News: Research

The fifth annual Chicago Quantum Summit brought together over 220 members of the quantum information science and technology community from across the nation and around the world. Read the recap.

A collaboration between the University of Chicago, University of San Francisco, and University of Cambridge gathers and analyzes data on the funding, location, and research status for more than 230 GMO crop varieties in Africa.

PSD news and honors were among the University of Chicago’s historic 2022 highlights. Read more about Eugene Parker (1927-2022), addressing digital disparities, expanding the Chicago quantum network, and the first inaugural South Side Science Festival.

This month PSD researchers were featured in the news for climate research findings that the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern, creating a living smartwatch that runs on slime, and seminal contributions to the development of a quantum internet.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was the first to successfully replicate the process of how the sun makes energy, on earth –nuclear fusion ignition. UChicago Astronomy & Astrophysics professor Dr. Don Lamb helped develop a computer code to do experiments on the kind of lasers like the one used to achieve fusion ignition.

Two postdocs, Yanzeng Li and Alexander Strang, have been named recipients of the 2022-2023 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Yuji Suzuki, SM’70, a longtime supporter and former Council member of the Physical Sciences Division, established the Yuji and Lorraine Suzuki Postdoctoral Research Fund in 2016 to recognize outstanding postdoctoral researchers. The award provides a salary top-off.

UChicago Ph.D. student Jasmine Lu and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Pedro Lopes built a smartwatch that runs on Physarum Polycephalum, a species of slime mold. 

As part of The Day Tomorrow Began, UChicago News explains the meaning of quantum internet—a network of quantum computers that will someday send, compute, and receive information encoded in quantum states.

Sidney Nagel, the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, is accepting the 2023 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research. The award, sometimes referred to as the ‘lifetime achievement Oscar of physics,’ recognizes “contributions of the highest level that advance our knowledge and understanding of the physical universe in all its facets.”

Sanjana Curtis, a postdoc in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, wrote an article for Scientific American describing new evidence on how cosmic cataclysms forge gold, platinum, and other heavy members of the periodic table.

Fred Chong, the Seymour Goodman Professor in the Department of Computer Science, was elevated to IEEE Fellow in the organization’s 2023 class. The distinction was given to Chong for “contributions to the field of quantum computer architecture, compilation and optimization.”

In this Big Brains podcast episode with Prof. David Awschalom, Dept. of Physics, explore how foundational discoveries at UChicago have shaped quantum research.

Climate scientist Tiffany Shaw explains why the southern hemisphere is stormier than its northern neighbor. Also, the southern hemisphere is getting even stormier over time, whereas the north is not. This is consistent with what climate models simulate for a warming world.

A new study led by climate scientist Tiffany Shaw explains the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern, by about 24%, and asymmetry has increased since the 1980’s. Ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere are the culprits.

Dept. of Chemistry Prof. Bozhi Tian’s artwork melds "scenes of nature with hints of technology, much as his research merges biological and synthetic systems." Read more about his artwork and research in UChicago Magazine.