Board of Directors

Ms. Simons also has more than 25 years of experience actively supporting non-profit organizations in New York City and Long Island. In addition to her work to advance basic science research, Ms. Simons has been involved in K-12 education for underserved communities. Ms. Simons is Vice President of the Board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an outstanding U.S. research facility specializing in molecular biology and genetics. She is President of the Board of the LearningSpring School, a New York City school for children ages 5–14 diagnosed on the autism spectrum. She is also a member of Board of Trustees at the East Harlem Tutorial Program, an after school program in New York City.

Ms. Simons received a B.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from SUNY at Stony Brook.

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.

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.

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 1975. 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.