The Nobel Prize Week Is Kicking Off in Stockholm with the Medicine Award – WTOP News
Karl Deisseroth shared the prize with two German researchers for optogenetics, a method that uses light and genes to control brain cells.
- Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, won the Nobel Prize for medicine early Monday for his work developing optogenetics, a field combining light and genes to control neurons in living brains.
- Deisseroth shared the prize with researchers Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel in Germany for their collaborative development of optogenetics, a breakthrough that switches neurons on and off using light and genetic techniques.
- After receiving the call from the Nobel Assembly in Stockholm, Deisseroth celebrated at his Stanford home while his wife, Dr. Michelle Monje-Deisseroth, joined him as Stanford University staff coordinated remote interviews throughout the night.
- When media attention intensified, Deisseroth paused the interviews to request a break starting at 6:30 a.m. because his children needed school lunches before leaving for the day.
- Deisseroth emphasized his dual identity, saying "For me, I'm a physician-scientist. I care about patients and my patients who have autism, who have depression." He added he cares about understanding how the brain works.
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The master of bioengineering, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was awarded along with Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel with the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2026 for the discoveries that gave way to optogenetics. Karl Deisseroth, when he heard the news, decided to tell his family and the first thing he did was to share it with his children.
The scientist received the award for his work in optogenetics, which aims to use light in treatment in people with autism and schizophrenia.
The week of Nobel Prize winners 2026 is scheduled from 5 to 12 October, the institutions in charge will announce the winners of the 2026 edition of the different categories, with a break in the end...
After receiving the call from Stockholm, Karl Deisseroth woke up his daughters Sofia, 10 years old, and Emma, 13 years old, to announce to them the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In the video published by Stanford University, the two girls, still in pajamas, react with joy and embrace their father. Shortly after finishing their first connections with the press, the scientist returned to everyday life preparing lunch to be taken to school.
After it was announced that he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, Dr. Carl Deisseroth spent the first few hours talking on the phone and receiving congratulations. But he soon had to take a break for a much more mundane task: preparing school lunches for his children who were sleeping at home in Stanford while their father spoke to reporters and well-wishers into the night.
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