News: Research

Chuan He, John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry, has been named a 2023 Wolf Prize Laureate in Chemistry “for discovering reversible RNA methylation and its role in the regulation of gene expression.” The acclaimed Wolf Prize is awarded to outstanding scientists and artists for achievements in the interest of humanity and friendly relations among people.

Anne Mykland, a recent UChicago Lab graduate, recounts her experience as a high school intern in the UChicago DSI SummerLab, for the Harvard Data Science Review.

By applying chemicals to the skin, researchers from the University of Chicago have created a new form of haptics that make VR-experiences more real.

George Crabtree, widely recognized and admired as a brilliant, passionate materials scientist who led groundbreaking work in superconductivity and energy storage over the course of nearly seven decades at Argonne National Laboratory, died Jan. 23. He was 78.

Gizmodo explores the UChicago Human Computer Integeration Lab conceptual smartwatch that requires thriving slime mold or the smartwatch’s functionality becomes limited.

A group of scientists, including several with the UChicago and Fermilab, have released one of the most precise measurements ever made of how matter is distributed across the universe today, using DES and SPT data.

Assoc. Prof. Edwin Kite, Dept. of Geophysical Sciences, is part of a team striving to identify nontraditional abiotic methane sources that could potentially be in play on exoplanets of interest.

Wisconsin Public Radio Morning Show host Kate Archer Kent interviews computer science professors Rebecca Willet and Ben Zhao about the potential uses and security challenges to AI.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to determine why the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Nothern Hemisphere, explain how the HIV virus replicates itself, and gather and analyze data on the funding, location, and research status for more than 230 GMO crop varieties in Africa.

The University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Data Science Institute today announced the launch of Transform, a new accelerator for startup companies focused on the breakthrough technologies of data science and artificial intelligence.

The 2023 unveiling of the Doomsday Clock at a Jan. 24 event in Washington, D.C. showed  hands of the clock at 90 seconds to midnight. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which includes Profs. Holz and Rosner of PSD, cite ‘unprecedented danger’ amid war in Ukraine, concerns over climate change.

A study by UChicago chemists has uncovered a new key step in the process that HIV uses to replicate itself. “The thought is that if we could stop the capsids from forming, or cause them to malform, we could prevent HIV from being infectious and replicating,” said senior author, Prof. Greg Voth, Dept. of Chemistry.

Maria Valdes, a research scientist at UChicago and the Field Museum, is among an international team who can attest to Antarctica’s meteorite-hunter-friendliness: they returned with five new meteorites, including one that weighs 16.7 pounds (7.6 kg).

Prof. Ka Yee C. Lee, Dept. of Chemistry, was named a Fellow of the Biophysical Society in 2023 “for her impactful and creative contributions to our understanding of the structure and stability of lipid membranes and their interactions with proteins.”

Sleep research began at UChicago, when in 1953, Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky identified REM sleep, the stage when most dreaming occurs. Today, UChicago researchers study sleep’s relationship to body weight, disease, learning, and mood.