Monday, May 19, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 pm, Talk Room 2

The 25th anniversary VSS Lifetime Achievement Award celebrates Tatiana (Tania) Pasternak’s exceptional contributions to vision science over her life, recognizing her compelling research achievements, intellectual leadership, and dedicated, deep service to the scientific community.

Tatiana (Tania) Pasternak

Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience, University of Rochester, Scientific Review Officer at the US National Institutes of Health

Tania is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester (NY, USA), and she serves as Scientific Review Officer at the National Institutes of Health (USA). She first came to the USA on a NATO fellowship to work with Dr. William Hodos at the University of Maryland, while completing her graduate work at the Neurophysiological Institute, Copenhagen University (Denmark). After earning her PhD in Behavioral Physiology from Copenhagen University, she carried out her postdoctoral research under the guidance of Dr. John Lott Brown at the University of Rochester, in the Center for Visual Science, before assuming a faculty position at Rochester.

Tania has been at the forefront of almost every major development in visual neuroscience since the 1980s, her exceptional technical skills and scientific insight enabling her to carry out challenging experiments in both psychophysics and animal neurophysiology, making crucial contributions to the understanding of the neural underpinnings of motion perception, attention and memory, amongst other core visual functions.

Tania has been a powerful mentor and inspiring role model, particularly for women in science. At the University of Rochester, she directed the graduate course on integrative neuroscience for over two decades, helping to launch many successful careers that we so admire now. She has deployed her seemingly boundless energy in serving the scientific community through numerous editorial roles and national grant review panels, providing an important voice of judgment and reason through turbulent periods of funding regime changes. In her current role as Scientific Review Officer at the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Tania’s experience and wisdom lend important ballast to initiatives in visual and cognitive neuroscience.

Tania has also played pivotal roles in the organization and management of major scientific societies that bind us all, including the Society for Neuroscience, ARVO, and, of course, VSS. Tania joined the first Board of Directors of VSS in 2002, after its founding in 2001 by Ken Nakayama and Tom Sanocki, and Tania not only continued to serve on the Board until 2008, but also was President of VSS for the 2006 and 2007 meetings. Two years as President shows remarkable fortitude and dedication.

For these immense and sustained contributions to vision science, in both fundamental understanding and practice, over a long and productive career, we are privileged to honor Tania Pasternak with the 25th anniversary VSS Lifetime Achievement Award.