News

This year, the Institute's international community hails from 47 countries, representing 105 institutions worldwide. Visiting scholars range from postdocs to distinguished professors, united across disciplines by a common cause to push the boundaries of knowledge and pursue their own curiosity.

Maria Hsiuya Loh, an internationally recognized expert in the field of early modern Italian art, has joined the Institute for Advanced Study as Professor in the School of Historical Studies. Loh is best known for her work on Venetian art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The IAS Board of Trustees has elected John Overdeck as its next Chair. Overdeck, a philanthropist, business leader, and dedicated supporter of the Institute, will succeed software entrepreneur Charles Simonyi, who served as Chair since 2008.

Lia Medeiros, current Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has led a group of researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration in producing a groundbreaking new image of the M87 black hole, using machine learning algorithm PRIMO to achieve the full resolution of the array for the first time.

Measuring the mass of a galaxy cluster is difficult—clusters cannot be “weighed” by placing them on a scale. Digvijay Wadekar, current Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has worked to develop an AI program to identify new variables that might make inferring the mass from other observable quantities more accurate.

Salvatore Torquato, past Member in the School of Natural Sciences, and his IAS collaborator Oliver Philcox have applied methodologies from materials science in a cosmological context, providing new insights into the fundamental structure of the universe. Their work is now published in Physical Review X.

The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed Alexandra Day as its first Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Programming, and Partnerships. Day, who has extended the reach and engagement of some of the nation’s leading educational and cultural institutions, will begin at IAS on February 15, 2023.

A research team, led by current Visitor Roman Rafikov, has developed a technique to study planet formation in other solar systems. By analyzing the vortices that form within discs of gas and dust around young stars, limits can be placed on the mass and age of planets of various sizes.

The Rubenstein Commons building at IAS has opened its doors, providing a nexus of flexible gathering spaces to support enhanced communication and collaboration among scholars, and forming an inviting social hub for the wider IAS community.

Neutron stars are one of the densest objects found anywhere in the Universe. Scientists still do not understand what exactly they are made from. A new piece of the puzzle, constraining the range of possibilities, has been discovered by a pair of scholars at IAS.