Discovery Knows No Borders
At a moment when movies are at the forefront of everyone’s minds, the Institute for Advanced Study is delighted to present a 90-second film of its own: a new anthem video showcasing IAS and its mission of enabling foundational discovery.
The video connects influential figures from the Institute’s illustrious history, including founding Faculty member Albert Einstein and Director J. Robert Oppenheimer, with scholars who continue to shape research in both the sciences and humanities today.
Much of the footage seen in the video was shot on the IAS campus in February 2024 and features a number of current IAS scholars, including those listed below:
Anastasia Stavroula Valtadorou
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Member, School of Historical Studies
Valtadorou is interested in ancient Greek drama and, in particular, Euripides' plays (both surviving and fragmentary). She is currently completing her first monograph on the positive representation of eros (erotic love) and marriage in Greek tragedy.
Alondra Nelson
Harold F. Linder Professor, School of Social Science
Nelson's major research contributions are situated at the intersection of racial formation and social citizenship and emerging scientific and technological phenomena.
Artane Jérémie Siad
Visitor, School of Mathematics
Siad is interested in arithmetic statistics and related areas. While at IAS, he hopes to understand the distribution of class groups in thin families of global fields.
Brad Bolman
Founders' Circle Member, School of Historical Studies
Bolman studies the history of knowledge about organisms since the nineteenth century. He is currently working on a transnational history of mycology and fungal science.
Chris Hamilton
John N. Bahcall Fellow, School of Natural Sciences
Hamilton's research concerns the dynamics of galaxies, globular clusters, binary stars, and planetary systems; compact object mergers; and the kinetic theory of stellar systems and plasmas.
Read more about Hamilton's research on “Dynamics in Translation”
Craig Sutton
Member, School of Mathematics
Sutton is interested in properties of eigenfunctions (e.g., nodal domains, nodal sets, and multiplicity) in the presence of symmetry and the spectral geometry of (locally homogeneous) three-manifolds.
Durba Ghosh
Visitor, School of Historical Studies
Ghosh is working on a book that historicizes commemorative statues installed in Britain and India under colonial rule and removed after independence in 1947.
Elena Murchikova
Visitor, School of Natural Sciences
Murchikova works on the interface of theory and observations. Her primary focus is black hole astrophysics, with a particular interest in the Milky Way’s galactic center black hole Sagittarius A* and its accretion.
Read more about Murchikova’s research on “How the Event Horizon Telescope Showed Us a Black Hole”
Holmfridur Hannesdottir
Member, School of Natural Sciences
Hannesdottir is interested in exploring the theoretical foundations of quantum field theory. By exploiting infrared divergences and constraints on the analytic structure, she probes properties of scattering amplitudes in perturbation theory.
Jacob Lurie
Frank C. and Florence S. Ogg Professor, School of Mathematics
Lurie’s research has influenced a diverse range of fields from topology to number theory, providing foundational work that has changed the way mathematicians describe and work with derived phenomena.
Jonathan Davis-Secord
Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellow, School of Historical Studies
Davis-Secord is a historian of early medieval England. His publications cover a variety of Old English, Latin, and Middle English works, as well as medieval music.
Maria H. Loh
Professor, School of Historical Studies
Loh is an internationally recognized expert in the field of early modern Italian art and theory. She is best known for her work on Venetian art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly Titian and the numerous copies and variants that his works have inspired.
Read a primer on Loh's research in this article on “Grafting New Stems”
Nathan Seiberg
Charles Simonyi Professor, School of Natural Sciences
Seiberg’s research focuses on various aspects of string theory, quantum field theory, and particle physics. He has made deep contributions to the understanding of the dynamics of quantum field theories, especially two-dimensional conformal field theories and supersymmetric quantum field theories.
Penelope Lisa Deutscher
Member, School of Social Science
Deutscher specializes in the intersections of twentieth-century French philosophy and theories of gender and sexuality. She is currently developing a post-Foucauldian vocabulary for the reproductive rights that are made and undermined by heterogeneous forms of power.
Qianshu Lu
Member, School of Natural Sciences
Lu studies the interplay between cosmology and particle theory. She is particularly interested in cosmological signatures of particle physics models that are motivated by constraints from quantum gravity.
Rebecca Rimai Diesing
Infosys Member, School of Natural Sciences
Diesing is interested in the acceleration and astrophysical impact of cosmic rays. She uses a detailed model of cosmic ray acceleration to better understand the evolutions and environments of extreme astrophysical phenomena.
Learn more about Diesing’s research on the IAS Instagram page
Sahand Seifnashri
Member, School of Natural Sciences
Seifnashri works on quantum field theory and its applications in high-energy and condensed matter physics. He is interested in generalized symmetries, their anomalies, and understanding the structures of extended operators and defects in quantum field theory.
Sarah Davis-Secord
Member, School of Historical Studies
Davis-Secord’s interests include Muslim-Christian interactions in the early medieval Mediterranean and the globalization of trade and communication networks.
Explore Davis-Secord’s ongoing research in this Instagram post
Shiyue Li
Member, School of Mathematics
Li's research probes combinatorial aspects of algebraic geometry.
Sierra Lomuto
Member, School of Historical Studies
Lomuto is interested in the relationship between literary fantasy and racial formation, and how global networks shaped medieval England’s literature.
Thomas Richard Cass
Erik Ellentuck Fellow, School of Mathematics
Cass’s research concerns problems in rough analysis, a relatively new branch of mathematics that has emerged as a framework for studying random systems driven by highly oscillatory signals.
Uddipan Banik
Member, School of Natural Sciences
Banik is interested in galactic dynamics, galaxy formation and evolution, dark matter, kinetic theory, and structure formation.
Explore Banik’s research into how perturbed galaxies reach equilibrium
Wilbur Shirley
Member, School of Natural Sciences
Shirley works at the intersection of condensed matter physics and quantum information. He is interested in topological, fractonic, and critical states of matter.
Yasha (Yakov) Savelyev
Member, School of Mathematics
Savelyev is interested in interactions of symplectic geometry, particularly gauge-theoretic ideas like Floer-Fukaya theory, aspects of dynamical systems, and algebraic topology.
