News: Faculty Awards

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.

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

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.
 

Professor Emeritus James Norris received the inaugural "Spin Chemistry Lifetime Achievement Award" from the ESR Spectroscopy group of the Royal Society of Chemistry. This award is designed to honor scientists who have made groundbreaking contributions to the field of spectroscopy.

UChicago Professor of Computer Science Rebecca Willett is the 2024 recipient of the SIAM Activity Group on Data Science Career Prize, for “her work in physics-informed machine learning and data science and for her service and leadership in the data science community.”

Astronomy and Astrophysics Asst. Prof. Austin Joyce has been selected for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program. Prof. Joyce will use this opportunity to apply cosmological quantum field theory to understand how the universe evolved and acquired its structure.

Two UChicago faculty members were recognized as 2024 APS Fellows. Prof. Tiffany Shaw was selected for her contributions to atmospheric dynamics and its response to climate change, while Asst. Prof. Alex Drlica-Wagner was honored for his work in observational cosmology, including groundbreaking research in dark matter science.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation announced today the 2024 class of Packard Fellows for Science and Engineering, including UChicago assistant professor of physics Zoe Yan. This year’s class features 20 innovative early-career scientists and engineers who will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research. This year’s class of Fellows is pushing the boundaries of science and innovation in their fields of study, from advances in detecting and treating serious diseases to understanding how species react to changing climates to energy-efficient electronics. 

Congrats to John Jumper, SM'12, PhD'17, who was awarded a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work creating an AI model called AlphaFold that predicts the structures of proteins. 

Jumper studied with Karl Freed, Henry G. Gale Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and member of the James Franck Institute; and Tobin Sosnick, William B. Graham Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and member of the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.

Jumper becomes the 100th scholar associated with UChicago to receive a Nobel Prize!

The second edition of TIME100 AI showcases some of the most influential new leaders in AI research and technology. Featured in this year's list is UChicago's Computer Science professor Ben Zhao, the inventor of Nightshade, a program that helps protect artists' work from AI scraping.

UChicago President Paul Alivisatos was honored this week in Norway as one of the winners of the 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience. He shared the award with Prof. Chad Mirkin of Northwestern and Prof. Robert Langer of MIT.

A multidisciplinary eight-member team from UChicago and Northwestern will launch the Cellular Adaptation Lab to study how fundamental cellular behaviors are linked to disease and responses to climate change.

Chemistry Department and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Prof. Giulia Galli has been named the 2024-2025 Joseph O. Hirschfelder Awardee. This yearly prize honors exceptional work in theoretical chemistry.

Assistant Professor Sarah Sebo secures CAREER grant to develop robots with advanced social skills for improved collaboration and learning in schools and beyond.