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Simons Foundation Lectures

Simons Foundation

The Simons Foundation’s mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.

Co-founded in New York City by Jim and Marilyn Simons, the foundation exists to support basic — or discovery-driven — scientific research undertaken in the pursuit of understanding the phenomena of our world.

The Simons Foundation’s support of science takes two forms: We support research by making grants to individual investigators and their projects through academic institutions, and, with the launch of the Flatiron Institute in 2016, we now conduct scientific research in-house, supporting teams of top computational scientists.

Links:
Simons Foundation: https://www.simonsfoundation.org
Flatiron Institute: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/flatiron/
Simons Foundation Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SimonsFoundation
Flatiron Institute Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlatironInstitute/
Simons Foundation Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsfdn
Flatiron Institute Twitter: https://twitter.com/flatironinst

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  • 21 episodes
  • daily
  • Avg 55 min
  • English

Episodes 21

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  • Today · 46 min

    Brian Metzger - How Gravitational Waves Pointed Us to the Origin of Gold (February 5, 2020)

    Two summers ago, the LIGO interferometers detected gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars for the first time. (Neutron stars are the dense cores left over when massive stars explode at the end of their lives). This discovery initiated a frenzied search for a visual ‘afterglow’ to the merger using dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space. Within hours, fading blue light, unlike that ever seen before, was discovered from a galaxy 100 million light-years away. Uploaded 10-02-20 In this lecture, Brian Metzger will discuss the monumental importance of the first detection of gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars. The August 2017 discovery initiated a frenzied search for a visual ‘afterglow’ to the merger using dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space. Within hours, fading blue light, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, was discovered from a galaxy 100 million light-years away. From the debris of the merger, he and other scientists witnessed directly for the first time the creation of the heaviest elements in the universe, such as gold, silver and platinum. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/how-gravitational-waves-pointed-us-to-the-origin-of-gold/

  • Today · 1 hr 8 min

    Liang Dai - A New Window Into the Universe (February 4, 2020)

    Detection of chirping gravitational waves (GWs) at ground-based laser interferometry observatories LIGO and Virgo have uncovered a population of compact binary mergers. Forthcoming observing runs with upgraded sensitivity and more observatories joining the network will tremendously increase the number of source systems, which will shed light on their astrophysical origin and enable to exploit those events as cosmological probes. I will present independent efforts by the IAS group to analyze the publicly available LIGO/Virgo data and report newly discovered GW events in addition to what experimental collaborations have reported. I will highlight several original and crucial data analysis methodologies we have developed for template matching, noise characterization and parameter estimation. In addition, I will give outlook on gravitational lensing of cosmological GW sources as expected from forthcoming observations and envisage its applications. I will explain our new findings of how wave propagation effects, measurable with GWs but unfeasible with usual electromagnetic sources, can allow extraction of unique information to reconstruct the lens or to probe non-luminous sub-galactic dark matter structures, thereby deepening our understanding of the matter distribution in the Universe. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/cca-special-seminar-liang-dai/ Uploaded 13-02-20

  • Today · 1 hr 7 min

    Ken van Tilburg - The Structure of Dark Matter on Small Scales (February 6, 2020)

    Halometry—mapping out the spectrum, location, and kinematics of nonluminous structures inside the Galactic halo—can be realized via effects that variable weak gravitational lensing induces on the proper motions of stars and other luminous background sources. Modern astrometric surveys provide unprecedented positional precision along with a leap in the number of cataloged objects. Astrometry thus offers a new and sensitive probe of collapsed dark matter structures over a wide mass range, from one millionth to several million solar masses. It opens up a window into the spectrum of primordial density fluctuations with very small comoving wavenumbers, scales hitherto poorly constrained. Uploaded 13-02-20 I will outline a program of detection strategies for dark matter substructure based on time-domain weak gravitational lensing, after summarizing existing techniques and constraints. I will present first results from analyses based on Gaia’s second data release. Finally, I will show that minimal models of axion-like dark matter naturally produce dense small-scale structures which can be probed by the aforementioned astrometric lensing techniques. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/cca-special-seminar-ken-van-tilburg/

