News: Faculty

Congratulations to Robert Wald, Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College, who has received a 2025 Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).

This episode of the Big Brains podcast features Chemistry Professor Greg Engel, who helped launch the field of quantum biology. Engel explains how plants and bacteria evolved to exploit quantum effects for photosynthesis—and how understanding these systems could spark a revolution in quantum sensing, medicine, and neuroscience.

Congratulations to Abigail Vieregg, Professor of Physics, Enrico Fermi Institute, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, and the College, who has received a 2025 Cottrell SEED Award!

Congratulations to Prof. Talapin and Prof. Anderson, who have received prestigious ACS awards! The American Chemical Society has announced its 2026 national award winners, acknowledged for their outstanding achievements in chemistry across various fields in the discipline.

Near Modane, a laboratory buried beneath the Alps is attempting to capture elements of a world parallel to our own. Paolo Privitera uses this laboratory to study dark matter. 

[Article published in French. View in Chrome browser for translation option.]

Fred Ciesla reveals how observations of a young star offer a glimpse of the high-temperature conditions that shaped rock formation in the early Solar System.

Hank Hoffmann, Liew Family Chair of Computer Science, earns SEAMS Most Influential Paper Award for research on using control theory to enhance adaptive software reliability and responsiveness.

Professors Steven Sibener in Chemistry and Meghana Ranganathan in Geophysical Sciences will lead project to better predict ice loss.

Yearly American Association of Physics Teachers award, given to Nadya Mason, honors outstanding contributions to physics and their communication to physics educators.

Stuart Rowan and researchers from UChicago Pritzker Molecular Engineering created drug delivery nanoparticles that self-assemble with a simple temperature shift.

The mysterious substance called dark matter is intrinsically invisible. It cannot be directly observed; its presence is inferred by its gravitational influence on the universe, such as binding galaxy clusters together and moving stars around their galaxy faster than they should. Yet new research published in Physical Review Letters uses a “camera” to look for dark matter interactions, thereby probing the nature of this elusive stuff.

A neurotic robot in a University of Chicago study was seen as more human and relatable, sparking emotional connections—despite extroverted robots being preferred.

UChicago CS Assistant Professor Haotian Jiang and collaborator Nikhil Bansal develop a new algorithm that addresses the problems and surpasses the performance of both existing methods of numerical integration, including Monte Carlo and Quasi-Monte Carlo.

Integrating sulfur into crystalline nanostructures utilizes previously untapped active sites.

An irregularity in magnesium oxide, a commonly used material in microelectronics, may be suited for qubits.