Formation | 1994 |
---|---|
Type | Private foundation |
Headquarters | New York City, U.S. |
President | David Spergel |
Key people |
|
Revenue (2021) | $267,780,782 [1] |
Expenses (2021) | $307,447,716 [1] |
Website | www |
The Simons Foundation is an American private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and Jim Simons with offices in New York City. [2] As one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 billion in 2022, [3] the foundation's mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and basic sciences. The foundation supports science by making grants to individual researchers and their projects.
In 2021, Marilyn Simons stepped down as president after 26 years at the helm, and astrophysicist David Spergel was appointed president. [4]
In 2016, the foundation launched the Flatiron Institute, its in-house multidisciplinary research institute focused on computational science. [5] The Flatiron Institute hosts centers for computational science in five areas:
The foundation makes grants in four program areas: [6] [7]
Among other programs, the Simons Foundation funds the Simons Investigators in MPS program [8] which provides a stable base of support for outstanding scientists, enabling them to undertake long-term study of fundamental questions. [9]
In 2012 the foundation launched a new funding model, the Simons Collaborations, which brings funded investigators — sometimes from different disciplines — together to work on an important scientific problem. To date, 25 Simons Collaborations have been launched by the foundation's Mathematics and Physical Sciences and Life Sciences divisions and by its neuroscience initiatives. [10]
As of December 2018, [update] the Simons Foundation is listed as a White House BRAIN Initiative Alliance Member. [11] The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) is working to understand the internal processes underlying cognition. [12]
In May 2022, the Simons Foundation partnered with Stony Brook University to boost diversity in STEM, with a $56 million gift. [13]
In April 2023, the Simons Foundation pledged $100 million to support “The New York Climate Exchange” (“The Exchange”) on Governors Island in New York City. The Exchange — a $700 million, 172-acre international center for developing and deploying dynamic solutions to the global climate crisis — is set to open in 2028. [14]
In June 2023, the Simons Foundation presented Stony Brook University with a $500 million unrestricted gift, which is one of the largest gifts ever made to a U.S. university. [15]
The Simons Foundation is a major supporter of Math for America, which has built a community of accomplished mathematics and science teachers who make a lasting impact in their schools, their communities, and the profession at large through collaboration and continued learning. [16] [17]
The foundation also funds two editorially independent online publications: Quanta Magazine and The Transmitter . Quanta reports on developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the basic life sciences. [18] The Transmitter provides news and analysis of advancements in neuroscience research and is the successor to Spectrum , a publication focused on autism research which originated as the News & Opinion section of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative website. [19] [20]
Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university on Long Island in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's two flagship institutions. Its campus consists of 213 buildings on over 1,454 acres of land in Suffolk County and it is the largest public university in the state of New York.
The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, California. It is widely regarded as a world leading mathematical center for collaborative research, drawing thousands of leading researchers from around the world each year.
Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.
Terrence Joseph Sejnowski is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretical and computational biology. He has performed pioneering research in neural networks and computational neuroscience.
David Gil Amaral is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, United States, and since 1998 has been the research director at the M.I.N.D. Institute, an affiliate of UC Davis, engaged in interdisciplinary research into the causes and treatment of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. Amaral joined the UC Davis faculty as a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the Center for Neuroscience and as an investigator at the California Regional Primate Research Center in 1991. Since 1995, he has been a professor of psychiatry in the UC Davis School of Medicine, with an appointment to the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.
James Harris Simons was an American hedge fund manager, investor, mathematician, and philanthropist. At the time of his death, Simons's net worth was estimated to be $31.4 billion, making him the 51st-richest person in the world. He was the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a quantitative hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York. He and his fund are known to be quantitative investors, using mathematical models and algorithms to make investment gains from market inefficiencies. Due to the long-term aggregate investment returns of Renaissance and its Medallion Fund, Simons was described as the "greatest investor on Wall Street," and more specifically "the most successful hedge fund manager of all time".
Mriganka Sur is an Indian neuroscientist. He is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a Visiting Faculty Member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and N.R. Narayana Murthy Distinguished Chair in Computational Brain Research at the Centre for Computational Brain Research, IIT Madras. He was on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2010 and has been serving as Jury Chair from 2018.
Dennis Parnell Sullivan is an American mathematician known for his work in algebraic topology, geometric topology, and dynamical systems. He holds the Albert Einstein Chair at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is a distinguished professor at Stony Brook University.
