News

Sofía Torallas Tovar, a renowned papyrologist, has joined IAS as long-term Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Historical Studies. A prolific scholar of the ancient Mediterranean, Torallas Tovar's work encompasses Greek and Coptic magical texts, funerary practices and culture, patristic literature, the Coptic Bible, and Philo and Alexandrian Judaism.

Frank and Peggy Taplin Member George N. Wong, Visitor Lia Medeiros, and Professor James Stone, all from the Institute's School of Natural Sciences, have developed an innovative technique to search for black hole light echoes. Their novel method, which will make it easier for the mass and the spin of black holes to be measured, represents a major step forward, since it operates independently of many of the other ways in which scientists have probed these parameters in the past.

The Institute for Advanced Study has made two new appointments to its Board of Trustees: Paul DiMaggio, a Professor of Sociology at New York University, and Anoop Prasad, Managing Director and member of the Executive Committee of D. E. Shaw & Co. Their appointments were unanimously adopted by the Board on October 26, 2024.

The Institute for Advanced Study commenced its 2024–25 academic year on September 23, 2024, welcoming scholars from around the globe to its storied campus. The 267 visiting scholars, who began arriving earlier in the month, represent 35 nations and more than 130 institutions. Each is selected by the Institute’s permanent Faculty based on the promise of their research, spanning the sciences and humanities.

A new study of ancient DNA by a team of international researchers, including Patrick Geary, Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Historical Studies, provides insight into the development of and social structures within European rural communities following the fall of the Roman Empire. Some of these communities, about the formation of which little was previously known, would eventually become the basis for many modern European countries.

Designed to facilitate work on projects and topics that are beyond the reach of a single scholar, discipline, or institution, the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Collaborative Research has been launched at IAS, expanding the Institute's capacity for discovery across fields. The Center will provide the funding, space, infrastructure, and expertise for collaborative projects with partners across the globe. 

Irit Dveer Dinur, Elon Lindenstrauss, and Aaron Naber have been appointed to the Institute Faculty, bringing unique expertise in pure mathematics and computer science to the School of Mathematics. They will begin their Institute appointments this summer. Considered one of the top honors in academia, IAS Faculty appointments are reserved for the world’s foremost leaders in their respective fields.

Sebastian Mizera, Member in the School of Natural Sciences, and his collaborators, have used computational algebraic geometry to study predictions for particle physics experiments, such as those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The team’s results were published in Physical Review Letters in March. 

James H. Simons, former IAS Member (1972) and Board Vice Chair, widely recognized as a prize-winning mathematician, singular hedge fund manager, and a visionary philanthropist—with an indefatigable curiosity for science and discovery—died on Friday, May 10. He was 86.

The Institute for Advanced Study will restore and expand its Historical Studies - Social Science Library, providing enhanced space and support for its scholars, while fostering discovery at the intersection of traditional fields and exploration in emerging disciplines.

Patrick Geary, Emeritus Professor in the School of Historical Studies, together with Hungarian, Austrian, and German research groups, has published a paper in Nature, revealing the social dynamics of Avar-period steppe descent populations that settled in Europe's Carpathian Basin in the 6th century.

Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics, was named by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) as the recipient of the 2023 ACM A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing."

A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which includes George Wong, Frank and Peggy Taplin Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. 

In a paper published today in Nature, Sihao Cheng, Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member in the Institute’s School of Natural Sciences, and his collaborators have proposed a new theory that explains why a puzzling population of white dwarf stars stopped cooling for ten billion years. 

The new AI Democracy Projects, co-founded by Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, engaged state and local election officials, journalists, and AI and election experts in some of the first testing and publicly available results of leading AI models’ safety regarding election information.

How has past climate variability contributed to human migrations and other forms of population movement? Nicola Di Cosmo, Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies, is part of an interdisciplinary group, including historians, climatologists, and archeologists, that has developed a new tool, the “dahliagram,” to explore this question.

George Wong, Frank and Peggy Taplin Member in the School of Natural Sciences, and astrophysicists from Princeton University and Vanderbilt University have determined conclusively that energy close to the event horizon of M87’s central black hole is pushing outward, not inward—as one would normally assume with black holes.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Synergy Grant of €10 million to a project led by Nima Arkani- Hamed, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, and past IAS Members. The team aims to create a new mathematical language to describe physical phenomena on all scales.

The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed neuroscientist Eve Marder to its Board of Trustees. Nominated by the Institute’s School of Natural Sciences, she succeeds Ewine F. van Dishoeck as Academic Trustee. Her appointment was unanimously adopted by the Board on May 6, 2023.

This year, the Institute's international community hails from 47 countries, representing 105 institutions worldwide. Visiting scholars range from postdocs to distinguished professors, united across disciplines by a common cause to push the boundaries of knowledge and pursue their own curiosity.

Maria Hsiuya Loh, an internationally recognized expert in the field of early modern Italian art, has joined the Institute for Advanced Study as Professor in the School of Historical Studies. Loh is best known for her work on Venetian art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The IAS Board of Trustees has elected John Overdeck as its next Chair. Overdeck, a philanthropist, business leader, and dedicated supporter of the Institute, will succeed software entrepreneur Charles Simonyi, who served as Chair since 2008.

Lia Medeiros, current Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has led a group of researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration in producing a groundbreaking new image of the M87 black hole, using machine learning algorithm PRIMO to achieve the full resolution of the array for the first time.

Measuring the mass of a galaxy cluster is difficult—clusters cannot be “weighed” by placing them on a scale. Digvijay Wadekar, current Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has worked to develop an AI program to identify new variables that might make inferring the mass from other observable quantities more accurate.

Salvatore Torquato, past Member in the School of Natural Sciences, and his IAS collaborator Oliver Philcox have applied methodologies from materials science in a cosmological context, providing new insights into the fundamental structure of the universe. Their work is now published in Physical Review X.

The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed Alexandra Day as its first Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Programming, and Partnerships. Day, who has extended the reach and engagement of some of the nation’s leading educational and cultural institutions, will begin at IAS on February 15, 2023.

A research team, led by current Visitor Roman Rafikov, has developed a technique to study planet formation in other solar systems. By analyzing the vortices that form within discs of gas and dust around young stars, limits can be placed on the mass and age of planets of various sizes.

The Rubenstein Commons building at IAS has opened its doors, providing a nexus of flexible gathering spaces to support enhanced communication and collaboration among scholars, and forming an inviting social hub for the wider IAS community.

Neutron stars are one of the densest objects found anywhere in the Universe. Scientists still do not understand what exactly they are made from. A new piece of the puzzle, constraining the range of possibilities, has been discovered by a pair of scholars at IAS.

The Institute for Advanced Study is delighted to announce the establishment of the Frank C. and Florence S. Ogg Professorship in the School of Mathematics, thanks to the generosity of former Mathematics Member (1968–69), Andrew Ogg.