News

The Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program has selected two PSD students for its national laboratory research award. Chemistry students, Daniel King, will join research on data science for AI applications to chemical, geological, biochemical, and materials sciences at Argonne National Laboratory. Physics student, Alexander Hryciuk, will join experimental research on high energy physics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Sixty-five students were awarded nationwide.

Assistant Professor Edwin Kite, Department of the Geophysical Sciences, has been awarded funding from the first Scialog initiative, which is short for “science + dialog.” Created by Research Corp. for Science Advancement, the Scialog format brings together early-career scientists to write proposals for high-risk, high-reward collaborations. Kite’s group proposed to create stochastic simulation of evolving planetary biospheres. They were among 20 groups selected, with $55,000 granted from Simons Foundation.

A team that includes UChicago, Argonne beamline scientist Barbara Lavina and physicist Jiyong Zhao will be among the first to study asteroid fragments from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. This summer they took readings of asteroid fragments using X-ray scattering methods at beamline 3-ID-B at the Advanced Photon Source. Next, the fragments will return to Argonne for more extensive readings using Mössbauer spectroscopy techniques.
 

By stacking ultra-thin layers of crystal on top of each other, rotated slightly, researchers led by Jiwoong Park, professor of chemistry and molecular engineering, created a material that is extremely good at both containing heat and moving it—an unusual ability at the microscale.
 

Haynes Stephens, a graduate student in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, has been awarded by the Diversity Advisory Board for his efforts on behalf of diversity and inclusion in the PSD. Read more about his contributions to the Division.
 

As rising sea levels threaten coastal areas, scientists like Reika Yokochi in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences are using an emerging nuclear dating technique to track the ins and outs of water flow.
 

A new project funded through a $3.25 million grant from DoE to UChicago and Argonne National Lab will allow researchers to apply artificial intelligence to accelerate the scientific simulation of complex physical systems, especially those relating to climate change.

The University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange are among the partnering institutions awarded $5 million from the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator. QuSTEAM: Convergence Undergraduate Education in Quantum Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics will be a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional program led by Ohio State intended to revolutionize and create more equitable pathways to quantum science education.

UChicago is a partner a collaboration of researchers led by Cornell University that has been awarded $22.5 million from the National Science Foundation to continue gaining the fundamental understanding needed to transform the brightness of electron beams available to science, medicine and industry.

Three PhD students and two students in the MS in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MS-CAPP) program were named to the 2022 class of the Siebel Scholars. This year’s class of UChicago CS Siebel Scholars includes students studying quantum computing, security and privacy, and energy-efficient software, as well as master’s students working with policymakers, non-profits, and governments on applying data-driven and computational methods for transformative social impact.

The Big Brains podcast speaks with Paul Alivisatos, the new UChicago president and nanomaterials pioneer. He discusses his field-defining research and how universities can support scientific discovery.

Welcome to the new faculty joining the Physical Sciences Division in '21-22 academic year!

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to develop a new carbon material for better bioelectronics, to engineer organic capsules that vacuum and deliver cargo at will, and to understand how particles might communicate with each other and relate as symmetries.

Assistant Professor Sebastian Hurtado-Salazar of the Department of Mathematics has been awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics “for contributions to the proof of Zimmer’s conjecture.” He shares it with Aaron Brown of Northwestern University. Their work has shown there is a cutoff in how many dimensions a space can have and also have special symmetries called higher-rank lattices.

Scientists are exploring combinatorial rules for new models of the molecular wiring of cells. Assistant Professor Arvind Murugan, Department of Physics, contributed to modeling work that showed how promiscuous systems of molecular interactions could offer advantages over one-to-one sets of interactions.