News: Students

Graduate students Evan Angelico and Nina Coyle have received prestigious Department of Energy fellowships to conduct their research at Fermilab.

Jade Checlair was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium. Prior to attending the University of Chicago, she studied physics at the University of Toronto and spent a summer in Tokyo researching exoplanets. She’s now in her third year at UChicago, pursuing a PhD in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences.

Alan Chang was born in Minneapolis, MN, and grew up in San Jose, CA. He received a BA in mathematics from Princeton and is now in his fifth year of the University of Chicago’s Mathematics PhD program. We interviewed him via email about his experiences at UChicago.

June Wu is from Shanghai, China. Before coming to the University of Chicago, she received her BA in mathematics and MS in scientific computing from the Courant Institute at New York University. She is in her first year of pursuing a PhD with the Committee on Computational and Applied Mathematics (CCAM). We interviewed her via email about her experiences at UChicago.

Petr Panov is from Moscow, Russia. He earned his BSc and MSc in biophysics from Moscow Institute of Technology. He is now a fourth-year student pursuing a PhD in statistics. We interviewed him via email about his experiences at the University of Chicago.

Adina Feinstein grew up in Syosset, New York. She received a BS in Astrophysics from Tufts University and is now a first-year student in the MS-PSD program with a concentration in astronomy & astrophysics. We interviewed her via email about her experiences at the University of Chicago.

This April, labs in the Department of Chemistry and the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME) are invited to join a competition to be the Safest Lab of 2019. The premise? The Joint Research Safety Initiative (JRSI), a student and postdoc-run group, will train volunteers to walk through participating labs “looking both for safety mishaps and clever ingenuity.” The winning labs earn not only the title but also a grand prize of $500 or two runner-up prizes of $250 to be used for a lab outing. 

Naomi Sweeting, a fourth-year in the College, has been awarded the Alice T. Schafer Mathematics Prize, given annually by the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) to an undergraduate woman for excellence in mathematics.

Although NASA's Kepler space telescope ran out of fuel and ended its mission in 2018, citizen scientists, including UChicago graduate student Adina Feinstein, have used its data to discover an exoplanet 226 light-years away in the Taurus constellation.

Gabriel Vargas grew up in San José, Costa Rica. He received a Licenciatura (Bachelor’s plus professional degree) in microbiology and clinical chemistry and a Master’s degree in microbiology from the University of Costa Rica. He is now pursuing a PhD in geophysical sciences with a concentration on microbiology. We interviewed him about his experiences at the University of Chicago.

Margaret Nichols grew up in Minneapolis, MN. She received her BA in math with a minor in computer science from Oberlin College. She is now pursuing her PhD in mathematics with a focus on geometric topology and the study of 3-manifolds. We interviewed her about her experience at the University of Chicago.

This past year brought us the launch of NASA's Parker Solar Probe, named after Prof. Emeritus Eugene Parker, the next generation South Pole Telescope, metal-organic nanoflowers to treat cancer, and more. Here is a look back at ten highlights in research and innovation in the PSD.

Rupak Gupta grew up in Delhi, India. He received a bachelor's in engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Delhi University and master’s in financial mathematics at UChicago. We interviewed him about his experience at UChicago.

Becca Thompson grew up in Evanston, IL. She attended Amherst College and worked in healthcare technology for two years before starting at the University of Chicago. She’s now pursuing a PhD in chemistry. We interviewed her about her experience at the University of Chicago.

Bernard Dickens III is a Chicago native. He received a BS in computer science from Morehouse College and is now pursuing a PhD. We interviewed him about his experiences at the University of Chicago.