News: Faculty

Great Lakes scientists, including some from the University of Chicago, recently took part in the first coordinated sampling effort of the lakes in winter to understand what disappearing ice might mean for one of the largest freshwater systems on the planet.

Rebecca Maxcy, director of The Financial Education Initiative at UChicago, comments on access and quality in personal finance instruction in high schools. Her group’s tool kit for evaluation of instructional materials and classroom advocacy is recommended.

Prof. Emeritus Michael S. Turner memorializes Prof. Eugene Parker in the @nytimes: "He was Mr. Magnetism...He was the expert on magnetism in the universe and understood it better than anyone else."

Young-Kee Kim, Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, has been elected as a foreign member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.

Geophysical scientist Elisabeth Moyer joined NewsNation to discuss the 'key' to oil independence.

Physicist Sidney Nagel is part of a new exhibition that brings together faculty and artists to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Gray Center's Mellon Collaborative Fellowship in Arts Practice and Scholarship.

A new research initiative at the University of Chicago called the Data & Democracy Initiative aims to ignite interdisciplinary research on the digital challenges facing democracies around the world.

Prof. Emeritus Eugene N. Parker, a pioneering astrophysicist whose contributions to solar physics were so enormous that NASA named its Parker Solar Probe mission after him, died March 15. He was 94.

The Organic Chemistry textbook from Wiley first came out in 1976 and is used by undergraduates throughout the world. Professor Scott Snyder joined the author team for the 11th edition over a decade ago and has since contributed to both the 12th edition and the 13th edition that was published this month.

Faculty profile of Rana Hanocka, a new assistant professor who joined UChicago CS in the summer of 2021, aims to democratize this technology, building AI capabilities for 3D data that transform aspiration into reality.

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.