Simons Society of Fellows: People

Joy Bergelson is the Dorothy Schiff Professor of Genomics in the Department of Biology at NYU. Research in her laboratory straddles the ecology and evolution of species interactions, as she investigates the coevolutionary interactions between plants and their pathogens. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Science, the American Society of Arts and Sciences and the American Society for the Advancement of Science.

William Bialek serves as the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor in Physics at Princeton University, where he joined the faculty in 2001. His connection to the CUNY Graduate Center began as Visiting Presidential Professor of Physics in 2009 and continues as a Visiting Research Scholar. His work centers on discovering if there are theoretical principles that have the power and generality that we expect in physics, yet encompass the complexity and diversity of life’s most beautiful phenomena.

Paul Chaikin is a Silver Professor of Physics at NYU, where he helped found the Center for Soft Matter Research. His more recent research centers on photonic non-crystals, artificial active matter, colloids, self-assembly, self-replication, DNA nanotechnology, topological defects on curved surfaces and quantifying order in nonequilibrium phenomena. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and a Fellow of the AAA&S, the APS and the Institute of Physics (London).

E. Jane Hubbard is a Senior Fellow with the Simons Society of Fellows and a professor of cell biology and of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. In her lab at NYU, Hubbard identified genes that when mutant cause germline tumors. For the last 10 years, her lab has focused on how animal physiology interfaces with signal transduction mechanisms to regulate germline stem cells in C. elegans.

Carol Mason investigates visual system development. Her work has revealed molecular signals for the differentiation and guidance of retinal ganglion cells during the formation of the circuit for binocular vision.

John Morgan is a professor of mathematics and founding director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University.

J. Anthony Movshon studies vision and visual perception, using a multidisciplinary approach that combines biology, behavior and theory.

Christos Papadimitriou is the Donovan Family Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the Donald E. Knuth Prize, the Gödel Prize, the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IEEE Computer Society Women of ENIAC Computer Pioneer Award, the John von Neumann Theory Prize, the IEEE SC Charles Babbage Award and the Harvey Prize from Technion.

Michael 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. He studies partial differential equations and other models governing waves in classical and quantum systems, with a recent focus on quantum materials.