News

A top flight of architects and structural engineers will present public lectures on some of the most innovative work being done in contemporary structural design as part of a unique physics undergraduate course offered this Spring Quarter at the University of Chicago, Physics & Contemporary Architecture (PHSC11800) taught by Professors Sid Nagel and Heinrich Jaeger. Enrolled undergraduate students, as well as the interested public, can join online for free Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. CST.

Lia Merminga, an internationally renowned physicist and scientific leader, has been appointed to lead Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, effective April 18. She is the seventh director and first woman director.

Two astrophysicists who have been selected for the prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship Program have chosen to join the University of Chicago Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics to conduct their postdoctoral research. Jessica Avva, AB'15, and Hayley Macpherson will seek to answer how the universe works as Einstein Fellows, beginning their programs in Autumn Quarter of 2022.

The Heising-Simons Foundation today announced Michael Zhang, California Institute of Technology, Astronomy Ph.D.’22, as a recipient of the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. He is among eight fellows selected for 2022. Zhang will be joining the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Fall term to study the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system.

The Physical Sciences Division has many programs ranked highly in the 2022 U.S. News & World Report top science graduate schools rankings.

A new pilot program from the UChicago Financial Education Initiative is facilitating conversations about money for local area families. Funded by the University of Chicago Women’s Board, Family Money Night brings parents, kids, and schools together in a uniquely research-based experience.
 

With projects spanning an array of industries, data types, and methodological approaches, the Master of Science in Analytics (MScA) program’s autumn 2021 Capstone Showcase featured an impressive field of twenty-one teams, with four distinguished with Best in Show awards.

Physical Sciences Division members, including an alumna, a graduate student, and undergraduates, won the first inaugural 'Science as Art' contest run by University of Chicago Communications. See their winning photos.

A new study introduces a breakthrough in making nanocrystals function together electronically. The research led by Prof. Dmitri Talapin, Department of Chemistry, may open the doors to future devices with new abilities.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science Junchen Jiang received the NSF CAREER Award to study how individual preferences and machine learning can help automatically optimize video quality while also conserving valuable bandwidth. The award, the NSF’s most prestigious for early-career faculty, was one of six awarded to UChicago CS faculty during the 2021-22 cycle.

Famed astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who died March 15, “touched” the sun and the hearts of the Homewood-Flossmoor community, where he lived for more than 50 years. The Chicago Tribune memorializes Parker, recalling his humble dedication to area causes, to nature and to his neighbors.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to catch and study neutrinos at a local nuclear reactor, treat cancer with nanodevices made out of DNA, conduct Great Lakes sampling efforts under winter conditions, and recreate conditions in giant galaxy clusters with lasers.

In this AIP Oral History, Walter Massey, chairman of the board of the Giant Magellan Telescope, former UChicago professor and now advisor and trustee emeritus, describes his childhood in segregated Mississippi, his drive towards championing scientific discovery, and contributions across civil rights, science policy, and higher education. 

PSD's March spotlight is Brenda F. Thomas, secretary in the James Franck Institute (JFI) and assistant to faculty members David P. DeMille, Woowon Kang, David Schuster, Peter Littlewood, William TM Irvine, and Linda Young. She is also the JFI Colloquium & Seminar Coordinator and Computations and Science Seminar Coordinator. She has been with the PSD for 28 years.

‘Rubble pile’ asteroids are loose collections of material, which can split apart as they rotate. Science News covered physicist Melody Lim's March 15 presentation at the American Physical Society in Chicago on her experiment to understand the inner workings of such asteroids by levitating plastic beads that form collections, spin and break up.