News: Awards

Chemistry Prof. Guilia Galli one of two UChicago scholars elected to National Academy of Sciences

Six UChicago scholars elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to discover how to best decontaminate N95 masks, develop probes made of DNA to track molecular secrets, and find a math bridge that extends beyond Fermat's Last Theorem.

Three undergraduates awarded Goldwater Scholarships to support STEM education: third-years Spencer Dembner, Vennela Mannava and Thomas Propson honored

Congratulations to UChicago PSD’s five 2020 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program recipients, David Zegeye and Cory Cotter in astronomy, LeeAnn Marie Sager in chemistry, and Jordan T Kemp and Amanda Mirna Farah in physics.

Prof. Foygel Barber wins Hall Award “for outstanding
contributions to the development of methodology and theory for structured
high-dimensional data problems such as sparse regression, sparse
nonparametric models, and low-rank models, as well as scalable
optimization techniques for nonconvex problems.”

This month PSD researchers have been featured for the efforts of chemists to decode RNA of the new coronavirus, using AI to decode cuneiform tablets, and predicting a new state of matter.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry Mark Levin was awarded the Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigators Prize for his proposal to find a new way to create a synthetic tracer compound which will significantly improve the effectiveness of current PET scan technology. If he is successful, his technology will open the door to a whole new class of more effective imaging compounds.

Margaret Gardel, Professor in the Department of Physics and Director of the Material Research Science and Engineering Center, was awarded $25,000 for work on how cells sense mechanical forces and respond to those forces with chemical activity.

American Astronomical Society has announced their new Fellows program, kicking it off with an initial group of 200 Legacy Fellows. Astronomy Professors John Carlstrom, Wendy Freedman, and Michael Turner were among those named Legacy Fellows.

The Research Corporation for Science Advancement has selected astronomer Leslie Rogers for a Cottrell Award
 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Jan. 30 that University of Chicago Prof. Emeritus Eugene Parker has been awarded the 2020 Crafoord Prize in Astronomy.
Awarded every three years, the prestigious Crafoord Prize consists of a gold medal and a sum of six million Swedish krona (about $600,000)—one of the largest prizes in science. 
The Academy, which is also responsible for selecting Nobel Prize winners, cited Parker for his “pioneering and fundamental studies of the solar wind and magnetic fields from stellar to galactic scales.”

For his work developing new methods for the large-scale optimization challenges that underlie many modern computing applications, UChicago CS assistant professor Lorenzo Orecchia received the NSF CAREER award. The CAREER program is one of the most prestigious NSF awards, supporting 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.

Stuart A. Kurtz has been named the George and Elizabeth Yovovich Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the College. Kurtz is a theoretical computer scientist who studies computational logic, type theory, complexity theory and randomness. He also has made research contributions in biological computing, bioinformatics and constructive logic. 

Matthew Stephens has been named the Ralph W. Gerard Professor in the Departments of Statistics and Human Genetics and the College. Stephens’ research focuses on a wide variety of problems at the interface of statistics and genetics. His lab often tackles problems where novel statistical methods are required, or can learn something new compared with existing approaches. 

Asst. Prof. Raymond Moellering earned a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award for his project "Reactivity-Driven Metabolic Signaling: A Feature not a Flaw in Metabolic Regulation." Moellering's research aims to develop cellular probes, proteomic methods, and cellular models to illuminate the role of methylglyoxal, a reactive metabolite that is hypothesized to link cellular metabolism with cell stress response, inflammation and many diseases like diabetes, cancer and aging. With this award, Moellering hopes to identify proteins that serve as metabolic sensors, which transmit signals resulting in physical changes in cells and organisms.