New Testing Approach Diagnoses COVID-19 With Near-Perfect Accuracy

 Simons Foundation, February 2023

By inspecting the body’s immune response at a molecular level, a research team has developed a new way to test patients for COVID-19. Their method can potentially catch infections a matter of hours after exposure — far earlier than current COVID-19 tests can detect the virus — with near-perfect accuracy. The team describes their innovation, which is still in the early stages of development, in the February 27 issue of Cell Reports Methods.

Simons Foundation Scientists Named as Sloan Research Fellows

 Simons Foundation, February 2023

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded its prestigious research fellowship to four past and present Simons Foundation researchers. This year’s 125 fellowship recipients “represent the most promising scientific researchers working today,” according to the program’s website. “Their achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada.”

Simons Foundation Providing Support to Researchers in Ukraine

 Simons Foundation, January 2023

Scientists and mathematicians in Ukraine are continuing to conduct their research in the face of Russian bombings, failing power grids, internet disruptions and shattered windows. Today, the Simons Foundation is announcing its support of 405 Ukrainian mathematicians, biologists, physicists and chemists who remain in Ukraine. In total, the foundation will award more than $1.2 million in funding over 12 months.

Colin Hill and Oliver Philcox Among Winners of Buchalter Cosmology Prize

 Simons Foundation, January 2023

First place for this year’s Buchalter Cosmology Prize went to a paper co-authored by Colin Hill, until recently a Flatiron Institute associate research scientist and currently an assistant professor at Columbia University, and Junior Fellow of the Simons Society of Fellows Oliver Philcox, also of Columbia. The prize aims to “support the development of new theories, observations, or methods, that can help illuminate the puzzle of cosmic expansion from first principles.”

How the ‘Hell Planet’ Got So Hot

 Simons Foundation, December 2022

New research sheds light on how the “hell planet” got so devilishly hot and how other worlds might become too toasty for life. That rocky world, 55 Cnc e (nicknamed “Janssen”), orbits its star so closely that a year lasts just 18 hours, its surface is a giant lava ocean, and its interior may be chock-full of diamond.