News: Awards

Thirteen members of the University of Chicago faculty, including three from the Physical Sciences Division, have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships, effective July 1.

After graduating from the University of Chicago’s MS in Applied Data Science program, Kyler Rosen found himself at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and entrepreneurship as founding engineer at Slideflow Labs, a healthcare AI startup focused on rapid cancer diagnostics.

Congrats to Abigail Lee, PhD’25 in Astronomy and Astrophysics, who has received a 2025 PhD Prize from the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
 

The Physical Sciences Division has selected four graduate students to receive a William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship for the 2026-2027 academic year.

CSEi’s first essay contest sparks undergraduate engagement on sunlight reflection methods (SRM), awarding $7,000 in prizes.

Congratulations to the PSD faculty members who have received NSF CAREER Awards. According to the NSF, the prestigious CAREER award supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
 

UChicago’s Alex Kale receives the Early CAREER Award for advancing ethical and practical standards in data visualization, empowering creators and audiences to better interpret what charts reveal and what they conceal.

Frank Calegari, professor and associate chair of the Department of Mathematics, and Young-Kee Kim, the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute, have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences.

PhD Graduate Brennan Schaffner receives ACM SIGCHI special recognition award for his research on dark patterns, subsequent interventions, and influence users. 

Congratulations to the PSD community members who have been recognized with 2026 Frontiers of Science Awards. Michael Levin, Professor in Physics and the JFI, and Physics alum Carolyn Zhang, PhD'23, are recognized for the field of condensed matter physics. Yoav Afik, a postdoctoral scholar in the EFI who works on the ATLAS experiment, is recognized for research in particle physics phenomenology.

This year, eight PSD instructors and students have been honored for excellence in teaching the next generation of physical and mathematical scientists.

Congrats to Nick Feamster, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science, who has won a Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Third-years Arthur Costa, Shelley Fernando, Mason McCormack, and Vincent Wang, all of whom study PSD or joint-PSD subjects, earn the prestigious award for their research.

How an RNA pioneer’s discovery of reversible methylation launched a new era in the chemical and biological sciences.

Congratulations to Rebecca Willett, the 2026 recipient of the Arthur L. Kelly Faculty Prize!