The Simons Society of Fellows Welcomes Senior Fellows William Bialek and Michael Weinstein
The Simons Society of Fellows is pleased to announce that William Bialek and Michael Weinstein have joined the society as Senior Fellows. This prestigious honor is given in recognition of their considerable achievements in the fields of physics and applied mathematics as well as their years of distinguished service as educators and mentors to younger generations of researchers.
William Bialek is the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor in Physics at Princeton University. He holds an additional appointment as Visiting Presidential Professor of Physics at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, where he helped launch CUNY’s Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences. Bialek’s wide-ranging work investigates whether there are theoretical principles that have broad power and generality across the physical sciences while also applying to the complexity and diversity of biological systems. He is especially interested in examples where living systems perform with a precision and reproducibility close to some fundamental limits. Bialek is the recipient of the 2013 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience, the 2018 Max Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics from the American Physical Society and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Michael I. Weinstein is professor of applied mathematics in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and professor of mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, where he has taught since 2004. His major research interests include partial differential equations and other models governing waves in classical and quantum systems, applied analysis, and waves in nonlinear, inhomogeneous and random media. Weinstein has served as a Simons Foundation Math + X Investigator since 2015. He is also a fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and the American Mathematical Society. He received the Martin Kruskal Prize from SIAM in 2018 for his work on nonlinear waves and coherent structures.
Founded in 2014, the Simons Society of Fellows is a community of scholars that encourages dialogue and collaboration among researchers across a wide range of disciplines. It organizes weekly dinners, annual retreats, alumni conferences and career development workshops to facilitate the exchange of ideas and interdisciplinary engagement. It also encourages its Fellows to participate in and attend regular lectures and conferences organized by the Simons Foundation.
The Simons Society of Fellows consists of two classes of members: Senior and Junior Fellows. Senior Fellows are distinguished scientists based in the New York City area who gather to discuss and support their research in a collegial, interdisciplinary format. Junior Fellows are outstanding early-career scientists who receive support from the foundation for up to three years to conduct independent research with no teaching obligations at a university in New York City.
