News Assistant

Lars Bildsten joins Simons Foundation board of trustees. The Simons Foundation welcomes astrophysicist Lars Bildsten to its board of trustees. As a board member, he will provide strategic vision, oversight and stewardship to support the foundation's mission to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. Bildsten is a theoretical astrophysicist and the director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also holds the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics. His research centers on the life and death of stars, with a particular focus on stellar structure, nuclear burning and the violent explosions that mark the end of a star's life. He previously held research and faculty positions at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. Since becoming director of KITP in 2012, Bildsten has overseen one of the most vibrant international hubs for scientific collaboration, fostering breakthroughs across the spectrum of theoretical physics. He is a winner of the Bruno Rossi Prize, the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics and the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as a fellow of the American Physical Society. Bildsten joins fellow Simons Foundation trustees Cori Bargmann, a neurobiologist and geneticist; physician-scientist Emery Brown; mathematician and physicist Ingrid Daubechies; mathematical physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf; mathematician David Eisenbud; investor and business leader Bill Ford; organizational advisor and investment professional Andrew Golden; evolutionary biologist Hopi Hoekstra; mathematician Jill Pipher; computer scientist William H. Press; investor and philanthropist Nat Simons; financial executive Ellen Taus; molecular biologist and vice chair Shirley M. Tilghman; and co-founder and chair Marilyn H. Simons.

Applied math Professor lends statistical expertise to neuroscience program. 10/01/2026 By Casey Moffitt The National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB) has invited Illinois Tech Professor of Applied Mathematics Sonja Petrović to its six-week Theory and Mathematics in Neuroscience program as a scholar-in-residence. Petrović will rely on her extensive research experience in building statistical models for networks to guide junior researchers on projects in neuroscience during the program. "I am excited to be able to learn new things and expand both the applications I work on and collaborate on 'new math' that the biology needs," she says. "The most useful outsider is the one who asks, 'How do you know?' I'll be a statistician among neuroscientists, and that's usually where the interesting problems are hiding." The NITMB program, running from October 5 through November 15, 2026, in Chicago, includes three conference workshops: Dynamics in Neuroscience, Geometry in Neuroscience, and Probabilistic Inference in Neuroscience. Petrović is one of 15 invited scholars-in-residence who come from institutions such as Northwestern University, University of Chicago, Princeton University, and Brown University. Junior researchers will conduct research throughout the program across all three conference workshops and during dedicated research weeks, with the potential for their projects to develop into long-term projects with NITMB. According to NITMB, the coordinated events throughout the program are intended to bring emerging and established researchers into an ongoing conversation around the three branches of mathematics that shape modern neuroscience: dynamics, geometry, and probability. "The point of being a scholar-in-residence is that you can connect with so many people from all over the world that you'd otherwise never be in a room with - mathematicians, neuroscientists, statisticians," Petrović says. "Those conversations are where new research starts. Nobody shows up to a six-week program with a finished paper. You show up with questions, and you leave with collaborators." Petrović's research background includes using algebraic statistics to build models that explain data related to networks, or how things connect. Neurons operate similarly to a network, as neurons connect or they don't. She has used her research expertise to study neurons in roundworms, as well as in human brains. Currently, Petrović has been working to find equations that describe how neurons behave over time along with Illinois Tech Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Megan Morrison. During the NITMB program, Petrović will also give a talk focused on how to find the appropriate models for studying networks, as well as a tutorial on algebraic statistics. In addition to her participation in the program, she will continue to teach at Illinois Tech during the fall semester. "Biology has reached a point where it needs mathematics that either doesn't exist yet or hasn't been brought into biology yet," Petrović says. "Sometimes that means new mathematics. Sometimes it means importing an established field as a new tool. My own work does both. The National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation are funding NITMB on the bet that what's holding modern biology back is theoretical rather than experimental."

