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

Illustration of an optical lattice, which looks like an egg crate, with pairs of particles sitting in various pockets of the lattice.

Center for Computational Quantum Physics Scientists Capture Superconductivity’s ‘Dancing Pairs’ for First Time, Filling Gap in Decades-Old Theory By Mara Johnson-Groh

Analysis of a first-of-its-kind experiment reveals missing pieces in the decades-old theory of superconductivity.

A 3D rendering of components inside a cell that make up the human mitotic spindle.

Center for Computational Biology The Machinery That Helps Divide Your Cells Self-Organizes Like an Active Liquid Crystal

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

April 1, 2026

A stabilized finite element formulation for simulating ordered arrays of immersed flexible fibers with applications in cellular mechanics

S. Varchanis, D. Stein

We present a new computational tool for the simulation of aligned assemblies of thin, bendable, but inextensible fibers immersed in…

Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering

2026

Machine learning-based prediction of peptide aggregation during chemical synthesis

V. Mulligan

Solid-phase peptide synthesis enables the study of countless peptides, but aggregation during synthesis hinders production of many sequences of interest.…

Nature Chemistry

March 14, 2026

A Network of Biologically Inspired Rectified Spectral Units (ReSUs) Learns Hierarchical Features Without Error Backpropagation

S. Qin, J. Pughe-Sanford, A. Genkin, Pembe Gizem Ozdil, P. Greengard, A. Sengupta, D. Chklovskii

We introduce a biologically inspired, multilayer neural architecture composed of Rectified Spectral Units (ReSUs). Each ReSU projects a recent window…

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence

News & Announcements

April 15, 2026

Gravity Follows Newton’s and Einstein’s Rules, Even at Cosmic Scales

An illustration of Earth in silhouette with galaxies and the colorful CMB in the background.

Center for Computational Quantum Physics

April 15, 2026

Scientists Capture Superconductivity’s ‘Dancing Pairs’ for First Time, Filling Gap in Decades-Old Theory By Mara Johnson-Groh

Center for Computational Mathematics

April 01, 2026

Introducing ROCKET: An Upgrade to AlphaFold That Learns From Raw Experimental Data By Jane Beaufore

Illustration of abstract proteins floating through a starry sky.

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.