Simons Foundation

Last updated

Simons Foundation
Formation1994
Type Private foundation
HeadquartersNew York City, U.S.
President
David Spergel
Key people
  • Marlow Kee
  • Marion Greenup
  • Euan Robertson
Revenue (2021)
$267,780,782 [1]
Expenses (2021)$307,447,716 [1]
Website www.simonsfoundation.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

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 the basic sciences. The foundation supports science by making grants to individual researchers and their projects.

Contents

In 2021, Marilyn Simons stepped down as president after 26 years at the helm, and astrophysicist David Spergel was appointed president. [4]

The Flatiron Institute

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:

Funding areas

The foundation makes grants in four program areas: [6] [7]

Simons Investigators awardees

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]

Simons Collaborations

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]

White House BRAIN Initiative Alliance membership

As of December 2018, 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]

Major gifts

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]

Supported institutes

Philanthro-journalism

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]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stony Brook University</span> Public university in Stony Brook, New York

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute</span> Research institute

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Baron-Cohen</span> British psychologist and author

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 Center for Neuroscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Simons (mathematician)</span> American mathematician and billionaire

James Harris Simons is an American hedge fund manager, investor, mathematician, and philanthropist. He is 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 is described as the "greatest investor on Wall Street", and more specifically "the most successful hedge fund manager of all time".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simons Center for Geometry and Physics</span> Research facility

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative</span> Research program

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 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.

Konrad Paul Körding is a German neuroscience professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Neuromatch. He is known for his contributions to the fields of motor control, neural data methods, and computational neuroscience, as well as his advocacy and contribution to open science and scientific rigor.

Laurence Frederick Abbott is an American theoretical neuroscientist, who is currently the William Bloor Professor of Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University, where he helped create the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. He is widely regarded as one of the leaders of theoretical neuroscience, and is coauthor, along with Peter Dayan, on the first comprehensive textbook on theoretical neuroscience, which is considered to be the standard text for students and researchers entering theoretical neuroscience. He helped invent the dynamic clamp method alongside Eve Marder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York Genome Center</span> Research organization in New York, United States

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 Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute is a non-profit institute founded by husband and wife Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo with the aim of supporting study into the human brain. In 2016 the couple committed US$1 billion to support the institute’s work, which focuses on research in three core areas – brain discovery, brain treatment and brain development. Towards that end, the institute supports interdisciplinary research concerning neuroscience, particularly research on brain mechanics, perception, and the impact of perception on behavior and well-being.

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's 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vijay Balasubramanian</span> Indian physicist

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.

References

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  3. "Simons Foundation Annual Reports". simonsfoundation.org.
  4. Karon, Paul (August 4, 2021). "The Simons Foundation Has A New President For the First Time In Its History". Inside Philanthropy.
  5. Chang, Kenneth (November 22, 2016). "James Simons's Foundation Starts New Institute for Computing, Big Data". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved January 20, 2017.
  6. "About Simons Foundation". Simons Foundation. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
  7. Callahan, David (August 15, 2017). "Inside the Simons Foundation: Big Philanthropy on the Frontiers of Science". Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved January 20, 2017.
  8. Simons Investigators, The Simons Foundation
  9. Simons Investigators Awardees, The Simons Foundation
  10. Simons Foundation Collaborations, The Simons Foundation
  11. "Participants". The BRAIN Initiative.
  12. "Simons Foundation". The BRAIN Initiative.
  13. Genn, Adina (May 11, 2022). "Simons Foundation SBU Aims to Boost Diversity in Stem". Long Island Business News.
  14. Fitzsimmons, Emma G.; Rubinstein, Dana (April 24, 2023). "Governors Island to Be Site of $700 Million Climate Campus". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved May 3, 2023.
  15. Stack, Liam (June 1, 2023). "Stony Brook University to Receive $500 Million, an Uncommonly Large Gift". The New York Times.
  16. Conklin, Richard. "Math For America Retains Talented Step Teachers Through Ecosystem of Trust". Education World. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  17. Thomas, Kei-Sygh (September 25, 2017). "15 Million to 1000 Top Math Science Teachers: How 'Math for America' Is Boosting STEM in Schools". The 74.
  18. "About Quanta". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  19. "About Spectrum". Spectrum News. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  20. Oransky, Ivan. "Welcome to The Transmitter". The Transmitter. Retrieved December 18, 2023.