News: Students

Scientists have dived deeper into the "eye of the storm" swirling around supermassive black holes than ever before. This unprecedented investigation of the turbulent and violent conditions around these cosmic titans, including the first black hole ever imaged by humanity, was possible thanks to the joint Japanese Aerospace Agency (JAXA)/ NASA X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM).
 

Rahul Kukreja, pursuing an MS in Statistics at the University of Chicago, shares his transformative journey from India to the US. He highlights academic rigor, the fast-paced quarter system, cultural adjustment, emotional resilience, and building networks. Beyond studies, he learned self-reliance, cooking, and the value of relationships, emphasizing growth through challenges and curiosity.

This March, the University of Chicago will become a crossroads for researchers, designers, artists, and technologists from around the world as it hosts the 20th ACM Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, TEI’26, from March 8–11, 2026. For UChicago students, faculty, and staff, it’s a chance to engage with leaders at the forefront of human-computer interaction and help celebrate two decades of innovation in tangible, embedded, and embodied technologies.

New infrared light sources mark 100-fold efficiency boost, could improve broad range of sensors, technology.

Analyzing NOAA's billion-dollar weather disaster database, a UChicago-led study projects sharply rising costs driven by climate change and expanding development.

Monica Para balances a full-time Data Analyst role with part-time online studies in the University of Chicago’s MS in Applied Data Science program. Her week includes office work, AI projects, evening Zoom lectures, assignments, and tech community involvement. She uses weekends for coursework and hiking, emphasizing strong time management.

​​In a Data Engineering course taught by Steve Barry, a team of Master’s in Applied Data Science students built a full end-to-end data pipeline, from raw public datasets to an interactive, AI-powered interface. The project gave students hands-on experience designing the kind of data infrastructure that underpins real-world applications, developing the technical skills.

On February 17, Univision Chicago aired a feature on Space Explorers, a signature program of UChicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.

Yuelong Li, in his second year of the Master's Program in Computational and Applied Mathematics, focuses on the mathematics of topological insulators. We interviewed him about his experiences at UChicago.

Anand Nakhate chose the University of Chicago's FinMath program because it matched exactly what he was looking for – deep mathematical rigor combined with structured, real-world application.

Learning experiences at Argonne National Laboratory fuel the ambitions of future leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

FIfth year PhD student Soumik Ghosh was awarded the International Business Machines (IBM) PhD fellowship. The following is a Q&A that shares his background, academic journey, and what comes next for his research. 

Physics graduate student Ryohei Weil contributes to research that has verified four theoretical predictions regarding computational phases of matter. These contributions confirm the stability of quantum technology for scalability in the future. 

In December, undergraduate Ranya Sharma was honored with a 2025 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award—one of the highest recognitions for early-career computing research in North America. The award, presented by the Computing Research Association, acknowledges Ranya’s standout contributions to understanding how digital infrastructure shapes privacy, performance, and equity across the Internet.

UChicago chemists gain insight into how a Parkinson’s-associated protein binds to membranes in the brain.