News

In a unique year, UChicago students find togetherness—apart. Students across majors joined astro professor Daniel Holz for “Are We Doomed?,” a class that uses readings and guest experts to inform different apocalyptic scenarios: nuclear war, climate change, artificial intelligence, and of course, pandemics and related biological issues.

Theoretical physicist Marc Kamionkowski, PhD’91, has been awarded the 2021 Gruber Cosmology Prize, along with Uroš Seljak of UC Berkeley and LBL, and Matias Zaldarriaga of IAS, for their contributions to methods essential for studying the early universe through analysis of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. The award is given through the Gruber Foundation, which was established at Yale to honor and encourage excellence in the fields of cosmology, genetics, neuroscience, justice, and women’s rights.

An interdisciplinary team of UChicago physicists, including Michael Fruchart, Ryo Hanai, Peter Littlewood, and Vincenzo Vitelli, published a new theory for non-reciprocal matter in Nature. They describe how systems composed of many objects that have non-reciprocal interactions can evolve in surprising ways. This may underlie many phenomena we see around us, from neurons to bird flocks and quantum systems.

Edgar Marrufo and Aurora Ireland, graduate students in the Department of Physics, are among 78 outstanding U.S. graduate students who have been selected by The Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program to perform research in national laboratories.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to build a quantum bit that can search for dark matter, use muscle response for digital authentication, design 'nanotraps' to catch and clear coronavirus from tissue, and harness molecules into a single quantum state. 

The PSD remembers organic chemist John C. Martin, PhD’77, who became a billionaire by developing and marketing a daily single-dose pill that transformed HIV into a manageable disease and who popularized another drug that cures hepatitis C. He died on March 30 at age 69.

In a long-awaited breakthrough, Prof. Cheng Chin and graduate students in the Department of Physics have harnessed molecules into a single quantum state —one of the most important goals in quantum physics.

UChicago scientists, including Assoc. Prof. Bozhi Tian of Chemistry, design ‘nanotraps’ to catch and clear coronavirus from tissue. The potential COVID-19 treatment pairs nanoparticles with immune system to search and destroy viruses.

UChicago beamline scientists at the GeoSoilEnviroCARS facility housed at Argonne National Laboratory helped geologists unlock the secrets of Earth’s early atmosphere. The technique involves very small beams that can measure the exact composition of the atmosphere when Earth’s oldest rocks were formed.

Fernando Bañales Mejia was born and raised in Riverside, California. After graduating from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, in 2017, he attended the University of Chicago for two years as a PSD Pathway scholar in the Master of Science in the Physical Sciences Division (MSPSD) program. He completed the program in 2020, during the pandemic.

Graduate student Katrina Miller writes for Scientific American about astronomers, like Assoc. Prof. in physics Abigail Vieregg who works on IceCube, searching for the Universe’s most energetic particles by turning on the radio.

Victor Veitch, a new assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and the first faculty hire in the University of Chicago’s new data science initiative, wants to see a future of “safe and credible” artificial intelligence. In order to realize that vision, he’s interested in revising the foundations of machine learning so that models work in ways more palatable to humans and human values, instead of today’s black boxes and non-sequitur logic.

Planetary scientist Edwin Kite led a study finding icy clouds could have kept early Mars warm enough for rivers and lakes.

Chemist Laura Gagliardi and astrophysicist and dean Angela Olinto elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

UChicago’s incoming President Alivisatos is committed to supporting students from a broad array of backgrounds and to fostering a pride in academic inquiry in the same way President Zimmer has been. The Chicago Maroon on this and many other positive qualities he shares with the current president.