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2025 Simons Society of Fellows Alumni Symposium

Conference

When

  • All Day

Where

Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium

160 5th Ave

New York, NY 10010, United States

The 2025 Simons Society of Fellows Alumni Symposium, held on September 30, 2025, brought together alumni from across the world who are actively reshaping how science engages with our society. In attendance were approximately 65 current and former Junior Fellows, seven current Senior Fellows, and one keynote speaker. We were also pleased to have four former Senior Fellows—Drs. Joy Bergelson, Moses Chao, David Hirsh, and Tony Movshon—participate in the event, highlighting a longstanding commitment to mentorship of the Junior Fellows.

This year’s event, organized by former Junior Fellows Drs. Cynthia Steinhardt and Lynn Yap, explored the theme “Impact of Science on Society,” from a multidisciplinary perspective, including neuroscience, engineering, artificial intelligence, cryptography, plant cell biology, and Earth and planetary sciences. Four alumni speakers and one keynote speaker gave thought-provoking presentations that fostered dialogue across disciplines throughout the day, sparking new ideas and collaborations that promise to further advance how past and present fellows respond to the needs of our global community.

  • Dr. Logan Grosenick (Weill Cornell) showed how psychiatry, long constrained by DSM categories, can now be transformed using interpretable AI and large datasets. By identifying biological subgroups in conditions like depression and autism, his work is opening the door to more precise diagnoses and truly personalized treatments.
  • Dr. Michal Breker-Dekel (Hebrew University) shared how her research on microalgae led to a collaboration on engineered symbiosis. This pivot led to a novel co-culture framework that is providing new solutions for sustainable meat production (CultivO2) and regenerative medicine.
  • Dr. Antigoni Polychroniadou (J.P. Morgan) reminded us that AI-driven systems already shape how we bank, shop, and receive healthcare. Her focus: How do we secure private information, prevent hacking, and ensure that algorithms making real-world decisions are free of bias?
  • Dr. Abigail Bodner (MIT) highlighted how advances in ocean turbulence modeling can strengthen global climate predictions; and how we are in a race to run experiments and calculations fast enough to guide decisions before we experience significant climate impacts by 2050. She also discussed building an international network of young scientists engaged in climate science and becoming part of the solution via Climatematch Academy.
  • Dr. Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard University), Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, was our distinguished keynote speaker. Dr. Jasanoff is a pioneer in exploring the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. She has authored more than 130 articles and book chapters and over 15 books. Dr. Jasanoff’s lecture served as an eye-opening reminder that science’s future depends on strengthening its bonds with democracy and society. Without trust and communication, we risk losing public support; with them, science can have its greatest impact.

The symposium also significantly contributed to the career development and spurred collaborations among attendees:

  • New scientific collaborations: Bringing together current and former fellows across different cohorts led to scientific discussions that inspired new collaborations. For example, Dr. Patrick Kennedy had several productive and thought-provoking conversations that resulted in plans to visit another alumnus’s laboratory to learn more about their remarkable model system, which will hopefully lead to the establishment of a formal collaboration. Several alumni discussed joint grant proposal ideas that will bring together diverse expertise, and skill sets to address some of the most pressing needs in science and technology today.
  • New conferences and group meetings: In addition to scientific collaborations, the symposium served as an impetus to create more opportunities for further scientific exchange between fellows. For example, symposium co-organizer Dr. Steinhardt discussed putting together a New York-based neuromodulation conference, and spoke with Dr. Yuri Tschinkel (Executive Vice President, Mathematics and the Physical Sciences) about ways to raise funds for the conference through the Simons Foundation. Drs. Jasanoff and Bodner will reconvene in Boston to work together on creating awareness and outreach on climate change.
  • Career and networking opportunities: Attendees remarked on the invaluable networking opportunities made possible through this year’s symposium. Many fellows learned about and received advice on career planning and job searches. This symposium presented a rare opportunity for fellows in academia and industry to meet, share perspectives, and build mutual appreciation for the complementary ways in which research and innovation advance scientific discovery.

Through its continuity, the symposium has fostered an enduring community—allowing attendees to develop, sustain, and deepen their professional networks and mentoring relationships. By bringing together alumni from near and far, the Simons Foundation has made possible the generation of new insights and the fostering of valuable connections. Interactions were facilitated not only through the formal presentations but also at the closing dinner at a nearby restaurant. Thank you to the Simons Foundation for creating a space where diverse researchers can build careers that make a difference and where generations of fellows can learn and be inspired by each other to take risks and do work that can positively impact society.

Organizers:

Cynthia Steinhardt, Columbia University
Lynn Yap, Columbia University

Speakers:

Logan Grosenick, Weill Cornell
Abigail Bodner, MIT
Antigoni Polychroniadou, J.P. Morgan
Michal Breker-Dekel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University

Meeting Goals:

The seventh annual Simons Society of Fellows Alumni Symposium will center around the theme “Impact of Science on Society.” We will explore how science and technology have shaped—and been shaped by—the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they operate. This year’s symposium brings together alumni from diverse fields, including chemistry, cellular biology, engineering, artificial intelligence, earth and planetary sciences, to reflect on the reciprocal relationship between scientific advancement and societal change. Participants will consider how and why we ask the questions we do in our field, and how we can build scientific knowledge and technologies that are more responsive to and better integrated with the needs of our global community. By fostering dialogue across disciplines, the symposium aims to illuminate new ways for science to engage with the world it seeks to understand and improve.

