News: Faculty

2025

The road map to alien life passes through the ‘Cosmic Shoreline’

March 17, 2025

planet-like beachballs on the shore

UChicago astronomer Jacob Bean is playing a critical role in groundbreaking research of atmospheres on exoplanets.


How UChicago scientists are protecting artists from AI theft

March 17, 2025

statue in front of stylized resistors

A UChicago team is creating software to combat AI’s ability to use artists’ work. Computer science professor Ben Zhao sits down with WBEZ Chicago to discuss the project.


Anna Wuttig Profile in Angewandte Chemie

March 17, 2025

Anna Wuttig

The prestigious journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition has featured Chemistry Assistant Professor Anna Wuttig, offering a glimpse into her research, motivations, and personal passions. The profile coincides with the publication of her first article in the journal, "Unlocking Mesoscopic Disorder in Graphitic Carbon with Spectroelectrochemistry," which highlights her groundbreaking work on understanding and manipulating disorder in heterogeneous electrocatalysts for selective electricity-driven synthesis.


The Great AI Art Heist

March 17, 2025

cartoon hand in

A lab at UChicago is protecting artists from theft by a new adversary: the machines.


Robert Haselkorn, influential researcher and mentor in molecular genetics and cell biology, 1934-202

March 13, 2025

Robert Haselkorn

Haselkorn was widely known for his work on plant viral RNA, and was highly regarded for his teaching and mentoring with students.


The hidden cost of Netflix’s autoplay: A study on viewing patterns and user control

March 12, 2025

Photo of Netflix's home page

A new UChicago study from the Department of Computer Science reveals how Netflix’s autoplay feature subtly shapes viewing habits. The research highlights how turning off autoplay resulted in behavioral changes in participants, including reduced viewing time and increased awareness of media consumption.


Relaying volunteers’ input on machine learning to researchers

March 5, 2025

Big data cloud computing illustration

Chicago’s Adler Planetarium message board hosts conversations between staffers, scholars, and some of the roughly 2.8 million volunteers in Zooniverse, the world’s largest platform for crowdsourced research online. Starting around late 2023, staffers noticed a flurry of uncertainty and discomfort from volunteers centered around machine learning. The Zooniverse team recognized that this discomfort required a larger conversation. A grant from The Kavli Foundation will enable that conversation exploring the ethics of machine learning in citizen science in partnership with the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP); the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public at the University of California, Berkeley; and the National Science Foundation-Simons SkAI Institute.


The Moon Solidified 4.43 Billion Years Ago

March 3, 2025

Icon of the Moon

In a new research project, UChicago Prof. Nicolas Dauphas and a team of scientists used rocks gathered during the Apollo missions to learn more about the Moon's origins.
 


Can humans really extinguish all life on Earth? It’s complicated

March 3, 2025

Photo of earth on fire

In a new article, Geophysical Science's Prof. David Jablonski comments on how life on Earth would transform following a mass extinction. 


Federal budget cuts threaten to decimate America’s AI superiority—and other countries are watching

March 3, 2025

AI icon

UChicago Prof. Rebecca Willett and Prof. Henry Hoffmann co-author a new article discussing the impact of the recent and upcoming cuts to federal research and how they threaten U.S. AI leadership. 


Faculty Focus: Pedram Hassanzadeh

March 3, 2025

Pedram Hassanzadeh

Pedram Hassanzadeh is an associate professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences and Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics. He is also the Faculty Director of the AI for Climate (AICE) Initiative and Codirector of the Human-centered Weather Forecasting Initiative. He works on improving the fundamental understanding of the multiscale, nonlinear physics of extreme weather events and developing new tools for predicting the variability of these events across time scales, from days to decades.


Roland Winston, “father of non-imaging optics,” 1936–2025

February 28, 2025

Roland Winston

Roland Winston, SB’56, SM’57, PhD’63, former UChicago Physics professor and chair, is remembered as a pioneer of solar energy.


Clay Córdova wins Frontiers of Science Award 2025

February 26, 2025

Clay Córdova

Congratulations to Clay Córdova, Assistant Professor of Physics, who has received the 2025 Frontiers of Science Award (FSA) from the International Congress of Basic Sciences for his work on theoretical particle physics and new symmetries in nature.


Lunar rocks help scientists pinpoint when the moon crystallized

February 25, 2025

illustration of molten moon

UChicago scientists study samples from Apollo missions, revealing new details about lunar history.


Scientists track sea ice loss with earthquake sensors

February 21, 2025

A new UChicago study uses seismological “background noise” from worldwide monitoring network to study Arctic.