News

Four postdocs, Michel Fruchart, Hairong Lyu, Jun Nishida, and Anees Palapuravan, have been named recipients of the 2020-2021 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Yuji Suzuki, SM’70, a longtime supporter and former Council member of the Physical Sciences Division, established the Yuji and Lorraine Suzuki Postdoctoral Research Fund in 2016 to recognize outstanding postdoctoral researchers. The award provides a salary top-off.

Margo MacDonald was born and raised in Granville, Ohio. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and double majored in physics and biophysics. This is her third year pursuing a PhD in the Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences. We interviewed her via email about her experiences at UChicago.
 
 

New study helps pinpoint when Earth’s tectonic plates began—rocks tell story of planet’s transition from alien landscape to continents, oceans and life

Peter O. Vandervoort, astrophysicist and beloved UChicago mentor, 1935-2020, died Dec. 11. He was 85. Part of the UChicago community for nearly seven decades, Vandervoort, AB’54, SB’55, SM’56, PhD’60, was remembered by colleagues as the resident historian of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and a lifelong champion for the University.

Jack Steinberger, Nobel-winning physicist and UChicago alum, 1921-2020. Steinberger, SB’42, PhD’49, was most famous for his co-discovery of a new type of ghostlike particle called the muon neutrino—a breakthrough that earned him, Leon Lederman and Melvin Schwartz the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988.

PSD’s December spotlight is Joel Matos, Production Specialist & Graphic Designer, PSD Graphic Arts. Joel has been with UChicago for 9 years.

Chunxiao Song, PhD'13, co-founded a biotech startup that was recently acquired by Exact Sciences for $410 million. The startup company sequences genetic and epigenetic data to detect early-stage cancer.

In this unprecedented year of news, fifteen PSD-related stories on the UChicago News site garnered over 4,000 views according to Google analytics. The vital role of the PSD response to the pandemic is represented alongside coverage of the University’s appointment of its first woman provost and breakthroughs in field-defining research. Here, ranked by highest readership, are the top stories covering PSD news and research for 2020.

The Physical Sciences Division of the University of Chicago has selected 20 PhD students in the Departments of Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, and Astronomy & Astrophysics as the 2020–21 Radix Trading Fellows.

Geophysical Sciences Professor Elisabeth Moyer discusses her work on the Research Computing Center's U.S. Energy History Visualization in the Atlantic. It is an interactive Sankey diagram of energy transitions.

Geophysical Sciences Prof. Fred Ciesla comments on asteroid dust from Hayabusa2 solving a mystery of planet creation

Astronomer Andrea Ghez on the responsibility that comes with a Nobel Prize. Honored for black hole discovery, Laboratory Schools alum becomes ‘spokesperson for science’

Nine current and former University of Chicago Physical Science Division scientists were named in Web of Science's 2020 report of highly cited researchers. Researchers on the list have demonstrated significant and broad influence in the past decade, with highly cited papers ranking in the top 1% by citation for a chosen field or fields.

UChicago campus full voter engagement helps boost Hyde Park-Kenwood voter turn-out to 88.19 percent. Precinct 27, which covers campus, exceeded 100 percent voter turn-out

CS student, Tyler Skluzacek, invented a vibrating smartwatch to stop nightmares affecting combat veterans. Now it has been given FDA approval as a therapeutic device