News: Faculty

As part of a nationwide initiative to boost research in quantum science, the National Science Foundation will establish a $25 million institute in Chicago to investigate quantum sensing for biology and train the quantum workforce. Headquartered at the University of Chicago and in partnership with Chicago State University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Harvard University, the institute will be funded for five years.

UChicago chemists specializing in mathematical physics, materials chemistry, and physical chemistry are part of a team of scientists who have received $3 million in funding to support three years of quantum information science research. Working with Harvard University and Purdue University, the collaboration will try to build the foundations for using quantum computers to model molecules at the atomic level—yielding not only insights that could lead the way to new chemical discoveries, but potentially laying the groundwork for quantum computing as a whole.

A new data science major will help UChicago undergraduates learn how to analyze data and apply it to critical real-world problems in various disciplines. Students also have the option to combine data science with a second major.

Crain’s Chicago Business profiles UChicago’s major investment in quantum computing research in hopes of putting itself and Chicago at the forefront of the next big innovation in technology.

In a letter sent to members of the University community on his first day in Levi Hall, the leading chemist and new president wrote he will spend the fall in listening and planning sessions. He would like to explore two particular aspects: the UChicago of deep inquiry and scholarship, and the “engaged” UChicago in the world of practice.

As part of a new $61 million investment from the Department of Energy in quantum research, a consortium of scientists from University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were awarded funding to design a new internet protocol that manages different types of quantum information encoding.

Professor of Chemistry Giulia Galli is among a team of scientists at Argonne National Laboratory using machine learning to speed up development of materials that can harness energy from sunlight. The team was able to simplify the solution of the quantum mechanical equations that describe how light is absorbed by a solid, liquid or molecule.

In 2011, a team of MIT researchers including UChicago associate professor Hank Hoffmann (then a graduate student) proposed a “loop perforation” algorithm that gave computers a generalizable option to go off-script and sacrifice accuracy in favor of performance. Though the paper was controversial when originally presented at FSE (The ACM Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering), its tradeoff principles have since become widespread in computer science. To celebrate this forward-thinking research, FSE recently awarded Hoffmann and his co-authors Stelios Sidiroglou, Sasa Misailovic, and Martin Rinard the honorable mention in their annual Test of Time award.

Just out of stealth, Seymour Goodman Professor of Computer Science Fred Chong and Pranav Gokhale, PhD’20, have a new startup for software that makes quantum computing faster. Part of Duality, the first accelerator in the U.S. for quantum startups, Super.tech is building software to power next-gen quantum computing.

The University of Chicago podcast network interviews PSD biochemist Chuan He about his breakthrough discovery manipulating RNA for higher yields and greater drought resistance in rice and potatoes, for "Big Brains Podcast: How a genetic breakthrough could address global hunger."

Prof. Emeritus Noel M. Swerdlow of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, a distinguished historian of science and the world’s foremost expert on Ptolemy and Copernicus, died July 24. He was 79.
 

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to understand how manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops and increase drought tolerance, explain why planets with oxygenated atmospheres like ours could host alien life, and extol what billionaires mean for the changing arc of aerospace history. And, a Nobel-winning biochemist, Jack Szostak, will join the faculty in 2022.

The Chicago Quantum Exchange, a growing hub for the research and development of quantum technology that is based at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, has added to its community two world-leading research institutions at the forefront of quantum information science and engineering: the Weizmann Institute of Science and The Ohio State University.

Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jack Szostak will join the Department of Chemistry faculty, effective Sept. 1, 2022. A pioneering scholar of genetics who examines the biochemical origins of life, Szostak shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009. He will become the 24th person to hold a University Professorship, and the 11th active faculty member holding that title.

The outing of a top Catholic official using supposedly anonymous data from his cell phone is raising questions about privacy. NBC’s Joshua Johnson asks Ben Zhao, Neubauer Professor of Computer Science, to explain the practice of de-anonymization and whether or not you need to be concerned about your data.