News: Research

This month PSD researchers were featured for their efforts to test an unhackable internet, develop metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to transform cancer treatments, and design and build the next generation telescope called CMB-S4.

A group with UChicago and the Field Museum tested an instrument made by Thermo Fisher Scientific on a piece of a Martian meteorite and were able to accurately and easily date the rock using strontium isotopes.

A new University of Chicago initiative, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, a program of Schmidt Futures, will train the next generation of scientists combining research in both AI and science fields, including physics, astronomy and biology.

With a $9.2 million grant from IARPA, Andrew A. Chien will lead a team of UChicago CS researchers building the UpDown System, a new approach that could speed up graph analytics a hundredfold.

Students Ting-Han Lin and Spencer Ng together with Asst. Prof. Sarah Sebo, Dept. of Computer Science, presented research inspired by interactive amusement park animatronics and escape rooms to test people’s preferences for human versus robot game guides.

A study by undergraduate student Jared Siegel, UChicago ’22, will be published by The Astrophysical Journal and sets upper limits on the masses of 50 exoplanets. He conducted his research with Asst. Prof. Leslie Rogers, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

An analysis of rock scooped directly from the surface of an asteroid by a Japanese spacecraft suggests Ryugu originally formed alongside the ice giants Neptune and Uranus and spent time circling the sun as a comet before making its way to the asteroid belt near Earth.

Assistant Professor Leslie Rogers, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the College, is part of an interdisciplinary team that has been awarded a Scialog: Signatures of Life in the Universe Award to pursue innovative research on how volatile reservoirs within planets inform life outside the Solar System.

Former President Barack Obama sent a jolt of electricity through Chicago Quantum Exchange in Hyde Park. Students from Kenwood Academy were on a field trip to learn about the future of communication when Obama suddenly appeared during a career panel. Watch FOX32 News coverage.

With CMB-S4, scientists including UChicago cosmologists John Carlstrom and Jeff McMahon hope to connect a sandy desert with a polar desert—and revolutionize our understanding of the early universe.

Neubauer Family Assistant Professor Weixin Tang, Dept. of Chemistry, was named a 2022 Packard Fellow. The award will support her research to develop a mammalian biology-compatible, adaptation-ready directed evolution strategy to isolate biomolecules for therapeutic discovery.

UChicago research assistant, Donna DeEtte Elbert, was a “computer” for Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and shared authorship with the Nobel laureate on 18 papers. Her pivotal finding about planetary magnetic fields existed for years as a footnote in his work—until recently.

How can super-porous metal organic frameworks (MOFs) advance healthcare? Prof. Wenbin Lin, Dept. of Chemistry, has spent two decades inventing MOFs that can enhance the effect of the radiation in tumor cells without amplifying damage to normal cells.

A profile of the Chicago quantum network project. “What we’re looking at is: Can you transmit info in a secure way that is immune to hacking and protects your personal and privacy?” says Prof. David Awschalom, Dept. of Physics. “We’re getting close.”

Black holes fascinate both the public and scientists—they push the limits of our understanding about matter, space and time. Read more about them in this UChicago News Explainer Series,