News: Faculty

UChicago's Valerie Hayot-Sasson talks to HPCwire about the development of an open science data-flow platform to aid in better and timely public health decisions. This work includes improved data ingestion, curation, and management capabilities, and a shared development environment for rapid response and collaboration. 

In a new study, researchers may have found a way to turn giant exoplanets into sensitive detectors for dark matter particles. UChicago particle astrophysicist Dan Hooper provides insight into the amount of dark matter that passes through Jupiter every second. 
 

In a new study, researchers found that rain may have been an essential ingredient for the origin of life. This groundbreaking research was conducted by scientists from UChicago's Chemistry Department and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, including Nobel Prize laureate Jack Szostak.
 

Recent findings suggest that dark energy, long believed to be a constant force accelerating the expansion of the universe, may weaken over time. Joshua Frieman comments on this discovery and how it challenges our current understanding of the universe's expansion.
 

A new UChicago-led analysis measures universe expansion rate and finds the 'Hubble tension' may not exist. 

A new paper from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Houston Chemical Engineering Department, and Chicago Center for the Origins of Life suggests rainwater could have helped create a meshy wall around protocells 3.8 billion years ago, a critical step in the transition from tiny beads of RNA to all forms of life.

Meet the futuristic new materials developed by UChicago scientists that could soon be all around us. In the Chemistry Department, professor Bozhi Tian and his colleagues devised a soil-like material designed to promote microbial growth. 
 

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.

New reports say that users of GPT-4o form unusual bonds with the software’s voice response feature. Computer science professor Blase Ur comments on the importance of further research on this subject. 

For years, measurements of the universe's expansion rate have been overshooting the prediction. UChicago astrophysicist Wendy Freedman has played a crucial role in the ongoing debate about the Hubble constant, a measure of the universe's expansion rate.

Nearly 400 miles off the coast of Antarctica, the Earth’s largest iceberg—whose sprawling surface covers more than 1,600 square miles—is spinning like a top. UChicago glaciologist Douglas MacAyeal comments on the dynamic between the ocean and the iceberg. 

As new reports reveal evidence of a large underground reservoir on Mars, suggesting that the planet might still have water, challenges in this research area still remain. In a notable new paper, UChicago scientists propose a new methodology to warm Mars’s atmosphere.

Gene Mazenko, Professor Emeritus in UChicago’s Department of Physics, the James Franck Institute, and the College, who focused on phase transitions and hydrodynamics of magnets, fluids, liquid crystals, and glasses, died in Antioch, CA, on July 7. He was 79.

A collaborative study between UChicago, Northwestern, and the University of Central Florida proposes a revolutionary approach towards terraforming Mars. This method, using engineered dust particles, could be 5,000 times more efficient than previous proposals.

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