News: Research

Half a century ago, scientists at the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute helped invent a new way to study the universe: by treating the Big Bang itself as a laboratory to explore nature at energy scales unreachable on earth. This fall, nine of the researchers who carry that legacy forward will share what those fifty years have uncovered — from the invisible matter holding galaxies together to the gravitational ripples of colliding black holes.

The series of free public talks by UChicago scientists, “The Compton Lectures: 50 Years of Discovery,” run every Saturday from Oct. 3 through Dec. 5 at 11 a.m. in the Kersten Physics Teaching Center.
 

Teams led by University of Chicago and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have received new five-year grants from the National Science Foundation for quantum technology research worth $37.5 million apiece.

In its hunt for dark matter, the XENONnT experiment has detected the rare, feeble glow of neutrinos smacking into electrons.

Breakthrough from a team led by Jacob Covey, associate professor in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Department of Physics, turns helium-3’s low mass into a quantum resource.

Study led by UChicago researchers uses bending by gravity of the oldest light in the universe to map the intervening structure.

Argonne scientists are hitting the road, bringing AI out of the lab and into libraries, museums and community centers. No jargon. Just great science.

UChicago chemists invent faster, cheaper technique to turn isoxazoles into pyrroles, a building block for medicines.

The University of Chicago’s MS in Applied Data Science program celebrated the culminating work of its graduating students at the Summer 2026 Capstone Showcase on August 15th.

The National Science Foundation is investing over $290 million into eight university-based research institutes as part of its Quantum Leap Challenge program.

Better understanding how a common channel opens and closes may help scientists build better medicines.

When a problem is so complex that solving it requires expertise from academia, industry, government and national laboratories, it becomes a grand challenge.

The new approach, backed by experimental evidence from an interdisciplinary team at UChicago, including chemical biologist Hening Lin, identified central disease-driving genes, most not previously linked to asthma.

Deep beneath the French-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider sends protons crashing together at extraordinary speeds, allowing scientists to study the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces that shape the universe. Those collisions help researchers investigate questions ranging from the behavior of subatomic particles to the possibility of new physics beyond what is currently known.

In a project selected for funding by the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and partners from other national laboratories, universities and industry will apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable precise and adaptive resonance control in particle accelerators. Their work aims to lower operating costs by millions of dollars each year and improve accelerator performance, driving scientific discovery.

Research outlines a new workflow for design and manufacturing, illustrated by two new methane-fighting materials.