Simons Society of Fellows Welcomes 3 New Senior Fellows
The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce that physicist Andrea Alù, physicist Glennys R. Farrar and mathematician Michael L. Overton have joined the Simons Society of Fellows as Senior Fellows. The Simons Foundation extends this honor in recognition of the groundbreaking contributions these researchers have made to their fields and their years of distinguished service as educators and mentors to early-career researchers.
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: Junior and Senior Fellows. 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. Senior Fellows are distinguished scientists based in the New York City area. As Senior Fellows, Alù, Farrar and Overton will provide mentoring and guidance to the Junior Fellows.
Alù is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, the founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center and a professor of Electrical Engineering at the City College of New York. His research interests span applied electromagnetics, nano-optics, polaritonics and acoustics.
Farrar is a collegiate professor of physics and a Julius Silver, Rosalind S. Silver and Enid Silver Winslow Professor at New York University. Her primary research goal is discovering the identity of dark matter, which comprises around 85 percent of the universe’s mass yet fundamentally differs from any known type of matter. She is investigating whether dark matter is composed of quarks in a form that has eluded discovery.
Overton is a Silver Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. His research interests are at the interface of optimization and linear algebra, especially nonsmooth optimization problems involving eigenvalues, pseudospectra, stability and robust control. Among his recent interests is Crouzeix’s conjecture, which concerns bounding the ratio of the norm of a polynomial of a matrix to the norm of the polynomial on the numerical range of the matrix.
