Breakthroughs Workshops and Goldwasser Exploratory Workshops | Call for Proposals

We are delighted to announce a formal opportunity for researchers to propose specific workshops to be held at the Simons Institute. We invite proposals in the following two streams:

Goldwasser Exploratory Workshops: This workshop series honors Simons Institute Director Emerita Shafi Goldwasser, whose ventures into uncharted territory have led to field-transforming discoveries, including zero-knowledge proofs, for which she and Silvio Micali received the Turing Award. In this spirit, each Goldwasser Exploratory Workshop will stake out new territory, explore new interdisciplinary alliances, or advance unexpected approaches to longstanding problems. 

Breakthroughs Workshops: From time to time, the steady progress of research is interrupted by a massive leap forward, due to a particular breakthrough result. When such breakthroughs happen, they enable a cascade of progress as researchers examine their implications for a wide range of problems and applications. The Simons Institute’s Breakthrough Workshops will celebrate breakthrough results and provide a forum for the integration and extrapolation to follow.

Call for proposals. The Simons Institute currently invites proposals for Goldwasser Exploratory Workshops and Breakthrough Workshops to be held at Calvin Lab in 2025–26. There will be a maximum of two workshops in each series over the course of the year, and each workshop may last from three to five days. Costs for the workshops (speaker lodgings, workshop refreshments, publicity, and staffing) will be covered by the Simons Institute, up to a maximum of $35K. 

Submit a proposal. Proposals should include a description of the topic and how it fits into the chosen workshop series, a statement of the role of theory in the proposal and why the Simons Institute is uniquely appropriate to host this particular workshop, and a list of confirmed organizers and proposed invitees. Proposals will be considered on a rolling basis and should be submitted as a PDF to simonsassociatedirector@berkeley.edu.