News

Nine PSD graduate students have been awarded 2023 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.

Assoc. Prof. Jacob Bean comments on the newly discovered exoplanet Smertrios and its surprising atmospheric composition. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This month PSD researchers have been recognized for their pioneering discoveries, the quality and innovation of their research programs, and their unique contributions to new fields of inquiry. 

PSD’s March spotlight is Ryan Landek, Executive Director of Computing and IT. Ryan joined the Physical Sciences Division on November 2022 to develop, lead, and oversee PSD’s computing and information technology strategy.

Lauren is a third-year UChicago chemistry PhD student, with a bachelor’s in chemistry from UC Davis. She is a synthetic inorganic chemist and works primarily with a carbon and sulfur-based scaffold that she links between transition metals. We interviewed her about her experiences at UChicago. 

A new breakthrough by UChicago scientists shows how to make MXenes far more quickly and easily, with fewer toxic byproducts. Researchers hope the discovery, published March 24 in Science, will spur new innovation and pave the way towards using MXenes in everyday electronics and devices.

Image by Di Wang

By examining the composition of Venus’ atmosphere today and running simulations of its past to recreate those conditions, UChicago researchers found very few scenarios in which Venus could have sustained liquid water and moderate temperatures for long.

Images by NASA/JPL

Prof. Wendy Freedman discusses what the early galaxies discovered by JWST tell us about the early universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Matt Kirshen on StarTalk Radio.

New research by Prof. Cheng Chin at UChicago and Shanxi University discovered a way to simulate superconductivity that occurs when two sheets of graphene are slightly twisted as they are layered.

NBC Chicago celebrates pi day with Pi Pizza and UChicago mathematician, Amie Wilkinson.

New Scientist article discusses Asst. Prof. Pedro Lopes and graduate student Jasmine Lu's work to create a smartwatch that is partly made of slime mold, a living entity that must be fed adequately and often enough or the watch will stop working.

Quanta Magazine discusses Prof. Frank Calegari's co-authored paper that provided proof of the unbounded denominators conjecture.

Image: Jaynelon/Quanta Magazine

Researchers from UChicago, ETH Zurch, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard have formed an international, interdisciplinary collaborative to explore how life evolved on Earth and, possibly, other planets.

Assoc. Prof. Edwin Kite and graduate student Alexandra Warren work to model the history of Venus' atmosphere.

Image: Inverse/Shutterstock

Prof. Robert M. Wald discusses new research findings and his studies under celebrated theoretical physicist John Wheeler.

Image: Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine