Catherine Dulac, whose research has revealed the neural circuits underlying instinctive behaviors such as mating, parenting, and aggression and transformed scientific understanding of their biological roots, has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize . Awarded annually by Rockefeller University, the prize is the preeminent international award recognizing outstanding women scientists.
Dulac, the Xander University Professor at Harvard University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, will be honored at a ceremony on campus on October 20. She will be presented with the award by Paula Zahn, a ten-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, television anchor, and executive producer whose distinguished career spans more than three decades at the forefront of broadcast news, including anchoring programs for ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, and CNN.
A pioneer of molecular neuroscience approaches to social behavior, Dulac uncovered the genes that encode the receptor proteins in the vomeronasal organ (VNO), which are triggered by the chemical signals between animals called pheromones. She then used the VNO to examine mating behavior in mice, overturning previous assumptions that the brain comes pre-wired as either male or female. She next found that the neural peptide galanin, produced by neurons in the hypothalamus’s medial preoptic area, form a regulatory hub necessary and sufficient for parenting behavior in both males and females— later uncovering separate pools of neurons that control different maternal and paternal cues such as the desire to groom pups and the tamping down of aggression.
“Catherine has made spectacular contributions to our understanding of mammalian pheromones, and their roles in sex-specific behaviors,” says Michael W. Young , selection committee chair and the Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor at Rockefeller. “She has also made striking discoveries about how the brain generates complex parenting behaviors.”
Dulac’s lab has also uncovered clusters of neurons in the hypothalamus that drive classic sickness behaviors such as seeking warmth and loss of appetite. Her lab also discovered two opposing neuron populations connected to loneliness. One fires during isolation to signal the need for company; the other after socializing to signal the need has been met. She is currently probing why bacterial and parasitic infections trigger opposite social responses in animals — avoidance versus hypersociality — and searching for the neural mechanisms behind the difference.
Dulac is an officer of the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian honor, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Paris and completed her postdoctoral training at Columbia University prior to joining the faculty at Harvard.
The Pearl Meister Greengard Prize was established by the late Paul Greengard , the Vincent Astor Professor at Rockefeller, and his wife, the sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard. Greengard donated his monetary share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Rockefeller and, in partnership with generous supporters, established an annual award to recognize outstanding women scientists. The prize, which includes a $100,000 honorarium, is named for Greengard’s mother, who died during his birth.
Visit this page to register for the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize ceremony and learn more about the award. The event is open to the public, but registration for attendees is encouraged.