Past Alumni Symposia:

Agenda

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

8:30 AM CHECK-IN & BREAKFAST
9:30 AM Logan Grosenick | Beyond the DSM: Making Psychiatry A Quantitative Science
10:30 AM BREAK
11:00 AM Michal Breker-Dekel | Systems Genetics of Microalgae for Innovation in Agriculture, Medicine, and Food Industries
12:00 PM LUNCH
1:00 PM Antigoni Polychroniadou | Building Trust at the Frontier: Privacy, Fairness, and Security in an AI-Driven Society
2:00 PM BREAK
2:30 PM Abigail Bodner | Climate Science in a Changing Climate
3:30 PM BREAK
4:00 PM Sheila Jasanoff | Science, Democracy, and Public Knowledge in America
5:00 PM MEETING CONCLUDES
Abstracts & Slides

Logan Grosenick
Cornell University

Beyond the DSM: Making Psychiatry A Quantitative Science

Psychiatry is medicine’s last pre-mechanistic frontier. While oncologists select treatments based on tumor genetics, and cardiologists on physiology, psychiatrists still rely on symptom checklists and trial-and-error. The result is predictable: many patients fail first-line treatments, and broad diagnostic categories like “autism” and “depression” often create as much stigma as they do solutions. A central barrier to progress has been heterogeneity: patients with the same diagnosis can differ profoundly in biology, symptoms, and treatment response.

Our work has shown that reproducible biological subtypes of depression and autism exist and can predict clinical outcomes. To build on this, we are developing new AI frameworks that move beyond complex, opaque multistep pipelines. These models learn representations where clusters and dimensions can coexist and employ adaptive architectures that route data differently for each patient. By flexibly handling heterogeneity, these methods make it possible to exploit large-scale clinical datasets while preserving interpretability.

Together, these advances illustrate how computational and AI-based approaches can transform psychiatry into a quantitative, mechanistic science capable of revealing biology, predicting treatment response, and ultimately enabling more personalized, stigma-reducing, and effective care.
 

Michal Breker-Dekel
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Systems Genetics of Microalgae for Innovation in Agriculture, Medicine, and Food Industries
View Slides (PDF)

My lab develops high-throughput genomic and genetic approaches to dissect the molecular bases of complex biological interactions and fundamental plant cell biology problems, using Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a powerful unicellular model. This allows us to bridge fundamental discovery with translational potential.

In the first part of my talk, I will present our work using C. reinhardtii to probe host–microbe dynamics. Integrating bacterial pathogenicity screens, forward genetics, and multi-omics, we uncover deeply conserved mechanisms of bacterial antagonism that shape immunity and symbiosis across plants and algae, offering broad insights into green lineage biology.

In the second part, I will introduce our novel multi-scaffold symbiotic co-culture platform, where microalgae and animal cells grow in close proximity to enable reciprocal nutrient exchange and metabolic cooperation. This versatile system supports diverse applications—from sustainable cultured meat production to regenerative medicine approaches such as chronic wound healing—demonstrating how engineered biological symbiosis can tackle pressing challenges in health, food security, and environmental sustainability.
 

Antigoni Polychroniadou
J.P. Morgan

Building Trust at the Frontier: Privacy, Fairness, and Security in an AI-Driven Society
View Slides (PDF)

Science and technology are transforming the way we interact, transact, and communicate—but their success depends not only on what they can do, but on whether society can trust them. In this talk, I will explore research directions that embed privacy, fairness, and accountability into the foundations of emerging AI and data systems. These include methods for protecting sensitive information, ensuring equitable outcomes, and enabling secure collaboration across domains. By examining these advances together, I will reflect on how we can shape technologies that not only push scientific boundaries, but also foster trust, safeguard rights, and serve the needs of our global community.
 

Abigail Bodner
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Climate Science in a Changing Climate
View Slides (PDF)

Climate change poses a global challenge in a world often driven by local issues. Its impacts are distributed unevenly across regions, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable communities. Among the Earth’s systems, the ocean plays a particularly central role in climate change, linking processes that span scales—from meter-scale mixing to planetary-scale circulation. Local phenomena, such as heat exchange in surface waters or shifts in regional currents, can influence global climate dynamics, while large-scale changes in temperature and circulation reverberate locally through rising seas, intensifying storms, and ecosystem shifts. In this talk, I will discuss how my work in physical oceanography explores these connections, with a particular focus on ocean turbulence. By combining observations, theory, simulations, and machine learning, we can investigate how small-scale dynamics make climate models more reliable and improve our understanding of future change. I will argue that bridging local and global perspectives is essential for advancing climate science, guiding adaptation strategies, and helping society meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
 

Sheila Jasanoff
Harvard University

Science, Democracy, and Public Knowledge in America
View Slides (PDF)

For more than 70 years, relations between science and society in America have oscillated between two idealized accounts: a fairytale version in which pure science sits above society and speaks truth to power; and a marriage of convenience that sees science primarily as a source of technological advances, economic growth, and social progress. Neither story does justice to science’s third role as a source of public knowledge for public action. Misunderstandings of this role, I will argue, are responsible for much of the current malaise gripping science in America. Based on decades of research on science for policy, I will offer a fuller understanding of science and American civic epistemology. Increasing citizens’ awareness of the need for public knowledge is an essential step in restoring science to its rightful place in American democracy.

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