Karthik Shekhar, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering (CBE) at UC Berkeley, the John F. Heil Jr. Professor, and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, has been selected as the fifth recipient of the Philomathia Prize.
The annual prize is awarded to an early-career Berkeley faculty member, from any discipline, who demonstrates great distinction and promise in their academic field. It will be presented during the Philomathia Day symposium on November 5.
Established through a generous endowment gift from the Philomathia Foundation, the Philomathia Prize provides a monetary award of $200,000 for use at the recipient’s discretion over a three-year period. The awardee alternates between a STEM discipline and a social sciences or humanities discipline. Shekhar is the third College of Chemistry faculty member to receive the honor.
“Karthik is a uniquely creative and talented interdisciplinary scientist whose work integrates genomics, computation, and theory to uncover fundamental principles of neural organization, development, and evolution,” says the College of Chemistry’s Interim Dean and G. N. Lewis Professor Anne Baranger.
Shekhar, a chemical engineer and neuroscientist, receives the prize to advance research into the bioelectric basis of neural activity, a project that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic through conversations with his departmental colleague and co-investigator, Associate Professor Kranthi Mandadapu. Their collaboration has been central to shaping the scientific direction of the project and to the recruiting and mentoring of young trainees whose creativity and persistence have helped sustain it.
“It was very difficult for us to get any kind of funding,” recalls Shekhar. Despite having published initial studies investigating electrochemical dynamics during ion channel activity in biological membranes, their grant applications often fell into a gap between being judged as too ambitious for a new research direction or not extending enough from prior work. “That’s the irony of new, risky research,” says Shekhar.
“Before some essential ideas have fully taken shape, it can be hard to convince people that the questions are both fundamental and tractable.”
He is grateful for the support from the Philomathia Foundation.
“The Philomathia Foundation is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge through research and education. As both an exceptional scientist and teacher, Professor Shekhar shares this dedication, and we eagerly await insights from his team that will expand our understanding of bioelectricity’s role in brain function,” says Wilfred Chung, president of the Philomathia Foundation.
Shekhar, who joined Berkeley in January 2020, established his scientific reputation through pioneering work in neurogenomics that broadened our understanding of the diversity, development, and evolution of neurons in the retina and visual cortex. While this remains an active area of inquiry, the project supported by the Philomathia Prize will continue Shekhar and Mandadapu’s joint efforts to build a foundation of fundamental knowledge about how biological electricity works in the body at the microscopic scale.
Electrical signals propagate within and between neurons to trigger sensations that underpin our behavior and thoughts. “We know something about what elements give rise to it,” says Shekhar about bioelectricity, “but we don’t fully understand the mechanism of how you go from those microscopic elements to the full macroscopic response.” The long-term goal is to develop a theoretical microscopic framework that links the transport of ions such as sodium and potassium, the mechanics of biological membranes, and other physicochemical factors to explain emergent bioelectric phenomena and, ultimately, to predict new phenomena that can be tested experimentally.
Shekhar admits, “It’s still early stages, but we are already seeing examples of interesting emergent physics that will hopefully lead to interesting biology.” Anyone interested in learning more is welcome to attend the Philomathia Day symposium on November 5 about “Bioelectricity at the Interface: Molecules, Membranes, and Models.” The symposium will feature talks from early- and mid-career scientists exploring bioelectricity and membrane biology across scales, using experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches.
Shekhar is also distinguished in the classroom. He earned his department’s teaching award three times within five years and received the 2023 Donald Sterling Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the physical sciences. Instructing undergraduates about fluid dynamics, reaction kinetics, and thermodynamics helped instill Shekhar with the confidence to conduct his inquiry into bioelectricity. He also credits a supportive culture in CBE, as well as in the neuroscience and vision science communities on campus: “I could not have imagined any other place than Berkeley to do this research. As long as you are working on something intellectually interesting, as long as you’re doing technically rigorous work, you are given the freedom to pursue it.”
About the Philomathia Prize and the Philomathia Foundation
Established through a generous endowment gift from the Philomathia Foundation, the annual Philomathia Prize provides a monetary award of $200,000 for use at the recipient’s discretion over a three-year period. The Philomathia Prize competition is open to tenure-track assistant professors and recently tenured associate professors in any discipline. A committee of tenured Berkeley faculty selects the recipient. The honoree is expected to uphold the Philomathia Foundation’s vision of seeking innovative means to promote the betterment of humankind through a commitment to education and research. The nomination process for the next Philomathia Prize opens in October. For more information, visit: vpf.berkeley.edu/faculty-fellowships/philomathia-prize
Dedicated to improving the human condition through the support of innovative individuals and ideas, the Philomathia Foundation has been a generous philanthropic partner with UC Berkeley for more than two decades. It has provided significant gifts to build the East Asian Library and Tien Center for East Asian Studies, to establish the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute and the Advanced Bioimaging Center, and to support graduate student and postdoctoral fellows in the environmental sciences.