News: Faculty

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.

Prof. David Awschalom discusses the future of quantum communication in Wired Magazine.

Prof. Wendy Freedman named among four successful women behind the Hubble Space Telescope's achievements

Gravitational waves reveal unprecedented collision of heavy and light black holes. UChicago researcher Maya Fishbach discusses the latest gravitational waves detected by LIGO.

 

Physics Prof. Edward Blucher discusses a new study that finds groundbreaking information on neutrinos

Spies like us: Biological chemist Prof. Yamuna Krishnan and other UChicago scientists develop probes made of DNA to track molecular secrets

From Self-Sanitizing Face Masks To Emergency Ventilators, Here’s What Illinois Universities Are Doing To Combat The Coronavirus

The Register UK asks when will quantum computers be capable of crypto-cracking, cites new RAND report and CS Prof. Diana Franklin

Astrophysicist and former University of Chicago scientist, Margaret Burbidge, died in San Francisco in April. Burbidge was a giant in the field of astronomy and physics and an expert practitioner of astronomical spectroscopy—the study of the spectra of stars, galaxies, and quasi-stellar objects. She used her international spotlight to champion the representation and inclusion of women in the sciences.
 

UChicago community finds new ways to learn together
Faculty, students, University community connect as Spring Quarter and remote learning begins

Article notes Assoc. Prof. Luca Grandi’s role in the Xenon experiment, an investigation into the nature of dark matter, which has been halted by the pandemic

In Quanta, Prof. Matthew Emerton describes two new papers that reveal fundamental number-theoretic phenomena that overcome the barrier of bridging two continents—a challenge generations of researchers have pursued as “Langland's program,” which seeks to create a grand unified theory of mathematics. These findings may help prove Fermat’s Last Theorem for some number systems beyond the positive whole numbers.

Founding Chair on the Committee of Information Sciences and pioneer in numerical simulations of the formation of structure in the universe and dynamics of galaxies died on Mar. 7

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.