[5] In 2024 she was awarded a Kavli Prize in neuroscience along with Nancy Kanwisher and Winrich Freiwald for the discovery and study of specific areas in the brain that perform facial recognition.

[7] After joining UC Berkeley in 2021, her current research[8] explores visual perception in primates in order to understand how the brain creates our sense of reality.

[12] In 2004 she received the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award from the Humboldt Foundation, which allowed her to start her own independent research group at the University of Bremen in Germany from 2004 to 2008.

[18][19][20] Tsao and her lab have continued to make significant advances in understanding the specific facial features that cause neurons in these face patches to be activated.

[25] Doris Tsao has authored or co-authored numerous influential publications in the field of neuroscience, particularly in the areas of visual perception and the neural basis of cognition.

Tsao and her colleagues identified "face patches" in the brains of macaque monkeys, providing crucial insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the facial recognition system.

These publications represent just a fraction of Tsao's extensive body of work, which has significantly advanced our understanding of the neural basis of visual perception and cognition.