Spotlight
Technology Networks features Dr. Li Ye, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute and a 2026 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist, whose research explores how the brain and body regulate energy use. His team has found that fat tissue communicates with the brain to help maintain a set point for body weight and energy balance. Combining imaging, circuit mapping, and molecular screening, his lab investigates pathways that could inform new treatments for obesity, diabetes, and neurological diseases. Ye hopes to develop approaches that support sustained weight management by targeting energy expenditure or the body’s weight set point rather than suppressing appetite. Reflecting on his recognition, he said, “It is the community of scientists and peers that the Blavatnik Awards bring together that makes me particularly proud of this recognition.” He also emphasizes the Awards’ role in connecting researchers across physics, chemistry, and the life sciences, creating opportunities for new conversations across disciplines.
Supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition Punk to Pop will explore the connections between music, art, and fashion from 1972 to 1985. Bringing together around 300 objects across three acts, it will trace musical movements and subcultures from glam rock and disco to punk, goth, and the new romantics. Highlights include previously unseen stage costumes worn by George Michael, handwritten lyrics by Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, and Mick Jones’s first electric guitar. Theatrical staging and an immersive headset experience will accompany displays of fashion, photography, music videos, and design. The exhibition will examine how artists responded to austerity and political turbulence, and how music provided a space for experimentation and self-expression. Punk to Pop will run from March 13, 2027, to January 2, 2028.
In a conversation with Jonny Gould, Professor Zvi Gitelman of the University of Michigan highlights the Blavatnik Archive’s role in preserving Jewish wartime experiences. Founded by Len Blavatnik in 2005, the Archive supports the study of twentieth-century Jewish and world history, with a particular focus on the two world wars and Soviet Russia. Between 2006 and 2014, its interviewers filmed nearly 1,200 Jewish Red Army veterans and former partisans across eleven countries. The collection includes more than 1,500 hours of testimony, transcribed and translated into English, alongside photographs, letters, diaries, and other personal records. Gitelman explains how these testimonies preserve experiences often excluded from official Soviet accounts, conveying emotions and perspectives that written documents alone cannot capture. While acknowledging the limitations of memory, he emphasizes the value of these professionally recorded interviews, made before the rise of AI, amid growing concerns about misinformation and historical distortion.
Technology Networks highlights the research of Dr. Erin S. Calipari, a Vanderbilt University professor and 2026 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Finalist. Her team’s experiments suggest that dopamine signals how attention-grabbing an experience is, rather than reward alone. Observations that dopamine also increases in response to unpleasant and unfamiliar stimuli prompted the researchers to explore its broader role in learning. Their findings suggest that dopamine helps the brain determine which experiences deserve attention, influencing how quickly it learns and helping it filter out irrelevant information. This perspective could inform future research into addiction and psychiatric disorders, although its implications for treatment require further investigation. Calipari also reflects on how recognition through the Blavatnik Awards provides opportunities to learn from researchers across disciplines and consider new directions for her work.
Providing many of the world's best researchers, scientists, and universities with support, and funding to discover breakthroughs that solve humankind's greatest challenges.
The Foundation contributes to renowned institutions that showcase the breadth of arts and culture, including performance, exhibition and education.
The Blavatnik Archive is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to preserving and disseminating materials that contribute to the study of 20th-century Jewish and world history, with a special emphasis on World War I, World War II, and Soviet Russia.
