News: Faculty

Prof. Emeritus Dietrich Müller, a renowned experimental physicist at the University of Chicago who spent half a century building instruments to study energetic particles from space called cosmic rays, died Dec. 22 at the age of 85.

Aided by sophisticated computational tools, the MICCoM team led by Prof. Giulia Galli reaped a harvest of pivotal discoveries that should pave the way for new quantum devices, like greatly improved control over the formation of vacancies in silicon carbide used for realizing qubits in quantum devices.

Astronomers including Asst. Prof. Alex Ji are one step closer to revealing dark matter enveloping our Milky Way galaxy, thanks to a new map of twelve streams of stars orbiting within our galactic halo. Using doppler calculations, the scientists measured the speeds of stars and their chemical compositions, telling us where they were born.

Professor Cheng Chin of the Department of Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the James Franck Institute has received the ’21–’22 Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award, a Divisional honor that provides $100,000 for intellectually exciting and innovative research ventures that enable new research directions. Professor Chin is a pioneer in using ultracold atoms to study the quantum phenomena that underlie the behavior of other particles in the universe.

Professor Hsiao-Wen Chen and Professor Emeritus Richard Kron in the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics have been named 2022 American Astronomical Society Fellows.

Asst. Prof. Alex Ji, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, comments on the potential of the massive James Webb Telescope that launched on Christmas day and will be able to peer back 13.5 billion years. The successor to Hubble, it could help answer some of humanity’s biggest questions.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to find extremely energetic particles from outer space with the PUEO Antarctic balloon mission, teach students how to design, build and calibrate their own devices in the creative machines class, and assemble global experts to discuss internet equity and access.

UChicago scientists hope launch of James Webb Space Telescope will help explore previously ‘unanswerable’ questions.

Brent Doiron has been named the first Heinrich Kluver Professor of Neurobiology, Statistics and the College. Doiron uses advanced mathematics to understand how networks of neurons process information about sensory inputs. His research focuses on a combination of nonlinear dynamics and statistical mechanics, with an emphasis on the genesis and transfer of variability in neural circuits. He has developed core theoretical insights that have contributed to both neural coding and network learning. He works closely with experimental neuroscientists who work in the electrosensory, olfactory, somatosensory, auditory and visual systems.

University of Chicago physicist Abby Vieregg is leading an international experiment that essentially uses the ice in Antarctica as a giant detector to find extremely energetic particles from outer space. Recently approved by NASA, the $20 million project called PUEO will build an instrument to fly above the Antarctic in a balloon, launching in December 2024.

A new class taught by experimental physicists Professor Emeritus Stephan Meyer and Professor Scott Wakely is teaching students how to design, build and calibrate their own devices. Called “Creative Machines and Innovative Instruments,” the class has students writing code, 3D printing their designs and learning the challenges of making something entirely new from scratch.

For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere—called the corona—sampling particles and characterizing magnetic fields in this dynamic environment. The new milestone marks one major step for the probe named for Professor Emeritus Eugene Parker—and one giant leap for solar science.

Prof. Juan de Pablo has been appointed Executive Vice President for Science, Innovation, National Laboratories and Global Initiatives at the University of Chicago, effective immediately.

A new book by photographer Jessica Wynne called Do Not Erase: Mathematicians and Their Chalkboards (Princeton University Press, 2021) features 110 images of chalk-based investigations by mathematicians around the world—several affiliated with UChicago—alongside their reflections on blackboards as a medium.

Argonne scientists Lindsey Bleem, PhD’13, and Asst. Prof. Clarence Chang, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics, talk about what it’s like to look for signals from the early universe onsite at Antarctica's South Pole Telescope.