Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement Award

Outstanding scientists in the field of psychoneuroendocrinology have received the most prestigious Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement Award for their contributions to our understanding of brain-body interactions. Note that the name for this award has been changed in 2020 (formerly named Lifetime Achievement Award). The 2021 award will be the first named after PNE pioneer, Bruce E. McEwen.

2023 ISPNE Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement Award

The International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology (ISPNE) has awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Awards for over 20 years to a distinguished line of outstanding scientists in the field of psychoneuroendocrinology, for their contributions to our understanding of brain-body interactions. 

The 2023 Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement Award will be given by the Society during its Annual Meeting that will take place in London, at the Royal Society of Medicine, on August 30th and 31st and September 1st, 2023.

All ISPNE members are invited to submit their nominations (name and a brief statement of support) via email with “Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement Award” as the subject line to Professor Carmine Pariante at the following e-mail address: [email protected]

The deadline for submissions has been extended from March 31, 2023 to April 15, 2023– please note that this is sooner than previous years.



2022 ISPNE Bruce McEwen Lifetime Achievement Award

Robert Sapolsky, PhD
John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neuroscience
Stanford University

Robert Sapolsky is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University, and a research associate at the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya.  Since the late 1970s, he has divided his time between lab work -- examining the mechanisms by which stress and glucocorticoids damage the nervous system, and the design of gene therapy strategies to protect neurons from stress -- and studies of wild baboons in the Serengeti in East Africa, examining the relationships among dominance rank, social affiliation, personality and stress-related disease.  His books include Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers (1994/2004), Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017), and Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (2023).



Previous Lifetime Achievement Awards

2021:  Ned Kalin
2020:  James Herman
2019:  Marian Joëls
2018:  Megan Gunnar
2015:  Charles Nemeroff 
2015:  Alan Schatzberg
2014:  Michael Meaney
2013:  David Spiegel
2012:  Dirk Hellhammer
2007:  Ron de Kloet
2006:  Wylie Vale
2005:  John Mason
2004:  George Chrousos
2003:  Mary Dallman
2002:  Arthur Prange
2001:  Etienne Baulieu
2001:  Bruce McEwen
2000:  George Fink
2000:  Seymour Levine