2026 Fields Medals awarded to four of world's top mathematicians. The award, nicknamed the Nobel Prize of mathematics, recognizes outstanding achievement - and the promise of future achievement - by mathematicians under 40. During today's opening ceremony at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia, the International Mathematical Union (IMU) announced the recipients of the 2026 Fields Medals. This year's prizes went to four of the world's top mathematicians: Chinese mathematician Yu Deng of the University of Chicago; American mathematician John Pardon of Stony Brook University in New York; Canadian mathematician Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto; and Chinese mathematician Hong Wang of New York University and France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES). The Fields Medal is often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics due to its prestige. Awarded every four years to two to four mathematicians under the age of 40, the medal recognizes outstanding mathematical achievement in existing work and the promise of future achievement. Each winner receives 15,000 Canadian dollars (approximately $10,600) and a gold medal bearing the visage of the Greek mathematician Archimedes. "The four medalists exemplify the depth, originality and vitality of contemporary mathematics, and we are delighted to celebrate their achievements at the International Congress of Mathematicians," says Hiraku Nakajima, president of the IMU. Additional prizes awarded. During the ceremony, the IMU also announced the winners of other top prizes in mathematics. Full citations for these prizes are available on the IMU website. Shayan Oveis Gharan of the University of Washington received the Abacus Medal for mathematical contributions to computer science. Oveis Gharan is a Simons Investigator in Theoretical Computer Science. Graeme Segal of the University of Oxford won the Chern Medal for outstanding lifetime achievement in mathematics. The Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize was awarded to Yurii Nesterov of Belgium's University of Louvain for mathematical contributions with significant applied applications. Hannah Fry of the University of Cambridge was honored with the Leelavati Prize for public outreach. About the fields medalists. Deng was cited "for his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases, the derivation of wave kinetic equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic approaches to nonlinear Schrödinger dynamics." He derived one of the most central equations in kinetic theory and fluid dynamics - the Boltzmann equation - from the mathematics of colliding hard spheres. His work is a leap forward in a centuries-long quest by mathematicians and physicists to derive the basic laws of physics from first principles - one of the famous 23 problems put forth by mathematician David Hilbert at the 1900 ICM. John Pardon Pardon was cited for "his achievements in symplectic geometry, including new approaches to virtual fundamental cycles, Fukaya categories of Liouville manifolds and counting holomorphic curves, and for his contributions to other areas of geometry and topology, including group actions on 3-manifolds and knot theory." Pardon determined how to count curves on specific shapes in the field of symplectic geometry, proving the 20-year-old MNOP conjecture, which posited that two different ways of counting curves were in fact the same. Those specific shapes, called Calabi-Yau 3-folds, are thought to model its universe in superstring theory. Pardon's work has implications for representation theory, symplectic topology and quantum physics. Jacob Tsimerman Tsimerman was cited "for his role in the vast extension of the scope of o-minimal techniques within arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry, including the proof of Griffiths' conjecture on the algebraicity of images of the period maps." He started by attacking big problems in number theory, using algebraic geometry to see how shapes could reveal properties of numbers. He then imported a concept known as o-minimality - a logical framework used to "tame" wild mathematical structures - from one of the most abstract fields in mathematics, model theory, into algebraic geometry, with remarkable results. In particular, his results are deeply related to the Hodge conjecture, one of the seven famous million-dollar Millennium Prize Problems. Wang was cited "for her work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including applications of multiscale and decoupling techniques to the local smoothing conjecture for the planar wave equation, and major advances in Fourier restriction, Falconer distance sets, Furstenberg sets in the plane, and the Kakeya problem in three dimensions." Wang proved the three-dimensional version of a century-old problem that's simple to explain, yet difficult to solve: How much space does it take to turn a needle such that it points in every direction? In two dimensions, one can cleverly slide and rotate a needle in only a tiny area, but a related Kakeya problem in three dimensions proved much harder. Solving this problem has opened the door for a host of theorems and conjectures in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, geometric measure theory and other fields. The problem remains open for dimensions four and higher. Additional Information The Simons Foundation, in cooperation with the IMU, created videos featuring each of this year's award winners. The embeddable videos can be viewed on YouTube. About the International Congress of Mathematicians The ICM is the most important and prestigious conference in the mathematical community, hosted every four years by the IMU. The 2026 congress, running from July 23 to July 30 in Philadelphia, features hundreds of invited talks, panels and presentations on cutting-edge developments across mathematics. This year's conference is supported by the American Mathematical Society and the Simons Foundation and marks the first ICM in the United States since 1986. About the International Mathematical Union Founded in 1920, the IMU unites more than 80 member countries, represented through their national mathematical societies and academies. Together and through its members, the IMU encourages global collaboration and supports the development of mathematics in all regions of the world. About the American Mathematical Society Founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, the American Mathematical Society fulfills its mission through programs and services that promote mathematical research and its uses, strengthen mathematical education, and foster awareness and appreciation of mathematics and its connections to other disciplines and to everyday life. About the Simons Foundation The Simons Foundation is a private foundation in New York City whose mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. Founded in 1994 by Jim and Marilyn Simons, the foundation supports transformative science through grantmaking, in-house research and public engagement. The Simons Foundation provides grants in autism science and neuroscience; life sciences; mathematics and physical sciences; and science, society and culture. The foundation's in-house research division, the Flatiron Institute, develops and deploys computational methods to advance basic scientific research. Media Contacts Vanessa Chung, International Mathematical Union: [email protected] Thomas Sumner, Simons Foundation: [email protected]