News: Awards

The 2025 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize has been awarded to Ewain Gwynne for his work in conformal probability, which studies probabilistic objects such as random curves and surfaces.

Congratulations to the UChicago ATLAS team! This weekend, the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN were honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. The prize is awarded to the four collaborations, which unite thousands of researchers from more than 70 countries, and concerns the papers authored based on LHC Run-2 data up to July 2024.

Congratulations to Clay Córdova, Assistant Professor of Physics, who has received the 2025 Frontiers of Science Award (FSA) from the International Congress of Basic Sciences for his work on theoretical particle physics and new symmetries in nature.

Early-career scholars recognized for pioneering work in statistics, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, and computer science.

The prestigious Einstein Medal, established in 1979, honors individuals who have contributed significant scientific findings, works, or publications related to Albert Einstein.

Yamuna Krishnan, the Louis Block Professor of Chemistry and the College, has received the 2025 Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award. The Divisional honor provides unrestricted seed funds for intellectually exciting and innovative research ventures that enable new research directions.

Krishnan has pioneered the application of DNA nanotechnology to cell biology, deploying nanodevices as fluorescent reporters, thereby revealing the chemistry within sub-compartments of cells called organelles.

Prof. Wendy Freedman, one of world’s leading cosmologists, has been awarded the National Medal of Science, the country’s highest scientific honor. She was recognized for her pioneering contributions to cosmology, including the measurement of the expansion and evolution of the universe.

Photo by Ryan K. Morris, courtesy of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation

Two PSD faculty members have received named professorships. Hening Lin has been named the James and Karen Frank Family Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Chemistry and the College, and Rebecca Willett has been named the first Worah Family Professor in the Wallman Society of Fellows in the Departments of Statistics and Computer Science and the College.

UChicago award winners share their selections for the holidays.

UChicago retrospective article features PSD breakthroughs and accolades.

UChicago alumnus John Jumper was awarded a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the AlphaFold project, which uses AI to predict protein structures. Learn more about Jumper's academic and scientific journey.

John Jumper, SM’12, PhD’17, currently with Google’s DeepMind, received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Dec. 10 in Stockholm, Sweden. Watch his Nobel lecture, "Building chemical and biological intuition into protein structure prediction." His talk begins at 1:09:38.
 

Congratulations to Wendy Freedman for being named one of Nature’s 10! She is recognized for her pioneering work on Hubble constant measurements. 

Congratulations to Chemistry Department alumni Jiuyun Shi, PhD’23 (Bozhi Tian Group), and Nan Li, PhD’23 (Sihong Wang Group), for being named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list!

Six University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division scientists were named in Web of Science's 2024 report of highly cited researchers. According to Web of Science, researchers on the list have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their fields.