News: Awards

Prof. Michael Gladders is the 2022-2023 recipient of the Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award, a U. Chicago Physical Sciences Divisional honor that provides funding for intellectually exciting and innovative research ventures, enabling new directions of research.

Chuan He, John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been named a 2023 Wolf Prize Laureate in Chemistry “for discovering reversible RNA methylation and its role in the regulation of gene expression.” The acclaimed Wolf Prize is awarded to outstanding scientists and artists for achievements in the interest of humanity and friendly relations among people.

Philippe Guyot-Sionnest, Departments of Chemistry and Physics, Robert Rosner, Department of Physics, and Norbert F. Scherer, Department of Chemistry have been named in the 2022 class of American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows. The award recognizes their advancing scientific excellence, tackling complex societal challenges, and pushing boundaries that will reap benefits for years to come.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to determine why the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Nothern Hemisphere, explain how the HIV virus replicates itself, and gather and analyze data on the funding, location, and research status for more than 230 GMO crop varieties in Africa.

Alya Al-Kibbi, a first-year graduate student in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences studying planetary science, has been awarded a graduate fellowship from The Illinois Space Grant Consortium (ISGC).

Prof. Ka Yee C. Lee, Dept. of Chemistry, was named a Fellow of the Biophysical Society in 2023 “for her impactful and creative contributions to our understanding of the structure and stability of lipid membranes and their interactions with proteins.”

Neubauer Professor of Computer Science Heather Zheng was elected as a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest and most prestigious society of computing professionals, for her work in wireless networking and mobile computing.

Asst. Prof. Robert Rand of computer science received a $450,000 early career grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Research Program. The grant will fund his research on the formal verification of the ZX-calculus, a graphical system for representing quantum programs.

UChicago has received a grant from the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) to create the Community Data Fellows program, which pairs local, community-based nonprofit organizations with UChicago graduate students (Fellows) who possess skills in technology and policy analysis.

Guangbin Dong has been named the first Weldon G. Brown Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the College.

This month PSD researchers were featured in the news for climate research findings that the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern, creating a living smartwatch that runs on slime, and seminal contributions to the development of a quantum internet.

Two postdocs, Yanzeng Li and Alexander Strang, have been named recipients of the 2022-2023 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Yuji Suzuki, SM’70, a longtime supporter and former Council member of the Physical Sciences Division, established the Yuji and Lorraine Suzuki Postdoctoral Research Fund in 2016 to recognize outstanding postdoctoral researchers. The award provides a salary top-off.

Elizabeth Kelley, a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, was honored with the 2023 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award, which recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in the areas of equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.

Sidney Nagel, the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, is accepting the 2023 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research. The award, sometimes referred to as the ‘lifetime achievement Oscar of physics,’ recognizes “contributions of the highest level that advance our knowledge and understanding of the physical universe in all its facets.”

Fred Chong, the Seymour Goodman Professor in the Department of Computer Science, was elevated to IEEE Fellow in the organization’s 2023 class. The distinction was given to Chong for “contributions to the field of quantum computer architecture, compilation and optimization.”