This prestigious appointment begins on August 1, 2019.
Awarded by the Simons Foundation on the basis of an annual competition, Investigator awards are designed “support outstanding scientists in their most productive years, when they are establishing creative new research directions, providing leadership to the field and effectively mentoring junior scientists.”
A member of the YITP and Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty since 2012, Rouven has done groundbreaking work in the elementary particle physics and astrophysics, particularly in developing innovative methods in the search for dark matter. As cited on the foundation website, Rouven “has helped pioneer several novel direct-detection concepts to probe dark matter below the proton mass and has been a leader in establishing this as a new research direction, attracting significant theoretical and experimental efforts. He has also been a leader in conceiving of fixed-target experiments to search for new forces, helping to spawn several new efforts. Although a theorist, he is co-leading or participating in several experiments searching for dark matter and new forces.”
Simons Investigators are chosen on the basis of an annual competition the mathematical and physical sciences, on the basis of nominations of tenured faculty in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Simons Investigator program began in 2012, and this year Rouven joins Xiuxiong Chen of our Department of Mathematics as the first awardees at Stony Brook University.