Letter from the Director, October 2025
Dear friends,
Warm greetings from Berkeley, where our Fall 2025 research programs on Complexity and Linear Algebra, and on Algorithmic Foundations for Emerging Computing Technologies, are in full swing. There is a seminar talk or reading group meeting pretty much every day, and the two programs are also discovering interesting synergies and exploring holding a joint seminar series.
First off, I’d like to congratulate the recipients of the inaugural Trevisan Prize: Thomas Rothvoss and Yang Liu. Both winners have been long-term visitors at the Simons Institute, and Thomas is currently on our Scientific Advisory Board. This new prize honors Luca Trevisan, who was a faculty member at Bocconi University when he passed away in June 2024. Luca served as senior scientist of the Simons Institute from 2014 to 2019.
The application process is now open for postdoctoral-level research fellows and senior visitors for the Fall 2026 research programs on Spectral Theory Beyond Graphs, and on Pseudorandomness & High-Dimensional Expansion. We hope many of you will consider applying. And please feel free to share this call for applications with your networks.
In our latest episode of Polylogues, we have a delightful conversation between Yael Tauman Kalai (MIT) and Daniele Micciancio (UC San Diego), two of the senior participants in this past summer’s Cryptography program. The episode is hosted by Summer 2025 Science Communicator in Residence Lakshmi Chandrasekaran.
This month’s newsletter features reflections on the role of scientists in government from Spring 2025 Law and Society Fellow Serena Booth, an assistant professor at Brown University who previously served as an AI policy advisor in the U.S. Senate.
Also in our SimonsTV corner this month, we have Simons Institute Senior Scientist Nikhil Srivastava’s presentation on Diagonalization Algorithms, from the recent Complexity and Linear Algebra Boot Camp, and David Patterson’s talk, Computer Architecture 101 and Its Future, from the Algorithmic Foundations for Emerging Computing Technologies Boot Camp.
I hope your autumn is off to a great start and hope to see you in Berkeley soon.
Best wishes,
Venkat
Venkatesan Guruswami
Interim Director, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing