2023
Prof. Greg Engel has been named an American Chemical Society fellow
July 31, 2023

Congratulations to Chemistry professor Greg Engel, who is one of 42 new people honored as an ACS fellow for 2023. This program of the American Chemical Society recognizes ACS members who have made exceptional contributions to science, the profession, and the ACS community.
Argonne and University of Chicago researchers improve management of electric vehicle charging through machine learning
July 31, 2023

“When you have a lot of EVs charging at the same time, they can create a peak demand on the power station. This introduces increased charges, which we’re trying to avoid,” says Salman Yousaf, a graduate student in applied data science who is working on the project with three other students.
Image by Argonne National Laboratory
‘Oppenheimer’: 10 historical figures, ranked by accuracy
July 31, 2023

A Collider article mentions the movie's portrayal of Manhattan Project scientist David Hill, who was stationed at UChicago's Met Lab.
Photo courtesy of the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
How Netflix’s algorithms and tech feed its success
July 31, 2023

A Wall Street Journal article cites computer science Assoc. Prof. Marshini Chetty as saying that Netflix has no incentive to be transparent about its proprietary internal data.
The most surprising discoveries in physics
July 28, 2023

A Scientific American article features a quote from postdoctoral researcher Sanjana Curtis on why the discovery of neutrino oscillations is one of the most significant findings in physics.
Computer scientist Ben Zhao discusses AI regulations and protections
July 27, 2023

Ben Zhao discusses the Biden Administration's efforts to regulate AI in an artnet news article, AI protections in relation to the Hollywood actor and writer strike in a story for The Intercept, and a tool designed to protect your photos from AI in a story for MIT Technology Review.
UChicago scientists make new discovery proving entanglement is responsible for computational hardness in quantum systems
July 27, 2023

The model problem the team—led by computer scientist William Fefferman—debuted pinpointed a provable quantum speedup over any classical computer and indicates that entanglement is the cause.
Oppenheimer never won a Nobel Prize, but these 31 scientists with ties to the Manhattan Project did
July 25, 2023

Of the 31 Nobel Prize-winning Manhattan Project scientists, 12 had UChicago ties, including Maria Goeppert Mayer.
Photo courtesy of the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
Prof. Lek-Heng Lim wins Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship
July 24, 2023

University of Chicago professor of computational and applied mathematics Lek-Heng Lim has been awarded the 2023 Vannevar Bush Fellowship, the U.S. Department of Defense’s most prestigious award for basic research. It provides $3 million in funding to support transformative, “blue-sky” research at the limits of today’s technology.
Online product reviews are becoming a battlefield for modern AI
July 24, 2023

Computer scientist Ben Zhao says it’s “almost impossible” for AI to rise to the challenge of snuffing out AI-generated reviews because bot-created reviews are often indistinguishable from human ones.
What a Chicago physicists wants you to take away from Oppenheimer film
July 24, 2023

In a video interview, astrophysicist Don Lamb discusses key takeaways from "Oppenheimer."
How Oppenheimer weighed the odds of an atomic bomb test ending Earth
July 24, 2023

Astrophysicist Daniel Holz comments on the discussions and calculations over the issue of atmospheric ignition, saying "you don’t often talk in certainties...you talk in probabilities. If you haven’t done the experiment, you are hesitant to say, ‘This is impossible. It will never happen.’ … It was good to think it through.”
What the film “Oppenheimer” probably will not talk about: the lost women of the Manhattan Project
July 21, 2023

A Scientific American article describes the Lost Women of Science series and the launch of Lost Women of the Manhattan Project, sharing the stories of some women who worked on the atomic bomb, including Leona Woods and the team at UChicago's Metallurgical Laboratory.
Photo courtesy of the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
Crowd control
July 20, 2023

UChicago biophysicists from the Department of Physics and James Franck Institute discover that the way cells grow and multiply—normally considered part of the same process—are regulated separately.
Image courtesy John Devany
The Black scientists behind the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb program that inspired the movie ‘Oppenheimer’
July 20, 2023

There were at least 19 Black scientists and technicians who worked on the Manhattan Project, including mathematician J. Ernest Wilkins, the youngest student ever admitted to the University of Chicago at 13 years old who at 21 joined UChicago's Met Lab to research plutonium, and UChicago alums Moddie Daniel Taylor and Jasper Jeffries, whose scientific contributions were crucial to the Manhattan Project.
Photo courtesy of the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center