout her career.