2023
UChicago CS chair, faculty, and students inducted into Samsung Hall of Fame for identifying vulnerability in SmartTVs
November 2, 2023

Researchers from the Department of Computer Science have created a side-channel attack that identifies how easily hackers could guess a user's passwords or credit card numbers by listening to the audio of a SmartTV. The work has been recognized by Samsung, and the group is now featured in the Samsung Hall of Fame for Smart TV, Audio, and Displays.
UChicago chemists make breakthrough in drug discovery chemistry
November 2, 2023

For years, if you asked the people working to create new pharmaceutical drugs what they wished for, at the top of their lists would be a way to easily replace a carbon atom with a nitrogen atom in a molecule. But two studies from chemists at the University of Chicago, published in Science and Nature, offer two new methods to address this wish. The findings could make it easier to develop new drugs.
NSF awards up to $21.4M for design of next-gen telescopes to capture earliest moments of universe
October 27, 2023

The National Science Foundation has awarded $3.7 million to the University of Chicago for the first year of a grant that may provide up to $21.4 million for the final designs for a next-generation set of telescopes to map the light from the earliest moments of the universe—the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Storm signals
October 26, 2023

Climate scientist Tiffany Shaw will study whether climate predictions were right, for the right reasons.
Generative AI models are sucking data up from all over the internet, yours included
October 24, 2023

In a Scientific American article, CS Prof. Ben Zhao discusses the ways that data, though it may be meant for private use, can end up in public training sets for AI.
This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI
October 24, 2023

In an MIT Technology Review article, CS Prof. Ben Zhao discusses his new tool "Nightshade," which messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.
Crystals from Apollo mission find moon is 40 million years older than scientists thought
October 24, 2023

New UChicago, Field Museum study finds lunar crystals formed at least 4.46 billion years ago.
Congrats to cosmologist Rocky Kolb, winner of the APS Lilienfeld Prize!
October 24, 2023

In an interview with APS News, Kolb urges physicists to combat scientific illiteracy and discusses the Big Bang, parallel universes, and the need for public outreach.
Congrats to Physics professor David DeMille for receiving the APS Ramsey Prize!
October 24, 2023

The Norman F. Ramsey Prize recognizes outstanding accomplishments in the two fields of Norman Ramsey: atomic, molecular, and optical physics; and precision tests of fundamental laws and symmetries. DeMille, along with Gerald Gabrielse (Northwestern), and John M. Doyle (Harvard), earned the prize “for pioneering work in molecular physics, cooling, and spectroscopy that has profoundly advanced the search for the electric dipole moment of the electron, and for placing stringent constraints on modifications to the Standard Model in a tabletop experiment.”
The moon is 40 million years older than thought, ancient crystal suggests
October 23, 2023

The moon’s surface formed at least 40 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study of an ancient crystal embedded in rock collected by Apollo 17 astronauts. Washington Post article features GeoSci alumna Jennika Greer and professor Philipp Heck.
Your personal information is probably being used to train generative AI models
October 19, 2023

Prof. Ben Zhao discusses in Scientific American article how AI models are often trained using information not intended for the public, such as medical images.
Climate change will prompt expansion of farming in northern wilderness
October 19, 2023

New Scientist highlighted the work of former Dept. of the Geophysical Sciences PhD student and postdoc James Franke on shifting agricultural regions under climate change (with Prof. Liz Moyer), and Moyer was quoted.
Research suggests that privacy and security protection fell to the wayside during remote learning
October 19, 2023

A qualitative research study conducted by faculty and students at the University of Chicago and University of Maryland revealed key tensions and breakdowns in the sociotechnical infrastructure of emergency remote learning that contributed to elementary school children’s privacy and data being compromised.
The toll of heat deaths in the Phoenix area soars after the hottest summer on record
October 19, 2023

In Arizona Daily Sun article, Geophysical Sciences Prof. Noboru Nakamura says that "when the jet stream meanders, it creates a heat dome, a pool of very warm air under this displaced jet stream...it's almost like a warm blanket."
Can language models replace programmers?
October 19, 2023

MarkTechPost article highlights UChicago researchers' SWE-bench framework, which focuses on real-world software engineering issues, like patch generation and complex context reasoning, offering a more realistic and comprehensive evaluation for enhancing language models with software engineering capabilities.