News: Newsclips

Nearly 400 miles off the coast of Antarctica, the Earth’s largest iceberg—whose sprawling surface covers more than 1,600 square miles—is spinning like a top. UChicago glaciologist Douglas MacAyeal comments on the dynamic between the ocean and the iceberg. 

As new reports reveal evidence of a large underground reservoir on Mars, suggesting that the planet might still have water, challenges in this research area still remain. In a notable new paper, UChicago scientists propose a new methodology to warm Mars’s atmosphere.

Gene Mazenko, Professor Emeritus in UChicago’s Department of Physics, the James Franck Institute, and the College, who focused on phase transitions and hydrodynamics of magnets, fluids, liquid crystals, and glasses, died in Antioch, CA, on July 7. He was 79.

Ava Polzin is one of 50 students selected as a 2024 Quad Fellow. Now in its second year, the Quad Fellowship supports exceptional master's and doctoral students pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the United States.

Sarah Willson, a chemistry graduate student, has won the 2024 Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award from the American Vacuum Society for her thesis research on superconducting materials. The award is one of the highest honors given to a female graduate student for their doctoral research.

A collaborative study between UChicago, Northwestern, and the University of Central Florida proposes a revolutionary approach towards terraforming Mars. This method, using engineered dust particles, could be 5,000 times more efficient than previous proposals.

Assistant Professor Sarah Sebo secures CAREER grant to develop robots with advanced social skills for improved collaboration and learning in schools and beyond.

In this episode of the Big Brains podcast, computer science professors Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng discuss their programs, Glaze and Nightshade, which are copyright protection tools helping artists fight back against generative AI.

Nobel Laureate Tsung-Dao Lee passed away on August 4th. His research overturned the law of conservation of parity, which had been considered a fundamental law of nature for decades. Lee completed his graduate work at the University of Chicago.
 

Nobel winner Thomas Cech’s new book The Catalyst explores the discoveries that helped position RNA research at the center of biotechnology. UChicago’s Jack Szostak is amongst the group of scientists who helped expand essential RNA research. 

A team of scientists from the University of Chicago and MIT may have solved the decades-old mystery. A new breakthrough study reveals why the moon has a (very thin) atmosphere.

Chemistry Graduate Student Lauren McNamara has been recognized with the 2024 Merck Research Award. McNamara, who works as part of the John Anderson Lab, will be recognized at the American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee (WCC) luncheon in the fall and will present her research at a symposium in August. 

Chameleon, an experimental testbed for computer science research, has been awarded $12 million to operate a facility to support computer science research on edge, cloud, and AI. Led by Senior Scientist Kate Keahey from Argonne National Laboratory, Chameleon has been a cornerstone of CS research and education for nearly a decade.

Startup PsiQuantum, a Chicago Quantum Exchange (CQE) corporate partner, will construct a 300,000-square-foot Quantum Computer Operations Center on the state’s groundbreaking campus at the site of the former US Steel South Works plant on Chicago’s Southeast Side. PsiQuantum will partner with the University of Chicago to collaborate on research projects and explore opportunities to develop educational programs in quantum applications.

Assistant Professor Aloni Cohen, second-year PhD student Gabe Schoenbach, and postdoc Alexander Hoover recently posted a paper that extends the theory of watermarking outputs of language models. One of the main goals of watermarking language models involves embedding detectable signals within the outputs of language models such as ChatGPT.