Foundation’s Film About Jim Simons Named People’s Gold Winner at Telly Awards

 Simons Foundation, May 2025

The Telly Awards has named the foundation’s short film on the life and impact of Jim Simons as a People’s Telly Gold Winner in the general non-broadcast category and a silver winner in the general-biography category. The film, Jim Simons: Life and Philanthropy, chronicles Simons’ contributions and careers as a world-renowned mathematician, a trailblazing investor and a generous philanthropist.

Quantum Physicists Tune Material’s Property Using Energy of ‘Empty’ Space

 Simons Foundation, May 2025

In quantum physics, there’s no such thing as truly empty space. Even the barest of voids has quantum fluctuations, such as particles continually being created and quickly annihilated in empty space. In a new paper in Nature, a team of quantum physicists, including Flatiron Institute research scientist Nicolas Regnault, demonstrates a remarkable setup that can alter a material’s properties using vacuum field fluctuations. By tuning the interaction strength between vacuum fields and gases made up of electrons confined to two dimensions of movement, the team successfully altered the bulk behavior of the electrons using the vacuum field fluctuations.

Eternal Sky Film About Jim Simons and the Simons Observatory Now Streaming

 Simons Foundation, May 2025

“I’m fascinated with beginnings,” Simons Foundation co-founder Jim Simons says in Eternal Sky, a documentary now available for streaming. The film, directed by Debra Kellner, chronicles the lead-up to the construction of the Simons Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert. That project, designed and built by an international collaboration funded and brought together by Simons, aims to answer an enduring question: How did our universe come to be?

Watch: Jim Simons’ Life, Legacy and 5 Guiding Principles

 Simons Foundation, January 2025

Simons Foundation co-founder Jim Simons — an award-winning mathematician and widely regarded as the father of modern quantitative investing — led an extraordinary life, championing new ideas and ways of thinking as a mathematician, an investor and a philanthropist. On May 10, 2024, Simons died at the age of 86, leaving behind an unparalleled legacy.

New Datasets Will Train AI Models To Think Like Scientists

 Simons Foundation, December 2024

What can exploding stars teach us about how blood flows through an artery? Or swimming bacteria about how the ocean’s layers mix? A collaboration of researchers from universities, science philanthropies and national laboratories has reached an important milestone toward training artificial intelligence models to find and exploit transferable knowledge between seemingly disparate fields to drive scientific discovery.

Jill Pipher Joins Simons Foundation Board of Trustees

 Simons Foundation, November 2024

The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce that mathematician Jill Pipher has joined its board of trustees. Pipher is the Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor of Mathematics at Brown University, where she served as vice president for research from 2017 to 2024. She directed the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics from its founding in 2010 to 2016. Pipher previously served on the scientific advisory board for the Simons Foundation’s Mathematics & Physical Sciences division. From 2019 to 2021, she served as president of the American Mathematical Society.

First Class of New York State Science Policy Fellows Announced

 Simons Foundation, August 2024

The Rockefeller Institute of Government has announced the six scientists who will make up the inaugural cohort of the New York State Science Policy Fellowship. The program, funded by the Simons Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, gives fellows the opportunity to lend their technical and scientific expertise to state policymakers while gaining hands-on experience in state government.