2016 Physics of the Observer
FQXi's Physics of the Observer program was made possibly through support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The PIs listed were selected by a grant review panel and then recommended for funding through the FQXi Fund, a donor advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Awardee ![]() ![]() |
Institution | Value ![]() ![]() |
Project Title |
Gerardo Adesso / Tommaso Tufarelli / Marco Piani | The University of Nottingham / University of Strathclyde | $120,000 | Sentient observers in the quantum regime and the emergence of an objective reality |
Paula Apsell | WGBH | $150,000 | What the Physics?! |
John Barrow | University of Cambridge | $99,997 | Do Observers Matter? Exploring the physics of the observer |
Raphael Bousso | University of California, Berkeley | $123,898 | Dynamics of Observer-Dependent Holographic Screens |
George Andrew David Briggs | University of Oxford | $114,858 | Bench-top experimental test of gravitation as an observer of quantum states |
Adam Brown | Stanford University | $37,500 | Complexity, Black Holes, and Observers |
Craig Callender | University of California, San Diego | $36,110 | The Flow of Time, Physics, and Observation |
Giulio Chiribella / Adán Cabello / Matthias Kleinmann | University of Hong Kong / University of Seville / University of the Basque Country | $113,850 | The Observer Observed: a Bayesian Route to the Reconstruction of Quantum Theory |
James Crutchfield | University of California, Davis | $73,203 | Information Thermodynamics of the Observer |
Lidia del Rio / Renato Renner | University of Bristol / ETH Zurich | $60,000 | Many worlds, many times: Emergent observers in non-probabilisitic theories |
Richard Easther | University of Auckland | $121,463 | Minimal Observers and Maximal Observations |
Christopher Fuchs / Christopher Timpson | University of Massachusetts, Boston / University of Oxford | $140,959 | Does Participatory Realism Make Sense? The Role of Observership in Quantum Theory |
Ivette Fuentes / Stefano Mancini / David Edward Bruschi | University of Vienna / Universiai di Camerino / University of York | $84,021 | Quantum Observers in a Relativistic World |
Andrew J P Garner / Mile Gu | National University of Singapore / Nanyang Technological University, Singapore | $50,600 | Observer-dependent complexity: The quantum-classical divergence over 'what is complex?' |
Samir Mathur | The Ohio State University | $47,606 | What is an observer? |
Markus Mueller | University of Western Ontario | $101,574 | Emergent objective reality - from observers to physics via Solomonoff induction |
Rahul Nandkishore / Siddharth Ashok Parameswaran | University of Colorado, Boulder / University of California, Irvine | $66,685 | Transitions to Ergodicity: Emergence of Observers in Many-Body Quantum Systems |
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | University of Washington, Seattle | $100,533 | Epistemological Schemata of Astro|Physics: A Reconstruction of Observers |
Matthew Pusey / Lluis Masanes / Joel J. Wallman | Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics / University College London / University of Waterloo | $60,950 | Observers in Foil Theories |
Andrew Strominger | Harvard University | $45,001 | Observers on the Boundary of Spacetime |
Sara Imari Walker | Arizona State University | $73,151 | Accommodating observers in fundamental physics with causal mechanics |
David Wolpert | Santa Fe Institute | $128,319 | Observers as self-maintaining non-equilibrium systems |
Mischa Woods | University College London | $60,000 | Finite dimensional Quantum Observers |
TOTAL | $2,010,278 |
||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |