News: Students

University leaders welcome UChicago community back to campus for new academic year.

The all-day, all ages event highlighted the importance of STEM education, careers in science and understanding how science impacts daily life. The festival was created to connect South Side community members with science education resources.

Tianle Liu was born and raised in Beijing, China, and first came to UChicago as a physics and mathematics double major in The College. This will be her fifth year on campus! She is currently pursuing a master’s in computer science. As part of the EPiQC education team, she works with Professor Diana Franklin to create engaging and accessible quantum computing education materials.

NASA has awarded $4.3 million for the final phase of construction and flight of the Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon (EUSO-SPB2) experiment led by Prof. Angela Olinto, Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Sending a scientific balloon to 110,000 feet above Earth will enable a search for tiny, ultra-high-energy cosmic ray particles and neutrinos.

Third-year Audrey Scott is one of 51 undergrads to earn a competitive Brooke Owens Fellowship. Read about her summer research at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, CO.

Geophysical sciences graduate student, Sasha Warren, writes in Scientific American how wind, ice, and rock may have combined to give our planet its shortest day.

Dieter M. Gruen, Physics PhD’51, is a 99-year-old scientist who fled Nazi Germany, worked on the atomic bomb, and continues to push the bounds of alternative energy technology. 

Research led by Prof. Philipp Heck, the Robert A. Pritzker Curator of Meteoritics at Chicago’s Field Museum, and geophysical sciences graduate student, Xin Yang, explains strange particle ejection behavior seen in 2019 on the Bennu asteroid.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to use supercomputing simulations to reveal weaknesses in HIV-1 defense, share the scientific community's enthusiasm for the first full-color images of James Webb Space Telescope, and to invent a ‘quantum flute’ that can make particles of light move together.

UChicago Magazine profiles Kenneth Sembach, AB’88, the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, the NASA-contracted nonprofit organization responsible for Webb’s flight and science operations.

Emily Chen, SB’20 Chemistry and a researcher in the lab of Prof. Giulia Galli, has been selected for the inaugural Arley D. Cathey International Graduate Study Fellowships, which provide financial assistance to pursue a rigorous, research-oriented master's degree at an internationally renowned foreign research university.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to understand why Mars dried out, expand and activate the Chicagoland quantum network, and analyze samples from asteroid Ryugu collected by Hayabusa2.

After two years of remote participation, the 2022 DSI Summer Lab will bring 49 high school, undergraduate, and master’s students to Chicago for a ten-week immersion into data science research.

An inaugural cohort of a dozen students will join quantum research labs around the Midwest this June, planting the seeds for a diverse and inclusive quantum workforce.

Physics graduate student Katrina Miller traces histories of Black women physicists and astrophysicists in the PSD, in a personal essay for Wired Magazine. She writes, “I just wanted to be a scientist, not a trailblazer. But in my field, people like me are anomalies—and we face constant scrutiny for our race and gender.”