News

Building on decades of effort, Lizhong Zhang, Member (2023–24) in the School of Natural Sciences; James Stone, Professor in the School; and a team of astrophysicists have achieved a major milestone: developing the most comprehensive model to date of luminous black hole accretion. Their breakthrough allows scholars to "observe" such black hole systems not through a telescope, but through a computer.

Cathy N. Davidson, Visitor in the School of Social Science, has been named a recipient of the 2025 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education, for her work as a "leading voice in digital literacy, learning science, and interdisciplinary innovation."

Ten out of the 40 mathematicians named to the American Mathematical Society’s class of 2026 Fellows are current or former Members in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Mathematics.

Sushant Sachdeva, Visitor (2019) in the School of Mathematics, has been announced as the winner of the 2025 Infosys Prize in Engineering and Computer Science for making "fundamental contributions [that] have profoundly impacted many algorithmic challenges underlying modern society."

Marco Fantuzzi, Member (2012) and Visitor (2013) in the School of Historical Studies, has been named a winner of a Carl Friedrich von Siemens Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Fantuzzi is a renowned classicist whose research interests span Greek literature and drama, philology, and literary criticism, among other fields.

Chen Ning Yang (杨振宁), Faculty (1955–66) and Member (1949–54) in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences, passed away on October 18, 2025 at the age of 103. At the Institute, he produced a body of work which redefined how scientists conceptualize the fundamental symmetries of the universe. 

Lauren K. Williams, von Neumann Fellow (2017) in the Schools of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, has been named a 2025 MacArthur Fellow. The award recognizes Williams’s influential and wide-ranging research that bridges algebraic combinatorics, geometry, and physics. 

On September 22, the Institute officially began its 2025–26 academic year, bringing together scholars from around the globe to pursue a range of individual and collaborative projects. The 259 visiting scholars, representing 39 nations and more than 108 institutions, will work alongside the 26 permanent Faculty and 22 Emeriti, all of whom are leaders in their respective fields.

Camillo De Lellis, IBM von Neumann Professor in the School of Mathematics, has been elected as a fellow of Italy’s most historic scientific academy: the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He is one of only 46 scholars to be honored with this distinction in 2025.

In a recent article for Science, Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, proposes an approach to artificial intelligence’s unchecked proliferation and escalating harms: a reapplication of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) program developed for the Human Genome Project.