News: Faculty

Astrophysicist Prof. Emeritus Don Lamb is co-author on a new paper that may solve a decades-long mystery—why is gas in galaxy clusters still hot even after billions of years? Focusing 196 lasers on a target the size of a dime, scientists simulated conditions in a galaxy cluster and found solid evidence that hot and cold spots come from the impact of magnetic fields on the cooling of the hot gas.

The Optical Society of America, now named Optica, selected Prof. Norbert F. Scherer of the Department of Chemistry as the 2022 C.E.K. Mees Medal recipient. He was honored for seminal contributions to optical science, especially nonlinear spectroscopy and microscopy and optical matter experiments.

Jacob Bean, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is co-leading a team that plans to use James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to look at sub-Neptune planets and better model atmosphere composition and circulation.

Prof. Wendy Freedman, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, will address this year’s graduating class on the Main Quad during the June 4 ceremony. A renowned cosmologist, Freedman led the team that made a landmark measurement in 2001 of the Hubble constant—the rate at which the universe is expanding.

A team of University of Chicago chemists and biologists including Prof. Yamuna Krishnan developed a tiny device made out of DNA intended to locate tumor cells and force them to reveal themselves to patrolling immune cells.

Following the release of the national plan for developing a quantum workforce, educators and leaders in quantum information science came together to discuss the future of quantum education in the US. Computer science professor Diana Franklin was a featured speaker.

A nuclear reactor at an Illinois energy plant is helping University of Chicago scientists learn how to catch and understand the tiny, elusive particles known as neutrinos. Prof. Juan Collar said, “This is the closest that neutrino physicists have been able to get to a commercial reactor core.”

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to read out a qubit on demand and set a record for preserving quantum states for more than five seconds, to revolutionize the field of 2D materials with a technique to cut and stack fragile sheets of nanomaterials, and to demonstrate ultracold atoms can segregate into separate domain states.

Seymour Goodman Professor of Computer Science Fred Chong comments on a new programming language called Twist that can help scientists discover which qubits in their machines become entangled when working on a problem, and then take specific actions, like only accepting data from an unentangled qubit.

NASA has selected University of Chicago associate professor of geophysical sciences, Edwin Kite, to join the Mars Curiosity rover mission as a participating scientist. Kite, along with fourth-year Ph.D. student Sasha Warren, hopes to expand the rover science team’s understanding of climate history on Mars.

Neubauer Professor of Computer Science Ben Zhao comments on misrepresentation and fraud in modern hiring.

Newly announced Sloan Fellow Asst. Prof. Pedro Lopes, Department of Computer Science, was interviewed about his human computer integration research by FOX32 Chicago.

Amgen Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Benoit Roux is leading the effort to build a supercomputing cluster to explore structure and dynamics of biological systems.

Three Physical Sciences Division early-career scholars have been selected for Sloan Research Fellowships: Asst. Prof. Pedro Lopes in the Department of Computer Science, Asst. Prof. Chao Gao in the Department of Statistics, and Asst. Prof. Mark Levin in the Department of Chemistry.
 

A statue of KICP postdoctoral fellow Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil will be featured in The Smithsonian’s Women’s History Month presentation of “#IfThenSheCan - The Exhibit,” a collection of 120 statues of women in STEM that will be on display in the Smithsonian gardens March 5–27.