News: Faculty

The 2022 recipients of the Arthur L. Kelly Faculty Prize for Exceptional Service in the Physical Sciences Division are Young-Kee Kim, Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College, and Edward "Rocky" Kolb, Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the David N. Schramm Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College.

Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria presented the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy to the late Prof. Eugene Parker's son, Eric Parker, during a ceremony at Lund University in April. Prof. Parker was celebrated for discovering the solar wind.

An innovative technique led by Asst. Prof. Sunyoung Park, Dept. of the Geophysical Sciences, uses 3D printing and lasers to help improve our knowledge of what happens during ground shaking, and how different formations and layers beneath the ground lessen or increase damage in earthquakes.

By reviewing large-scale weather conditions and formations before the June 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, University of Chicago scientists, including College student first author, Emily Neal, discovered that a cyclone spawned an “anticyclone,” which combined to produce and then trap heat near the surface of the region.

Understanding Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, could help us understand how the Milky Way formed, as well as the strange physics that happen in and near black holes. In this video, University of Chicago Profs. John Carlstrom and Daniel Holz explain what it takes to “photograph” a black hole and what mysteries remain about black holes.

At UChicago’s inaugural Data Science Institute Summit on May 9, the initiative unveiled a new data portal that combines public and private data from 20 cities around the nation. The website makes data accessible to governments, community groups, data scientists and other interested stakeholders seeking to improve internet connectivity to mitigate the “digital divide.”

A team including Prof. David Schuster of the Dept. of Physics has announced the creation of a new qubit platform formed by freezing neon gas into a solid at very low temperatures, spraying electrons from a light bulb’s filament onto the solid, and trapping a single electron there. This system, developed at Argonne, shows great promise to be developed into ideal building blocks for future quantum computers.

Citywide, about 80% of households have internet access, but researchers with the University of Chicago’s Internet Equity Initiative led by Prof. Nick Feamster said there is a nearly 40 percentage-point difference between certain neighborhoods.

Chemist Prof. Chuan He has published results that shed light on a previously unknown pathway of genetic regulation, indicating new research directions to understand the fundamental processes of mammalian development—and could suggest avenues of treatments for disease or other biotechnology.

Three faculty members of the Physical Sciences Division and the Executive Vice President for Science, Innovation, National Laboratories, and Global Initiatives, Prof. Juan de Pablo, are among the 120 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year. The PSD faculty include Prof. Joshua Frieman of Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Chair and Professor Young-Kee Kim of Dept. of Physics, and Prof. Andrei Tokmakoff of Dept. of Chemistry.

Using complex “multiscale” computer simulations modeling viruses, Prof. Greg Voth and his team modeled the properties in the disassembly process that causes the capsid surrounding an HIV virus to rupture as well as how SARS-CoV-2 binds and enters cells. 

A new technique published by University of Chicago chemists and the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. allows scientists to quickly and easily produce new molecules of interest, to accelerate discovery by reducing the time and energy that goes into molecule design process.

Physics professor David Schuster led the University’s lab that helped with the specifications and verification on real hardware for a new system of control and readout electronics, known as Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK. Developed with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, it has proved to drastically improve quantum computer performance while cutting the cost of control equipment.

Yudai Tanaka, Pedro Lopes, and Jun Nishida of the Department of Computer Science are creating ways for virtual reality experiences to become more tactile. In a recent paper, they describe a system which uses electrical stimulation to control head movements of players in a VR environment.

Peter Littlewood, Professor of in the Department of Physics, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds appointments in James Franck Institute and the College, is a Fellow of the Institute of Molecular Engineering, and was former director of Argonne National Laboratory.