News

In this latest episode of the podcast Big Brains, space historian Jordan Bimm examines our militaristic relationship to the stars, and how it still shapes our future.

Just out of stealth, Seymour Goodman Professor of Computer Science Fred Chong and Pranav Gokhale, PhD’20, have a new startup for software that makes quantum computing faster. Part of Duality, the first accelerator in the U.S. for quantum startups, Super.tech is building software to power next-gen quantum computing.

The University of Chicago podcast network interviews PSD biochemist Chuan He about his breakthrough discovery manipulating RNA for higher yields and greater drought resistance in rice and potatoes, for "Big Brains Podcast: How a genetic breakthrough could address global hunger."

Fermi and UChicago Kavli scientist Brian Nord has envisioned a new hybrid data-analysis method that was awarded funding by the Department of Energy. It integrates both the strengths of machine learning and the interpretations of statistics. His new method could potentially advance how scientists approach cosmology.

Two UChicago-affiliated researchers came out on top at the IBM Quantum Open Science Challenge — Alexey Galda for the graph state challenge and Pranav Gokhale for the SWAP gate challenge. The first-of-its-kind challenge presented two targets to the research community and offered prize money and experimental time on their quantum computer as rewards. 

Prof. Emeritus Noel M. Swerdlow of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, a distinguished historian of science and the world’s foremost expert on Ptolemy and Copernicus, died July 24. He was 79.
 

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to understand how manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops and increase drought tolerance, explain why planets with oxygenated atmospheres like ours could host alien life, and extol what billionaires mean for the changing arc of aerospace history. And, a Nobel-winning biochemist, Jack Szostak, will join the faculty in 2022.

The Chicago Quantum Exchange, a growing hub for the research and development of quantum technology that is based at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, has added to its community two world-leading research institutions at the forefront of quantum information science and engineering: the Weizmann Institute of Science and The Ohio State University.

Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jack Szostak will join the Department of Chemistry faculty, effective Sept. 1, 2022. A pioneering scholar of genetics who examines the biochemical origins of life, Szostak shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009. He will become the 24th person to hold a University Professorship, and the 11th active faculty member holding that title.

The outing of a top Catholic official using supposedly anonymous data from his cell phone is raising questions about privacy. NBC’s Joshua Johnson asks Ben Zhao, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science, to explain the practice of de-anonymization and whether or not you need to be concerned about your data.

In an annual summer reading list, Assistant Professor Blase Ur and Associate Professor Daniel Fabrycky recommend summer reading, alongside other 2021 teaching award winners.

Manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops, as well as increasing drought tolerance, announced a group of scientists from the University of Chicago, Peking University and Guizhou University. The discovery of the exciting and simple modification was co-led by John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Chuan He.
 

Adela DePavia was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and Northern California’s East Bay Area. After finishing undergrad in 2019, she spent a year on a research fellowship before joining the Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics (CCAM) program at UChicago. Soon starting her second year, she studies connections between discrete and continuous time optimization, and optimization on manifolds.

The Physical Sciences Division community and the Department of Physics mourn the loss Ilan Naibryf, a rising fourth-year physics major remembered as a compassionate, dedicated friend.

UChicago-led South Pole Telescope has helped pinpoint the location of a supermassive black hole in galaxy Centaurus A. Contributing to the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, the new imagery reveals how a gigantic jet is being born. Most remarkably, only the outer edges of the jet seem to emit radiation, which challenges our theoretical models of jets.