News: Students

From an expedition to hunt for fossils in the deserts of Wyoming to building a virtual reality headset, University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division graduate students were exploring a range of questions during the Summer Quarter. Here is how six students spent the summer.

Computer science researchers in Asst. Prof. Pedro Lopes’ Human Computer Integration Lab recently presented their design for DextrEMS, a wearable device combining electrical muscle stimulation and mechanical brakes to control individual fingers.

The Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program has selected two PSD students for its national laboratory research award. Chemistry students, Daniel King, will join research on data science for AI applications to chemical, geological, biochemical, and materials sciences at Argonne National Laboratory. Physics student, Alexander Hryciuk, will join experimental research on high energy physics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Sixty-five students were awarded nationwide.

By stacking ultra-thin layers of crystal on top of each other, rotated slightly, researchers led by Jiwoong Park, professor of chemistry and molecular engineering, created a material that is extremely good at both containing heat and moving it—an unusual ability at the microscale.
 

UChicago is a partner a collaboration of researchers led by Cornell University that has been awarded $22.5 million from the National Science Foundation to continue gaining the fundamental understanding needed to transform the brightness of electron beams available to science, medicine and industry.

Three PhD students and two students in the MS in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MS-CAPP) program were named to the 2022 class of the Siebel Scholars. This year’s class of UChicago CS Siebel Scholars includes students studying quantum computing, security and privacy, and energy-efficient software, as well as master’s students working with policymakers, non-profits, and governments on applying data-driven and computational methods for transformative social impact.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to bring software that makes quantum computing faster to the market, to speed up development of materials that can harness energy from sunlight, and to pioneer US quantum research and design a new internet protocol that manages different types of quantum information encoding.

Prof. Bozhi Tian’s group has a newly patented method for fabrication of carbon-based bioelectronic devices and interfaces that could shape therapeutics of the future. The discovery demonstrates electrical biosensing that is more flexible, efficient, and stable.

A new data science major will help UChicago undergraduates learn how to analyze data and apply it to critical real-world problems in various disciplines. Students also have the option to combine data science with a second major.

Elizabeth Wells Kelley was born and raised in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Before coming to the University of Chicago, she earned a bachelor's in chemistry at the College of William & Mary, where she was a research assistant, teaching assistant, and tutor. She is starting her fifth year in the Department of Chemistry doctoral program. She has taken time off during her program to teach high school chemistry at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Now returned to her research, she works on organic synthesis and the scientific investigation of how humans learn, teach, and interact with chemistry.
 

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to understand how manipulating RNA can allow plants to yield dramatically more crops and increase drought tolerance, explain why planets with oxygenated atmospheres like ours could host alien life, and extol what billionaires mean for the changing arc of aerospace history. And, a Nobel-winning biochemist, Jack Szostak, will join the faculty in 2022.

Adela DePavia was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and Northern California’s East Bay Area. After finishing undergrad in 2019, she spent a year on a research fellowship before joining the Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics (CCAM) program at UChicago. Soon starting her second year, she studies connections between discrete and continuous time optimization, and optimization on manifolds.

The Physical Sciences Division community and the Department of Physics mourn the loss Ilan Naibryf, a rising fourth-year physics major remembered as a compassionate, dedicated friend.

The Physical Sciences Division community and the Department of Computer Science mourn the loss of Max Solomon Lewis, a rising third-year Computer Science major who is remembered as a campus leader and selfless friend.

Building the wide open future of data science requires bringing new students into the fold today. And at UChicago, for the third consecutive year, the Center for Data an Computing (CDAC) Summer Lab serves as one of those gateways. Welcoming 55 high school, undergraduate, and master’s students to serve as research assistants on projects with more than 39 mentors and adding a new “social impact” track, it’s the largest year yet for the program designed to train and inspire the next generation of interdisciplinary computational and data scientists.