Schmidt Center Postdoctoral Fellow Dániel Barabási Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 List

The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is thrilled to announce that Postdoctoral Fellow Dániel Barabási has been inducted into the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2025 for Science. 

With more than 10,000 nominations each year, the Under 30 list, evaluated by Forbes editors and industry expert leaders, recognizes a total of 600 young innovators under the age of 30 from North America, within 20 different industries, who are creating meaningful change with business, culture, and entrepreneurship. The science candidates were evaluated by a panel of judges featuring Sara Seager, professor of physics at MIT; Luna Yu, cofounder and CEO of Genecis; Christina Smolke, cofounder and CEO of Antheia; and Randy Glein, cofounder and partner of DFJ Growth.

Dániel joined the Schmidt Center as a fellow in 2024, collaborating with Professors Xiao Wang and Jason Buenrostro. He holds a PhD from the Harvard Biophysics Graduate Program, where he was advised by Florian Engert (2024), and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Notre Dame, where he worked with Zoltán Toroczkai on distance-based network models of brain connectivity (2013-2017). 

By characterizing brain connectivity maps and combining them with high-throughput transcriptomics, Dániel looks to uncover the architectural building blocks of neural circuits, thereby understanding the brain’s maturation, wiring, and function. In time, he aims to apply these tools to study evolutionary differences in brain connectivity between species and investigate how stress dysregulates the brain, with the goal of informing therapeutic interventions.

See the full list of the Forbes 30 Under 30 scientists and the rest of the 2025 class in other categories.

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