Gerald D. Fischbach is an American neuroscientist. He received his M.D. from the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University in 1965 before beginning his research career at the National Institutes of Health in 1966, where his research focused on the mechanisms of neuromuscular junctions. After his tenure at the National Institutes of Health, Fischbach was a professor at Harvard University Medical School from 1972 to 1981 and from 1990 to 1998 and the Washington University School of Medicine from 1981 to 1990. In 1998, he was named the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke before becoming the Vice President and Dean of the Health and Biomedical Sciences, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Columbia University from 2001 to 2006. Gerald Fischbach currently serves as the scientific director overseeing the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. Throughout Fischbach's career, much of his research has focused on the formation and function of the neuromuscular junction, which stemmed from his innovative use of cell culture to study synaptic mechanisms.
The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics is a center for theoretical physics and mathematics at Stony Brook University in New York. The focus of the center is mathematical physics and the interface of geometry and physics. It was founded in 2007 by a gift from the James and Marilyn Simons Foundation. The center's current director is physicist Luis Álvarez-Gaumé.
Nancy Jane Kopell is an American mathematician and professor at Boston University. She is co-director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet). She organized and directs the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative (CRC). Kopell received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1963 and her Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1967. She held visiting positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France (1970), MIT, and the California Institute of Technology (1976).
Henry B. Laufer is an American hedge fund manager, investor, mathematician, and philanthropist. He served as the Vice President of Research at Renaissance Technologies.
The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, or SFARI for short, is a research program established in 2005 by the Simons Foundation, which focuses on all aspects of autism research. Its director is Kelsey Martin. The organization has funded more than $200 million in autism research to 150 different investigators since 2007. The awards they give out include Bridge to Independence Awards, Pilot Awards, Research Awards, and Explorer Awards. One specific type of research they specialize in is mouse models of autism, which they are trying to make more available in cooperation with the Jackson Laboratory.
The Bernstein Network is a research network in the field of computational neuroscience; this field brings together experimental approaches in neurobiology with theoretical models and computer simulations. It unites different scientific disciplines, such as physics, biology, mathematics, medical science, psychology, computer science, engineering and philosophy in the endeavor to understand how the brain functions. The close combination of neurobiological experiments with theoretical models and computer simulations allows scientists of the Bernstein Network to pursue innovative approaches with regard to one of the most complex structures nature has created in the course of evolution: the natural brain.
Paul Thompson is a British-American neuroscientist, and a professor of neurology at the Imaging Genetics Center at the University of Southern California. Thompson obtained a bachelor's degree in Greek and Latin languages and mathematics from Oxford University. He also earned a master's degree in mathematics from Oxford and a PhD degree in neuroscience from University of California, Los Angeles.
The New York Genome Center (NYGC) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit academic research institution in New York, New York. It serves as a multi-institutional collaborative hub focused on the advancement of genomic science and its application to drive novel biomedical discoveries. NYGC's areas of focus include the development of computational and experimental genomic methods and disease-focused research to better understand the genetic basis of cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and neuropsychiatric disease. In 2020, the NYGC also has directed its expertise to COVID-19 genomics research.
The Flatiron Institute is an American internal research division of the Simons Foundation, launched in 2016. It comprises five centers for computational science: the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA); the Center for Computational Biology (CCB); the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ); the Center for Computational Mathematics (CCM); and the Center for Computational Neuroscience (CCN). It also has a group called the Scientific Computing Core (SCC). The institute takes its name from the Flatiron District in New York City where it is based.
Carina Curto is an American mathematician, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a Sloan Research Fellow. She is known for her work on mathematical neuroscience, including the applications of mathematics in both theoretical and computational neuroscience. Her recent work is funded by the BRAIN Initiative. She is an associate editor at SIAGA, a SIAM journal on applied algebra and geometry and on the editorial board at Physical Review Research.
Vijay Balasubramanian is a theoretical physicist and the Cathy and Marc Lasry Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He has conducted research in string theory, quantum field theory, and biophysics. He has also worked on problems in statistical inference and machine learning.
The Transmitter is an online publication dedicated to neuroscience research news and commentary. Aimed at professionals from across the neuroscience discipline, the website is an editorially-independent publication of the Simons Foundation.