The mission of the Flatiron Institute is to advance scientific research through computational methods, including data analysis, theory, modeling and simulation.

Simons Foundation

Featured News

Stylized illustration of sperm tails coiled up and aligned tidily.

Center for Computational Biology Mysteries of Fruit Fly Sperm Untangled by Mathematical Models

Biologists at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute and their colleagues strive to better understand remarkable living systems by bringing biology and mathematics into closer dialogue.

Artist's representation of a tensor network, showing many connected cubes.

Center for Computational Quantum Physics Quantum Dynamics Breakthrough Overturns Claim of ‘Quantum Supremacy,’ Opens New Research Directions

Illustration of the dust shell traveling away from a black hole and gas being pulled back towards it.

Center for Computational Astrophysics Caught in the Act: Astronomers Watch a Vanishing Star Turn Into a Black Hole

Our Centers

Center for Computational Astrophysics

Center for Computational Biology

Center for Computational Mathematics

Center for Computational Neuroscience

Center for Computational Quantum Physics

Scientific Computing Core

It develops, deploys and maintains computational infrastructure — from supercomputers to desktop PCs — dedicated solely to the use of Flatiron researchers.

Initiatives

Initiative for Computational Catalysis

The Simons Foundation Initiative for Computational Catalysis is a new effort within the Flatiron Institute dedicated to the development and application of computational techniques enabling the rational design of more efficient and more affordable catalysts.

Foundation Models of Science

Our goal is to accelerate the development of versatile foundation models tailored for numerical datasets and scientific machine learning tasks. The challenge we are undertaking is to build AI models which leverage information from heterogeneous datasets and across different scientific fields, which, contrary to domains like natural language processing, do not share a unifying representation.

Collaborative Work

Machine Learning at the Flatiron Institute

Machine learning has become an indispensable tool for computational science, and it is an active and growing area of research throughout the Flatiron Institute.

Structural and Molecular Biophysics

Underlying all biological processes are molecules and their interactions with each other. However, our ability to understand how these molecules function over biologically relevant scales remains very limited.

Learning the Universe

This collaboration aims to understand and determine the evolution and initial conditions of our universe, using observations via a Bayesian forward modeling approach.

CCA
| Columbia University
| Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
| Harvard University
| Stockholm University
| Institute D'Astrophysique de Paris
| Université de Montreal
| Princeton University
| Carnegie Mellon University
| Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics

Flatiron Institute Idea Scholar Program

For distinguished scientists interested in developing scientific talent in the workforce and enabling pathways to science

Scholars may engage in a variety of activities, such as working on scientific projects, starting new collaborations, mentoring junior scientists, and organizing or participating in workshops and career development events.

Learn More

A major effort of the Flatiron Institute is the development and support of high-quality, open-source software for research.

View All Software

Research Highlights

July 9, 2026

From stuff to things: Responses of neurons in macaque V4 to textures and objects

Justin D. Lieber, T. D. Oleskiw , Laura Palmieri, E. P. Simoncelli, J. A. Movshon

Humans and monkeys can rapidly recognize objects in everyday scenes. It is not fully understood where this computation arises, but…

bioRxiv:2024.02.20.581273

June 29, 2026

The Squealer: Sensification of model exploration and model misfit

A. Gelman, Andrew H. Jaffe, Eliot Carlson, P. Greengard

We introduce a method for visual and auditory feedback when exploring the fit of a model to data. Starting with…

arXiv:2606.29842

June 22, 2026

Similarity of Neural Network Representations in Superposition

Sunny Liu, Habon Issa, André Longon, Liv Gorton, Meenakshi Khosla, A. Williams, David Klindt

Comparing internal representations is a central goal in neuroscience and machine learning, but standard linear alignment metrics (Representational Similarity Analysis,…

arXiv:2604.00208

News & Announcements

Center for Computational Mathematics

June 24, 2026

Mathematicians Unleash Multifold Speed Boost for Supercomputer Simulations of Molecules By Susan Reslewic Keatley

A still from a movie showing a view inside a dense LiTFSI system, filled with multicolored spheres bumping into each other.

2025 Annual Report

June 23, 2026

The Mathematical Tools Trailblazing the Quantum Future By Mara Johnson-Groh

An illustration of the structure of a tensor network

2025 Annual Report

June 23, 2026

Delving Into the Mathematical Absurdities of Black Holes By Amanda Heidt

Leadership

Leslie Greengard, M.D., Ph.D.

Director, CCM

Leslie Greengard joined the Simons Foundation in 2013 as founding director of the Simons Center for Data Analysis, now called the Center for Computational Biology. Prior to that, Greengard served as director of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.

Julianne Dalcanton, Ph.D.

Director, CCA

Julianne Dalcanton joined the Simons Foundation in September 2021 as the director of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA). Her research specializes in the origins and evolution of galaxies.

Ian Fisk, Ph.D.

Chief Technology Officer, Simons Foundation

Ian Fisk came to the Simons Foundation in 2014 after working in the computing division at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois since 2003. Fisk was the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment’s computing coordinator at CERN from 2010 to 2013, overseeing operations and improvements…

Antoine Georges, Ph.D.

Director, CCQ

Antoine Georges is a professor of physics at the Collège de France, where he holds the chair in condensed matter physics. He also has joint appointments with École Polytechnique and the University of Geneva. He received his Ph.D. from the École Normale Supérieure in 1988.…

Andrew Millis, Ph.D.

Co-Director, CCQ

Andrew Millis is co-director of the Center for Computational Quantum Physics at the Flatiron Institute and professor of physics at Columbia University. He currently serves as Managing Director of the Flatiron Institute.

Michael Shelley, Ph.D.

Director, CCB

Michael Shelley joined the Simons Foundation in 2016 to work on the modeling and simulation of complex systems arising in physics and biology.

Eero P. Simoncelli, Ph.D.

Director, CCN

Eero P. Simoncelli is the inaugural director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience. Eero P. Simoncelli’s research interests span a wide range of topics in the representation and analysis of visual images and sounds in both machine and biological vision systems.