John E. Lisman (1944 – October 20, 2017) was the Zalman Abraham Kekst Chair in Neuroscience at the Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
He completed graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a postdoctoral fellowship with Nobel laureate George Wald at Harvard University.
Scholars are selected based on their extraordinary contributions to vision research and receive a $5000 prize.
The Lisman award is endowed by a gift from the Lifelong Vision Foundation (previously: Midwest Cornea Research Foundation), a public charity established to promote and disseminate vision research that is aimed at preserving and restoring sight.
In 2018,[5][6] the award was renamed to honor the memory of John E. Lisman (1944-2017), a Brandeis alumnus (BS 1966) and faculty member from 1974 until his death[7] in 2017.