Press & Media

September 2025: Dr. Basner earns the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award

In September 2025, Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MScEpi, the Director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry, was awarded the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This prestigious agency award was established in 1961 to recognize individual or team efforts that lead to a key scientific discovery, a fundamental contribution to a scientific field, or a significant enhancement of scientific understanding. Former recipients include multiple Nobel laureates.

Dr. Basner received the award for “exceptional research contributions related to characterizing and measuring the cognitive function of individuals in space and related environments”. With his Penn Psychiatry colleagues David Dinges and Ruben Gur, Dr. Basner developed a brief but comprehensive cognitive test battery for high-performing astronauts called Cognition that covers a range of cognitive domains. Dr. Basner and his research team demonstrated Cognition’s sensitivity to common spaceflight stressors in multiple space analog environments and on the International Space Station. Cognition has since emerged as NASA’s standard tool for assessing astronaut cognitive performance in research settings, but is also used in many terrestrial studies.