News: Faculty

Scientists have long known that melting glaciers contribute significantly to rising sea levels. However, the complex ways they move deep within are not fully understood, a process critical to understanding this melting. Two MIT researchers, including incoming GeoSci Asst. Prof. Meghana Ranganathan, have created the first usable model to analyze movements across the Antarctic Ice Sheet, looking at how ice flows in the glacier’s core.

CacheGen, developed by researchers from the University of Chicago, Stanford, and Microsoft, and led by UChicago computer scientist Junchen Jiang, promises to revolutionize LLM efficiency by addressing the critical challenge of processing long contexts.

University of Chicago chemists in Sarah King's lab have announced a new way to image antiferroelectric materials, which could one day lead to new types of technology. 

UChicago geologist Clara Blättler spent two months at sea extracting rock cores to recreate the history of climate.

Enabled by a U.S. Department of Energy program, a collaboration of scientists from Fermilab, UChicago, NOIRLab, and other institutions demonstrated that skipper-CCD detectors can be utilized to improve cosmology research.

A CBS Saturday Morning video discusses a farmer participating in an unusual experiment to help a farm thrive in rising temperatures. GeoSci Asst. Prof. Clara Blättler comments, starting at 2:25.

Researchers at UChicago Pritzker Molecular Engineering and UChicago Physics plan to use a $1.5 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop an entirely new method of engineering superconductors for quantum computers and other high-tech applications.

In this Scientific American article, mathematicians, including associate professor Ewain Gwynne, picked the most dazzling, thought-provoking, and compelling equations they know.

Brave research program or potentially dangerous foray into solar geoengineering? UChicago President Alivisatos and numerous PSD professors discuss the topic in this Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article.

The tool, called AudioSeal, could eventually help tackle the growing use of voice cloning tools for scams and misinformation. Computer scientist Ben Zhao discusses the system in this MIT Technology Review article. 

David Ballantyne Rowley, Professor Emeritus in UChicago’s Department of the Geophysical Sciences, who specialized in paleoaltimetry, paleogeography, and tectonics, is remembered for noble contrarianism, gregarious curiosity, and love of nature. 

 

The prestigious award recognizes pioneering work in nanoscale materials for medical applications. Alivisatos, University President and the John D. MacArthur Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, is widely known as a pioneer in nanoscience, the study of how materials behave at extremely tiny scales.

Multinational research team, including GeoSci Associate Prof. Pedram Hassanzadeh, will investigate the ocean’s carbon, oxygen, and heat cycles.

A new algorithm developed at UChicago, drawing inspiration from a famous experiment involving shadows in ancient Alexandria, could help quantum computers more efficiently simulate molecular systems with high accuracy.

New Yorker staff writer Rivka Galchen discusses UChicago class Are We Doomed?, cotaught by astrophysicist Daniel Holz. It’s in the interdisciplinary field of existential risk, which studies the threats posed by climate change, nuclear warfare, and artificial intelligence. Listen to the podcast and read the story.