News: Students

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to discover how to best decontaminate N95 masks, develop probes made of DNA to track molecular secrets, and find a math bridge that extends beyond Fermat's Last Theorem.

Syrian Truong was born in Fresno, California, and mostly lived there until he transferred from community college to university. The summer before arriving to the University of Chicago, he was doing a summer research internship at the Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg (IPCMS) in Strasbourg, France. Prior to this, he earned a B.S. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and three A.S. degrees in Biology for Transfer, Mathematics for Transfer, and Physics for Transfer from Fresno City College in Fresno, California. He also held jobs during his undergrad as a busser at Hunan Chinese Restaurant, a mathematics tutor at Fresno City College’s Tutorial Center, and a research assistant at UCSB. He has been at UChicago for 1.5 years and is enrolled in the Master of Science in the Physical Sciences Division (MS-PSD) program, working on hard condensed matter theory research. He is currently staying at home in Fresno, California. We interviewed him about his experiences below.

UChicago community finds new ways to learn together
Faculty, students, University community connect as Spring Quarter and remote learning begins

Three undergraduates awarded Goldwater Scholarships to support STEM education: third-years Spencer Dembner, Vennela Mannava and Thomas Propson honored

Congratulations to UChicago PSD’s five 2020 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program recipients, David Zegeye and Cory Cotter in astronomy, LeeAnn Marie Sager in chemistry, and Jordan T Kemp and Amanda Mirna Farah in physics.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for the efforts of chemists to decode RNA of the new coronavirus, using AI to decode cuneiform tablets, and predicting a new state of matter.

Research by PhD Student Pranav Gokhale and EPiQC Wins IBM Q Best Paper

Scientists Shiva Safaei, Prof. David Mazziotti, and LeeAnn Sager discuss a prediction that dual states of matter can exist in the same material—which may be useful for applications

Amy Tang was born in Shenyang, China, and grew up in Toronto, Canada. She was an undergraduate physics student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a fifth year graduate student in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. We interviewed her about her experiences below. 

Adina Feinstein, a NSF Graduate Research Fellow at UChicago, talks about the difficulties of finding young planets

A discovery by Chemistry Prof. David Mazziotti, Dr. Shiva Safaei, and graduate student LeeAnn Sager addresses the problem of generating and moving energy efficiently

Assoc. Prof. David Schuster and grad students Akash Dixit and Ankur Agrawal are searching for dark matter with quantum computers, one blip of light at a time

The Maroon interviews several undergraduate veterans of military service about applying their skills to challenging academics.

Hy Truong Son was born and raised in Hanoi, Vietnam. He has a BSc in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary. He is now in his fourth year of pursuing a PhD in computer science at the University of Chicago and is researching machine learning applications and chemical problems. 

Solomon Quinn is from New York City. He holds a BS in mathematics and physics from the University of Richmond and is in his second year of pursuing a PhD in computational and applied mathematics (CAM) at the University of Chicago.