News

2026

University of Chicago wins distinguished Laude Institute Moonshots seed grant

April 15, 2026

Moonshots-ONE Seed winner: Accelerating Science Actionable AI Weather Forecasts

The University of Chicago Data Science Institute faculty, affiliated faculty, and partners win seed funding to advance actionable AI weather forecasting in developing economies in Africa and Asia.


Alexandra Worden named Guggenheim Fellow

April 14, 2026

Alexandra Worden

Congratulations to Alexandra Worden, professor of Geophysical Sciences and senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, who has received a Guggenheim Fellowship. She joins a group of distinguished artists, scientists, and scholars in the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows honored for “prior career achievement and exceptional promise.”


Meet the computer scientist seeking to save human creativity because ‘it’s the best of us’

April 13, 2026

Photo of Ben Zhao

Prof Ben Zhao says it'll be a 'dark world' if AI slop proliferates.
 


What to know about the Artemis II mission and what might come after

April 13, 2026

Photo of Derek Buzasi.

What they might be looking for might surprise you, said Professor Derek Buzasi, an astronomer at the University of Chicago. His segment begins at 0:50.


Berggren Center co-director takes on new role translating quantum science to the clinic

April 13, 2026

Julian Solway, MD, co-director of the Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine at UChicago.

Profile features Julian Solway, co-director of the UChicago Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine, along with Chemistry professor Greg Engel.


Could AI models forecast extreme weather events? With Pedram Hassanzadeh

April 13, 2026

A colorized image a storm starting to form.

Climate scientist explains how models are being trained to predict heat waves, monsoons and even unprecedented ‘gray swan’ events in this latest Big Brains episode.


$50 million gift to advance UChicago research and support faculty in AI

April 13, 2026

Photo of the University of Chicago Quadrangle.

Gift from Rika and Joe Mansueto launches a nearly $200 million initiative to recruit and retain leading scholars across disciplines.
 


Scientists discover ‘most chemically pristine’ star yet found in the universe

April 13, 2026

An artist's conception of the red giant star SDSS J0915-7334, which was born near the Large Magellanic Cloud and has now journeyed to reside in the Milky Way.

On trip to Chilean telescope, UChicago undergrad class sheds new light on evolution of earliest stars.


UChicago CS team qualified for 2026 ICPC World Final championships in Dubai

April 13, 2026

The 2026 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) North America Championship (NAC) hosted by University of Central Florida – March 18-23 – The top teams from the ICPC NAC 2026 will advance to the 2026 ICPC World Finals

Back-to-back successes cap a championship run for team “pocpocpoc”, consisting of undergraduates Bach Tran, Hung Pham, and Long Nguyen.
 


UChicago researchers build a tool to help fix peer review

April 13, 2026

Robotic head next to a paper with a scanning magnifying glass.

As AI floods academic publishing, Chenhao Tan's lab argues AI can be part of the fix.
 


When AI meets muscle: context-aware electrical stimulation promises a new way to guide human movements

April 13, 2026

Common in parts of Europe, windows often use a “tilt-turn” mechanism, which can be opened vertically or horizontally. In this case, the user only wants to open by tilting the top portion of the window. By recognizing the location and object, our syste

A new system from Yun Ho, Romain Nith, and Pedro Lopes combines AI and electrical muscle stimulation to physically guide users through unfamiliar tasks—marking a leap toward general-purpose, context-aware embodied assistance.
 


Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb selected as a 51 Pegasi b Fellow

April 7, 2026

Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb

Piaulet-Ghorayeb will blend atmospheric observations and theory to reveal the nature of sub-Neptunes, the galaxy's most common worlds.


An AI-authored paper just passed peer review. The scientific community isn’t ready

April 4, 2026

AI can generate research infinitely faster than humans can read it, threatening to bury an already strained peer-review system under a mountain of automated submissions.

The arrival of AI-generated research papers marks a turning point that could radically accelerate discovery—or drown it in automated mediocrity.


Huge study of chats between delusional users and AI finds alarming patterns

April 4, 2026

A distorted human face.

An analysis of hundreds of thousands of chats between AI chatbots and human users who experienced AI-tied delusional spirals found that the bots frequently reinforced delusional and even dangerous beliefs.


Study: The most effective robot tutors don’t pretend to be human

April 4, 2026

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 25: U.S. first lady Melania Trump enters the East Room with a humanoid robot during the Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit at the White House on March 25, 2026 in Washington, DC. Melania Trump held a roundtable at

New research from the University of Chicago suggests that computers make better tutors when they are not so thoroughly programmed to pretend to be human.