  • Yesterday · 1 hr 7 min

    Steven Girvin - The Race to Build Quantum Computers (February 12, 2020)

    The first quantum revolution brought us the great technological advances of the 20th century—the transistor, the laser, the atomic clock and GPS. A ‘second quantum revolution’ is now underway based on our relatively new understanding of how information can be stored, manipulated and communicated using strange quantum hardware that is neither fully digital nor fully analog. Uploaded 14-02-20 In this talk, Steven Girvin will give a gentle introduction to the basic concepts that underlie this quantum information revolution. Even more remarkable than the prospect of quantum computation, he says, is the concept of quantum error correction. Rapid theoretical and experimental progress has brought us to the threshold of the era of practical quantum error correction, and it may soon become possible to carry out nearly perfect computations using imperfect hardware. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/field-guide-to-the-second-quantum-revolution/

  • Yesterday · 31 min

    Alex Pouget - Brain wide representation of prior information (May 6, 2025)

    The neural representations of prior information about the state of the world are poorly understood. Here, to investigate them, we examined brain-wide recordings collected by the International Brain Laboratory. We report that the prior information is encoded in at least 20% to 30% of brain regions that, notably, span all levels of neural processing. This widespread representation of the prior is consistent with a neural model of Bayesian inference involving loops between areas, as opposed to a model in which the prior is incorporated only in decision-making areas. Uploaded 06-10-25 The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) aims to expand our understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition. For more information please visit: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/collaborations/global-brain/

  • Yesterday · 1 hr 11 min

    Alain Aspect - From Einstein’s Doubts to Quantum Technologies (February 19, 2020)

    The debate between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr over the interpretation of quantum mechanics was settled by the experimental tests of Bell’s inequalities. Those experiments drew attention to the revolutionary character of quantum entanglement, which is now a key ingredient of quantum computing and quantum information. Uploaded 21-02-20 In this lecture, Alain Aspect will first explain Einstein’s reasoning about entangled particles. That reasoning led to his conclusion that quantum mechanics is not complete, in contradiction with Bohr’s point of view. Aspect will then show how Bell’s inequalities have allowed experimentalists to settle the debate, emphasizing the most extraordinary features of entanglement and prompting the emergence of basic ideas for quantum information and quantum communication. These ideas are enabling the development of new technologies in many academic and industrial laboratories. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/from-einsteins-doubts-to-quantum-technologies-a-new-quantum-revolution/

  • Yesterday · 48 min

    ICM 2026 Invited Section Lecture - Michael Wemyss

    The Classification of 3-Fold Flops This talk will overview recent progress in understanding and classifying one of the most elementary of birational surgeries within algebraic geometry, namely 3-fold flops, through the development of a noncommutative version of singularity theory. Uploaded 05-10-26

  • Yesterday · 34 min

    Nicole Rust - The representation of mood in the primate insula (May 6, 2025)

    How does the brain shape mood? Answering this question is difficult. In this talk, I report that a strong neural correlate of happiness is reflected in the persistent responses of neurons in anterior insular cortex, a brain area implicated in the conscious experience of feelings. Uploaded 06-10-25 The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) aims to expand our understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition. For more information please visit: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/collaborations/global-brain/

  • Yesterday · 59 min

    Shirley Ho - The First AI Simulation of the Universe is Fast and Accurate (February 26, 2020)

    A full understanding of the evolution of the universe’s structure is one of the holy grails of modern astrophysics. Astrophysicists survey large volumes of the universe and compare the findings to computer simulations. Simulating the movement of billions of particles over billions of years is a daunting task, however, even when using the simplest physical models. Uploaded 28-02-20 In this lecture, Shirley Ho will discuss her team’s work building a deep neural network that learns from a set of pre-run numerical simulations and predicts the large scale structure of the universe. Extensive analysis demonstrates that their deep-learning technique outperforms the commonly used fast approximate simulation method in predicting cosmic structure in the non-linear regime. They also show that their method can accurately extrapolate far beyond its training data and predict structure formation for significantly different cosmological parameters. This ability to extrapolate outside its training set is highly unexpected and remains a mystery. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/the-first-ai-simulation-of-the-universe-is-fast-and-accurate-and-we-dont-know-why/

  • Yesterday · 31 min

    Andrew Leifer - Global brain dynamics in C. elegans: A decade of progress (May 6, 2025)

    The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) aims to expand our understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition. Uploaded 06-10-25 For more information please visit: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/collaborations/global-brain/

  • Yesterday · 1 hr 6 min

    Corina Tarnita - Self-Organization and Robustness in Biological Systems (March 4, 2020)

    Understanding and managing complex systems — characterized by emergent, self-organized patterns at scales larger than those of the interacting parts — has crystallized as one of the most pressing problems of our time, affecting studies in fields from biology to sociology to medicine and financial markets. Because biological systems have faced a range of challenges throughout evolutionary history that has led to a diversity of robust solutions, they are ideal for the study of complex systems, and solutions inferred from biology have successfully been applied to system design and management in other fields. It is therefore imperative not only to study individual biological systems, but also to compare broadly their organizing principles and emergent properties. The Tarnita Lab uses theoretical and empirical approaches to study the organization and emergent properties and behaviors of biological systems across spatiotemporal scales, from single cells to entire ecosystems. In this talk, Corina Tarnita will give an overview of their approach and what they have learned so far. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/self-organization-and-robustness-in-biological-systems/ Uploaded 09-03-20

  • Yesterday · 19 min

    SCGB-Origins - Bill Newsome (May 5, 2025)

    Bill Newsome recounts the origins of the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB), including early conversations with Jim Simons, the pivotal Buttermilk Falls workshop in June, 2012, and subsequent SCGB concept development culminating in the go-ahead signal from the Simons Foundation in fall, 2013. He also offers a larger perspective on the seminal year of 2013 that saw the launch of SCGB, the birth of the US national BRAIN initiative, and the formation of multiple prominent neuroscience efforts around the world. Uploaded 06-10-25 The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) aims to expand our understanding of the role of internal brain processes in the arc from sensation to action, thereby discovering the nature, role and mechanisms of the neural activity that produces cognition. For more information please visit: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/collaborations/global-brain/

  • Yesterday · 1 hr

    Gwen Eadie - Astrostatistics in the Era of Large Surveys (January 31, 2020)

    Astrostatistics is an interdisciplinary field that lives on the boundary between astronomy and statistics. This interdisciplinary field seeks to answer fundamental science questions about the universe while simultaneously inspiring new and improved statistical methods for data analysis. Uploaded 13-03-20 In this talk, I will introduce two areas of my research in astrostatistics. The first covers hierarchical Bayesian analysis in the context of the Milky Way Galaxy, applied to data from the Gaia satellite. The second covers a new time series analysis method in the context of asteroseismology (the study of oscillations in stars’ interiors), applied to data from the Kepler spacecraft. The surveys performed by the Gaia satellite and the Kepler spacecraft are early examples of big data in astronomy, and thus make good testing grounds for our new astrostatistics methods in preparation for upcoming large surveys. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/2020-spring-cca-friday-colloquium-gwen-eadie/

  • Yesterday · 55 min

    Kevin Buzzard - Where is Mathematics Going? (September 24, 2025)

    Where is Mathematics Going? ~ Is there a better way to do this? In this Presidential Lecture, Kevin Buzzard will discuss the future of mathematics and the role computers can play in proof development through tools such as Lean. Uploaded 02-10-25 For more information go here: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/where-is-mathematics-going/

Showing 1–20 of 21 episodes