News: Awards

A graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, Frank Gao, has been named among the 2020 winners of the Wayne C. Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching, awarded annually to graduate students for outstanding instruction of undergraduates. Additionally, three graduate students have been awarded the Physical Sciences Teaching Prizes for 2020-21: Gourav Khullar of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Sean Lee of the Department of Chemistry, and Victor Zhang of the Department of Physics. Read more about what inspires their teaching.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to theorize non-reciprocal interactions, push the frontiers of human computer interaction, and cut nitrogen atoms from molecules, opening up avenues for constructing molecules.

Neubauer Family Assistant Professor Weixin Tang of the Department of Chemistry has been named a 2021 Searle Scholar, which supports the independent research of exceptional young faculty in the biomedical sciences and chemistry. She will be awarded $300,000 to pursue research on sequencing and epigenetics to understand biological processes critical to cellular functions.

Forbes 30 Under 30 recognized Leslie Jones-Dove, AB’19, and Devshi Mehrotra, AB’19, who met as computer science majors, for their contributions to social impact. The pair took their capstone project for an “Entrepreneurship in Technology" class and built it out into a public defense software called JusticeText.

Prof. Beilinson, Department of Mathematics, accepted the Shaw Prize Award in Mathematical Sciences for his achievements in representation theory. Watch the acceptance speech.

Blase Ur, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Computer Science, is a recipient of the Quantrell award, one of the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching. Daniel Fabrycky, assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is the recipient of the Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentorship. Read more about the awards and recipients.

The Physical Sciences Division has selected ten graduate students to receive a William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year.  

The 2021 recipients of the Arthur L. Kelly Faculty Prize for Exceptional Service in the Physical Sciences Division are Aaron Dinner, Professor of Chemistry, and Stuart Kurtz, the George and Elizabeth Yovovich Professor of Computer Science in recognition of their leadership in the Division.
 

Computer Science participated in CHI 2021, a Human Computer Interaction conference, with an emerging group of UChicago faculty and student researchers representing the many different corners of HCI. This year, ten UChicago papers were accepted to the prestigious conference, with one receiving a Best Paper Award (given to the top 1 percent of submissions) and three others receiving Honorable Mentions (top 5 percent).

An online symposium featured 11 presentations by student teams from UChicago and French universities affiliated with the French National Centre for Scientific Research, with questions and discussion from faculty supervisors. Attendees voted to choose the best presentations and awarded two prizes. PSD’s Yi Liu in the Department of Statistics (pictured) and Maria Douaihy of CNRS – U. Montpellier won second place for “Modeling Transcriptional Bursting in Space and Time.” First place was awarded to Marie Greaney of BSD and Maxime Lehman of CNRS – U. Paris-Saclay for “How is Sensory Information Transformed into Appropriate Motor Control?”

Chemistry alumnus Kirk Lancaster, SB’18, has been selected as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and will receive full funding to pursue graduate studies at Stanford University. A student of Chinese language and formerly an intern at the State Department’s Office of Chemical and Biological Weapons Affairs, he will pursue advanced study of his intersecting interests of law, technology and international politics.

John Anderson, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, has been named a 2021 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar for leveraging unorthodox bonding effects in transition metal molecules and materials. According to the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the award recognizes early-career faculty who have "an outstanding independent body of scholarship and are deeply committed to education." Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars receive an unrestricted research grant of $100,000.

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.

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.