News: Research

SkAI Institute will develop AI tools and accelerate astronomy’s data-driven revolution.

Shawn Shan, a PhD student in computer science, was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 2024 Innovators Under 35. Shan helped create Glaze and Nightshade, tools that allow artists to protect their work from AI scraping.

In a new video, the Beckman Foundation highlights the research of UChicago Asst. Professor Sarah King in dynamic spectroscopy. King was a recipient of the 2020 Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Program award.

The second edition of TIME100 AI showcases some of the most influential new leaders in AI research and technology. Featured in this year's list is UChicago's Computer Science professor Ben Zhao, the inventor of Nightshade, a program that helps protect artists' work from AI scraping.

Scientists' understanding of the universe is ever-evolving, and recent research has tackled some of the biggest questions in cosmology. Professor Wendy Freedman's work is among these landmark developments, using data from the James Webb Space Telescope to challenge the existence of the Hubble tension.
 

A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something. The results of UChicago Prof. Wendy Freedman's new measurements of the cosmic expansion rate might reveal that the Hubble tension is not real.
 

In a new paper, a UChicago PME-led team of researchers from UChicago, Argonne National Laboratory, and University of Illinois Chicago used defect-embedded colloidal nanocrystals to create a perfect mixture of tiny solids in solution, which presents a better way to integrate quantum technologies. 

On August 16, stakeholders from academia, national labs, and industry—ranging from major corporations to startups—gathered for the soft launch of the Energy Transition Network, a new collaboration aimed at shifting the world away from fossil fuels in a safe, rapid, and cost-effective manner. Led by Professors Shirley Meng and Laura Gagliardi, the project will leverage Chicago’s existing resources to transform the region into a central hub of education, innovation, and startups focused on environmental issues.

Tong Lan, a graduate student with the Bryan Dickinson lab, is first author of a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that presents breakthrough research on covalent macrocyclic peptides. This work is essential for the development of more effective and targeted cancer treatments. 

In an exciting development for quantum computing, researchers from the Department of Computer Science, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and Argonne National Laboratory have introduced a groundbreaking classical algorithm that simulates Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) experiments. 

The University of Chicago is celebrating a major achievement with the recent announcement of a $1 million investment from the NSF for the first year of the ambitious Quantum Advantage Computing and Technology Initiative (QACTI) project.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has created a new Energy Innovation Hub, the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA), which will work to advance battery technology. Led by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, ESRA aims to drive technological innovation and strengthen US economic competitiveness.

After years of preparation, the first neutrinos have been observed by the Short-Baseline Near Detector collaboration. The data SBND collects will expand our knowledge of how neutrinos interact with matter and will be used to search for evidence of new physics.

Tadpole craters on Mars, formed by ancient water outflows, provide valuable insights into the planet’s transition from a wet to an arid environment. Researchers, including those at the University of Chicago, are using these unique formations to better understand the climate changes that occurred during Mars's poorly understood late Hesperian period.
 

University of Chicago astrophysics undergrad Zewei Wu has spent his summer near Munich, Germany in “Science City,” conducting research to help unravel the story of how galaxies form and evolve. At his internship at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics he has been running simulations of astrophysical plasma—the gas that composes more than half of all visible matter in galaxies, including stars and solar systems.