News: Research

2025

Skeletal editing: How close are we to true cut-and-paste chemistry?

July 28, 2025

Human-like drawings interacting with balls that are colored.

Reactions that alter organic scaffolds by a single atom are already proving useful, but time will tell if they’ll fundamentally change how molecules are made.


Chemical biologist links basic discoveries to treatments for disease

July 28, 2025

UChicago Prof. Hening Lin, standing, in the lab with graduate student Jiaqi Zhao. Lin is a chemical biologist whose work bridges multiple disciplines with the common goal of linking basic research to real clinical applications.

Prof. Hening Lin brings expertise in enzymes to UChicago, bridging scientists, engineers and doctors to translate research to clinical applications.


Can a doctor’s notes reveal when they’re tired? New research illuminates the hidden signals of physician fatigue—and raises questions about AI in healthcare

July 28, 2025

Associate Professor Chenhao Tan.

A new study led by Associate Professor Chenhao Tan analyzes hundreds of thousands of emergency room notes, uncovering how language patterns reveal physician fatigue and warning of potential pitfalls as AI-generated text enters clinical care.


PhD candidate Bogdan Stoica receives distinguished artifact evaluator award for championing reproducibility in computer science

July 28, 2025

PhD candidate, Bogdan Alexandru Stoica.

Final year PhD candidate Bodgan Alexandru Stoica, advised by Professor Shan Lu, is honored with the Distinguished Artifact Evaluator award for his contributions to the Artifact Evaluation Committee (AEC) at Eurosys 2025.


UChicago MS-ADS students present capstone project at Midwest ml Symposium

July 28, 2025

Nathan Rickert and Kwaku Ofori-Atta at the Midwest Machine Learning Symposium presenting their poster.

Ariel Azria, Kwaku Ofori-Atta, and Nathan Rickert were selected to share their capstone project, FinWise.AI, during the poster session.


Chicago State University’s quantum education programs help local students ‘imagine themselves working in the field’

July 16, 2025

Dr. Lucinda Boyd explains how to work an atomic force microscope (AFM) at the Quantum Sensing Summer Program at Chicago State University.

One program, Quantum Sensing Summer Program with NSF QuBBE, offers Chicago high schoolers two weeks of lab immersion.


Announcing the Center for Advanced Materials for Environmental Solutions

July 16, 2025

Photo of the University of Chicago.

The multidisciplinary Center develops materials with practical applications, like methane capture, water harvesting and CO2 conversion. The Center is led by Laura Gagliardi, the Richard and Kathy Leventhal Professor in the Department of Chemistry.


Innovative liquid biopsy test uses RNA to detect early-stage cancer

July 16, 2025

Three red vials with a magnifying glass held up to them to reveal the cells located within the vials.

UChicago researchers have developed a new liquid biopsy test that uses RNA modifications to detect early-stage colorectal cancer with 95% accuracy.


Was Mars doomed to be a desert? Study proposes new explanation

July 16, 2025

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this photo as it ascended the Martian mountain Mt. Sharp. A study proposes a new explanation for why Mars is a barren desert today, despite having many similarities to Earth.

UChicago-led analysis of Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover data may explain why the planet was likely harsh desert for most of the recent past.


Edward Anders, Holocaust survivor and pioneering figure in cosmochemistry, 1926–2025

July 16, 2025

Photo of Edward Anders in black and white.

Edward Anders, who passed away June 1st at the age of 98, helped to map the history of the solar system and documented the Holocaust. 


Under the hood: The mathematics of AI

July 16, 2025

Photo of a cat and a dog with green photography outline.

Rebecca Willett, the Data Science Institute's Faculty Director of AI, gave a public lecture at the National Museum of Mathematics highlighting core ideas underlying AI.


Hank Snowdon took a swing at data science and landed in the MLB

July 16, 2025

The MS-ADS program took a group of students to the White Sox Game on May 9th, 2025.

Hank Snowdon joined the Seattle Mariners with a lifelong love of baseball and a powerful new data science skill set. He’s now helping shape player decisions in one of Major League Baseball’s front offices.


Shape-shifting particles let scientists control how fluids flow

July 16, 2025

Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and NYU Tandon, including Prof. Stuart Rowan, demonstrate a new way to regulate how dense suspensions — mixtures of solid particles in a fluid — behave under stress.

University of Chicago chemist Stuart Rowan develops temperature-responsive materials that could improve manufacturing and 3D printing.


Understanding the energy dissipation dynamics of new quantum dots

July 16, 2025

Photo of two female researchers operating machinery.

A new study from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, including UChicago chemists Greg Engel and Dmitri Talapin, could help scientists and engineers better understand how to tune quantum dots—tiny semiconductor nanocrystals that harness quantum mechanics to release energy as light—for different technologies.


Mathematical model

July 16, 2025

Mina Rees, PhD’31, worked behind the scenes to develop the first federal agency dedicated to funding scientific research in peacetime. (Mina Rees, The Archives of the Alumni Association of Hunter College, Box 143, Folder 22, Archives & Special Collectio

Mina Rees, PhD’31 (1902–97), was the first woman elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and helped scientific research flourish.