As a world-renowned mathematician, Simons co-developed the influential Chern-Simons theory and worked as a Cold War codebreaker. As a pioneering quantitative investor, Simons founded Renaissance Technologies, known for its secretive and wildly profitable Medallion Fund. And in his current role as a philanthropist, Simons and his wife Marilyn established Math for America and have given billions to science-backed projects through The Simons Foundation.
This spring, Simons, who holds degrees from MIT and University of California, Berkeley, received the S. Donald Sussman Fellowship, awarded to individuals or groups who exhibit innovation and excellence in quantitative investment strategies and models.
âThat company did poorly, and then it did wonderfully,â Simons said. âBusinesses are often that way. If you start off doing one thing and it doesnât go well, you change and do something else. Itâs not often that the original plan works perfectly.â
But he didnât see eye to eye with his boss, Gen. Maxwell Taylor. When Taylor wrote an article in the New York Times Magazine supporting the Vietnam War, Simons published a counter-editorial, also in the Times, saying that not everyone who worked for Taylor subscribed to his views....
Two and a half years ago, MIT entered into a research agreement with startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems to develop a next-generation fusion research experiment, called SPARC, as a precursor to a practical, emissions-free power plant. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2'); });
Now, after many months of intensive research and engineering work, the researchers charged with defining and refining the physics behind the ambitious reactor design have published a series of papers summarizing the progress they have made and outlining the key research questions SPARC will enable.
Overall, says Martin Greenwald, deputy director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center and one of the project's lead scientists, the work is progressing smoothly and on track. This series of papers provides a high level of confidence in the plasma physics and the performance predictions for SPARC, he says. No unexpected impediments or surprises have shown up, and the remaining challenges appear to be manageable. This sets a solid basis for the device's operation once constructed, according to Greenwald....
Benedetto Marelli, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, was a postdoc at Tufts University's Omenetto Lab when he stumbled upon a novel use for silk. Preparing for a lab-wide cooking competition whose one requirement was to incorporate silk into each dish, Marelli accidentally left a silk-dipped strawberry on his bench: "I came back almost one week later, and the strawberries that were coated were still edible. The ones that were not coated with silk were completely spoiled." Marelli, whose previous research focused on the biomedical applications of silk, was stunned. "That opened up a new world for me," he adds. Marelli viewed his inadvertent discovery as an opportunity to explore silk's ability to address the issue of food waste. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2'); });
Marelli partnered with several Boston-based scientists, including Adam Behrens, then a postdoc in the lab of Institute Professor Robert Langer, to form Cambridge Crops. The company aims to iterate and expand on the initial discovery, using silk as its core ingredient to develop products that extend the shelf life of all sorts of perishable foods. The company's technology sees broad impact on extending the shelf life of whole and cut produce, meats, fish, and other foods. With support from a startup competition and subsequent venture capital, Cambridge Crops is equipped to increase global access to fresh foods, improve supply chain efficiencies, and even enable new products altogether....
Researchers have used color-changing fibers to help develop a mathematical model that can predict the stability of a knot. By combining the theoretical with the empirical, the new approach can explain why one knot is better than another....
