Institute for Advanced Study Appoints Neil Chriss to Board of Trustees
The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed Neil A. Chriss to its Board of Trustees, effective December 6, 2011. Dr. Chriss is Founder, Managing Principal and Chief Investment Officer of Hutchin Hill Capital. He is a founding Board Member of Math for America, established in 2004 to improve mathematics education in U.S. public secondary schools. A former Member (1994–95) in the Institute’s School of Mathematics, he is the Chair of the Institute’s School of Mathematics Council, which raises awareness of the School and its work beyond the Institute community.
Chriss received a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. He went on to earn an M.S. in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1993. Chriss began his career in 1993 in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto. In 1996 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. From there he joined the Quantitative Research Group at Morgan Stanley, where he remained until 1998, at which point he became Portfolio Manager in the Quantitative Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. From 2000–03 Chriss was President of ICor Brokerage, Inc., and from 2003–07, he was Managing Director and Head of Quantitative Strategies at SAC Capital Management.
“Neil Chriss has been a valued supporter of the work of the Institute through his membership on our Investment Committee and his leadership of our School of Mathematics Council,” stated Peter Goddard, Director of the Institute. “A former Member of the Institute, he is totally committed to its mission of supporting fundamental research in the sciences and humanities.”
In addition serving on the Executive Committee of Math for America, Chriss is also on the Board of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College, is an Advisory Director of the Financial Mathematics Program at the University of Chicago and is on the Visiting Committee of that school’s Physical Sciences Division. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, MSRI.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.