News: Faculty

Prof. Margaret Gardel discusses her research and the arc of her career in this Physics World interview. "I wish I could tell myself 20 years ago that it’s okay to feel like an impostor."

A New York Times article highlights GS Prof. David Keith's Climate Systems Engineering Initiative, mentioning a recent two-day workshop on glacial geoengineering hosted by the initiative, and quotes Professor Emeritus Doug MacAyeal on how predictions have changed since the 1970s.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Anna Wuttig has received an NSF CAREER Award, which supports junior faculty in the sciences through the Faculty Early Career Development Program. The highly regarded honor is bestowed annually upon researchers who have demonstrated exceptional promise in their respective fields. For Wuttig, it carries with it a five-year grant to support the project within the Chemical Catalysis Program of the Chemistry Division.

Long-time PSD Council member and chair Mihir Worah, PhD’95, and spouse Anupama Worah are the first donors to meet the Wallman fundraising challenge, endowing the Worah Family Chair in the Physical Sciences Division.

Asst. Prof. Anna Wuttig and her team found a way to use electricity to boost a type of chemical reaction often used in synthesizing new candidates for pharmaceutical drugs, which may lay the foundation for greener chemistry.

Cancers are often driven by proteins created by specific oncogenes. Drugs aimed at these proteins take advantage of their surface configurations to latch on and prevent them from interfering with cells, but some families of proteins lack pockets or crevices on their surfaces that the drugs can use. Attacking them is like climbing up a wall with no footholds. For decades, these proteins have been considered “undruggable,” but chemist Raymond Moellering is working to change that.

Three computer science professors have received named professorships: Henry Hoffmann, Bo Li, and Ce Zhang.

In a WBEZ Morning Edition audio segment, astrophysicist Jacob Bean discusses the initial research frenzy following the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and the process of settling into a reasonable pace.

In a NYT article, astrophysicist Daniel Holz discusses new research that shows black holes may form in different ways than expected.

The three-year, $450,000 grant will fund Rand’s work on formal verification of the ZX-calculus, a graphical system for representing quantum programs.

Prof. Abigail Vieregg discusses the possible construction of a new particle collider, one more powerful than any ever created, at Fermilab.

Photo by Ryan Postel / Fermilab

UChicago scientists have developed a new "hook and slide" method where they can insert atoms within an already existing carbon framework. The innovation comes from a paper recently published in Science, by Rui Zhang, a fifth-year graduate student with the Guangbin Dong Lab. This new strategy developed by Zhang, with assistance from undergraduate Tingting Yu, promises to optimize medicinal chemistry.

Image by Skrypnykov Dmytro/Shutterstock

Chemists Daniel Gibney, David Mazziotti, and Jan-Niklas Boyn invented a new way to allow computers to simulate certain quantum mechanical effects in complex electronic materials with far less effort.

UChicago teaching award winners, including Michael Gladders, ​​Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Quantrell Award winner, share their selections for the holidays.

Prof. John Carlstrom discusses funding for CMB-S4, which, he says, would scrutinize the cosmic microwave background for evidence that the newborn universe underwent an exponential growth spurt called inflation.