In 2005, PNAS established the annual Paper of the Year Prize to recognize recently published PNAS articles of scientific excellence and originality. The lab motto of Nick Cozzarelli, the late Editor-in-Chief, was “Blast ahead,” as he encouraged researchers to push the envelope of discovery. In his honor, the award was renamed the Cozzarelli Prize. The next awards will be presented at the PNAS Editorial Board Meeting on April 25, 2010, in Washington, DC.

Papers receiving the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize will be chosen from the 3,800 research articles published in PNAS in 2009 and selected to represent the six broadly defined classes under which the National Academy of Sciences is organized.

Please forward your nominations along with 1–3 sentences describing the work to the editorial office at pnas{at}nas.edu.

2008 Cozzarelli Prize Recipients

2008 Cozzarelli Prize Winners

The 2008 Cozzarelli prize winners were honored at the PNAS Editorial Board Meeting on April 26, 2009, in Washington, DC (from left to right): Katia Koelle, Yoshiro Nagao, Raymond Jeanloz, Marius Wernig, Daniel H. Kim, John J. Rossi, Karen McComb, Leanne Proops, and Albert-Laszlo Barabási.

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

"Fluid helium at conditions of giant planetary interiors" by Lars Stixrude and Raymond Jeanloz

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.


Biological Sciences

"MicroRNA-directed transcriptional gene silencing in mammalian cells" by Daniel H. Kim, Pål Sætrom, Ola Snøve, Jr., and John J. Rossi


Engineering and Applied Sciences

"The implications of human metabolic network topology for disease comorbidity" by D.-S. Lee, J. Park, K. A. Kay, N. A. Christakis, Z. N. Oltvai, and A.-L. Barabási

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.


Biomedical Sciences

"Neurons derived from reprogrammed fibroblasts functionally integrate into the fetal brain and improve symptoms of rats with Parkinson's disease" by Marius Wernig, Jian-Ping Zhao, Jan Pruszak, Eva Hedlund, Dongdong Fu, Frank Soldner, Vania Broccoli, Martha Constantine-Paton, Ole Isacson, and Rudolf Jaenisch


Behavioral and Social Sciences

"Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus)" by Leanne Proops, Karen McComb, and David Reby

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.


Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

"Decreases in dengue transmission may act to increase the incidence of dengue hemorrhagic fever" by Yoshiro Nagao and Katia Koelle

2007 Cozzarelli Prize Recipients

2007 Cozzarelli Prize Winners

The 2007 Cozzarelli prize winners were honored at the PNAS Editorial Board Meeting on April 27, 2008, in Washington, DC (from left to right): Serguei N. Skatchkov, Andreas Reichenbach, Tommy Cedervall, R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar, Jim Moore, Iseult Lynch, Kenneth A. Dawson, Monica Olvera de la Cruz, Graziano Vernizzi, Brian Spencer, Kristian Franze, and Sandra Díaz.

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

"Understanding the nanoparticle-protein corona using methods to quantify exchange rates and affinities of proteins for nanoparticles" by Tommy Cedervall, Iseult Lynch, Stina Lindman, Tord Berggrd, Eva Thulin, Hanna Nilsson, Kenneth A. Dawson, and Sara Linse

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.

              Listen to an interview with Kennneth A. Dawson


Biological Sciences

"Müller cells are living optical fibers in the vertebrate retina" by Kristian Franze, Jens Grosche, Serguei N. Skatchkov, Stefan Schinkinger, Christian Foja, Detlev Schild, Ortrud Uckermann, Kort Travis, Andreas Reichenbach, and Jochen Guck 

              Listen to an interview with Andreas Reichenbach

Engineering and Applied Sciences

"Faceting ionic shells into icosahedra via electrostatics" by Graziano Vernizzi and
Monica Olvera de la Cruz

              Listen to an interview with Monica Olvera de la Cruz

Biomedical Sciences

"Targeted delivery of proteins across the blood-brain barrier" by Brian J. Spencer and Inder M. Verma

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.

              Listen to an interview with Brian J. Spencer

Behavioral and Social Sciences

"Savanna chimpanzees use tools to harvest the underground storage organs of plants" by R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar, Jim Moore, and Travis Rayne Pickering

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.

              Listen to an interview with R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar

Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

"Incorporating plant functional diversity effects in ecosystem service assessments" by Sandra Díaz, Sandra Lavorel, Francesco de Bello, Fabien Quétier, Karl Grigulis, and T. Matthew Robson

              Listen to an interview with Sandra Díaz   

2006 Cozzarelli Prize Winners

The 2006 Cozzarelli prize winners were honored at the PNAS Editorial Board Meeting on April 29, 2007, in Washington, DC (from left to right): Francesco Mallamace, Sow-Hsin Chen, Pat Levitt, Christian J. Kastrup, Stefan W. Hell, Gerald Donnert, Jeffrey R. Vincent, and Maximilian Auffhammer.

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

"Modular chemical mechanism predicts spatiotemporal dynamics of initiation in the complex network of hemostasis" by Christian J. Kastrup, Matthew K. Runyon, Feng Shen, and Rustem F. Ismagilov

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.


Biological Sciences

"Macromolecular-scale resolution in biological fluorescence microscopy" by Gerald Donnert, Jan Keller, Rebecca Medda, M. Alexandra Andrei, Silvio O. Rizzoli, Reinhard Lührmann, Reinhard Jahn, Christian Eggeling, and Stefan W. Hell


Engineering and Applied Sciences

"The violation of the Stokes–Einstein relation in supercooled water" by Sow-Hsin Chen, Francesco Mallamace, Chung-Yuan Mou, Matteo Broccio, Carmelo Corsaro, Antonio Faraone, and Li Liu

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.


Biomedical Sciences

"A genetic variant that disrupts MET transcription is associated with autism" by Daniel B. Campbell, James S. Sutcliffe, Philip J. Ebert, Roberto Militerni, Carmela Bravaccio, Simona Trillo, Maurizio Elia, Cindy Schneider, Raun Melmed, Roberto Sacco, Antonio M. Persico, and Pat Levitt


Behavioral and Social Sciences

"Insights on linking forests, trees, and people from the air, on the ground, and in the laboratory" by Elinor Ostrom and Harini Nagendra

            A PNAS Profile of Elinor Ostrom is available.


Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

"Integrated model shows that atmospheric brown clouds and greenhouse gases have reduced rice harvests in India" by Maximilian Auffhammer, V. Ramanathan, and Jeffrey R. Vincent

            A commentary accompanying this article is available.

2005 Cozzarelli Prize Recipient                               Karl Mahlburg

PNAS’ first Paper of the Year prize was awarded to Karl Mahlburg, a doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for his paper "Partition congruences and the Andrews-Garvan-Dyson crank." Mahlburg's article solves a critical part of a mathematical puzzle in number theory. His paper was chosen from among 3,000 papers published in the journal in 2005. Mahlburg was recognized on April 23, 2006, at the PNAS Editorial Board meeting in Washington, DC. Mahlburg's paper, published in October 2005, is available online. An accompanying commentary on the paper is also available.