Simon Tavaré is a statistician, computational biologist and cancer researcher. He is Professor of Statistics and Biological Sciences, and Herbert and Florence Irving Director, at the Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics at Columbia University in the City of New York. He previously held Professorships in the Department of Oncology and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMPT) at the University of Cambridge. A former Fellow of Christ’s, he has been an Honorary Fellow of the College since 2020.
After his PhD in Probability and Statistics from the University of Sheffield, Simon moved to the USA where he held positions at the University of Utah, Colorado State University, and the University of Southern California which he joined as a Professor in 1989. He held the George and Louise Kawamoto Chair in Biological Sciences at USC from 1998 to 2014 and was an adjunct Research Professor in Molecular and Computational Biology from 2014 to 2018. In 2018 he was appointed Professor Emeritus of Quantitative and Computational Biology
From 2003 to 2019 Simon was at the University of Cambridge. He was a Professor at DAMPT and Director of its MPhil in Computational and Systems Biology 2004-2014 and its Wellcome Trust PhD program in Mathematical Genomics and Medicine 2010-2017. He was also Professor of Cancer Research (Bioinformatics) in the Department of Oncology, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute 2013–18, and Director of Research at the Institute 2018-23, having been a Senior Group Leader since 2006. He was a Fellow of Christ’s from 2004 to 2019.
Simon joined Columbia University in 2018 as founding Director of the Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics and Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Biological Sciences.
Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2009 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011, Simon served as President of the London Mathematical Society 2015-17. He is also a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and an International Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Photo credit: Simon Tavaré / photography by Barbara Alper