Board of Directors

Marilyn Hawrys Simons is president of the Simons Foundation. Under her leadership, the foundation has grown rapidly since its inception in 1994 to become one of the country's leading private funders of basic scientific research. Simons also has more than 25 years of experience actively supporting nonprofit organizations in New York City and Long Island, New York. In addition to her work to advance basic science research, Simons has been involved in K-12 education for underserved communities. Simons is vice president of the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, an outstanding research facility specializing in molecular biology and genetics. She is treasurer of the board of the LearningSpring School, a New York City school for children aged 5-14 with diagnoses on the autism spectrum. She is also a member of the board of trustees at the East Harlem Tutorial Program, an after-school program in New York City. Simons received a B.A. and Ph.D. in economics from The State University of New York at Stony Brook.

David Eisenbud received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1970 at the University of Chicago under Saunders Mac Lane and Chris Robson, and was on the faculty at Brandeis University before going to the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been professor of mathematics since 1997. Eisenbud has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and a research professor at the University of Bonn in Germany, at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and at the Institut Poincaré. He served as director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute from 1997 to 2007, and served as director of mathematics and the physical sciences at the Simons Foundation from 2009 to 2012. Eisenbud was president of the American Mathematical Society from 2003 to 2005. He is now a director at Math for America, a foundation devoted to improving mathematics teaching. He chairs the editorial board of the journal Algebra and Number Theory, which he helped establish in 2006, and serves on several other editorial boards. Eisenbud has been a member of the board of Mathematical Sciences and their Applications (part of the National Research Council), and is a member of the U.S. National Committee of the International Mathematical Union. In 2006 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Eisenbud's major research contributions have focused on the study of algebraic curves and their moduli, and on the commutative algebra and algebraic geometry related to free resolutions.

Dr. Fischbach joined the Simons Foundation in 2006 to oversee the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, and is now the foundation's Director of Life Sciences. He formerly served as Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences at Columbia University, and was Director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the N.I.H. from 1998-2001. Dr. Fischbach began his research career at the N.I.H, serving there from 1966 – 1973. He subsequently served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 1973 – 1981. From 1981 – 1990, Dr. Fischbach was the Head of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine. In 1990, he returned to Harvard Medical School where he was the Chairman of the Neurobiology Departments of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital until 1998. Dr. Fischbach was a non-resident fellow of the Salk Institutes for over 20 years, and today serves on the Board of the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Association. Throughout his career he has investigated trophic interactions between nerve cells and the targets they innervate.

Mark Silber is executive vice president and CFO of Renaissance Technologies LLC, a New York–based private investment adviser. Mr. Silber joined the company in 1983 and is responsible for the overall operations of its finance, administration and compliance departments. He was formerly a certified public accountant with the firm of Seidman & Seidman, now BDO USA. He holds a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, a J.D. and L.L.M. in tax law from New York University School of Law, and an M.B.A. in finance from New York University Graduate School of Business Administration.

James H. Simons, Ph.D., is chairman of the board of the Simons Foundation. Dr. Simons is also board chair and founder of Renaissance Technologies. Prior to his financial career, Dr. Simons served as chairman of the mathematics department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and was a cryptanalyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Simons' scientific work was in geometry and topology; his most influential work involved the discovery and application of certain measurements, now called Chern-Simons invariants, which have had wide use, particularly in theoretical physics. Dr. Simons holds a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and won the American Mathematical Society's Veblen Prize for his work in geometry in 1976. He is a trustee of the Stony Brook Foundation, Rockefeller University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.