News: 2019

Asst. Prof. Raymond Moellering earned a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award for his project "Reactivity-Driven Metabolic Signaling: A Feature not a Flaw in Metabolic Regulation." Moellering's research aims to develop cellular probes, proteomic methods, and cellular models to illuminate the role of methylglyoxal, a reactive metabolite that is hypothesized to link cellular metabolism with cell stress response, inflammation and many diseases like diabetes, cancer and aging. With this award, Moellering hopes to identify proteins that serve as metabolic sensors, which transmit signals resulting in physical changes in cells and organisms.

Ten current and former University of Chicago Physical Science Division scientists were named in Web of Science's 2019 report of highly cited researchers. Researchers on the list have demonstrated significant and broad influence in the past decade, with highly cited papers ranking in the top 1% by citation for a chosen field or fields.

The Federal Communications Commission Chairman announced the appointment of UChicago's Monisha Ghosh to serve as the agency's Chief Technology Officer. Ghosh is a research professor in PME and an associate member of computer science. She has also been serving as a rotating program director at the National Science Foundation since September 2017, in the Computer and Network System Division within the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Ghosh will be the FCC's first female CTO.

In a paper published Dec. 17 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Asst. Prof. Edwin Kite and colleagues at Washington University, Stanford University, and Penn State University offer an innovative explanation for why there are proportionally fewer Neptune-sized exoplanets: The oceans of magma on the surface of these planets readily absorb their atmospheres once planets reach about three times the size of Earth. 

 
Giulia Galli, Liew Family Professor of Molecular Engineering and professor of chemistry, uses computational models to figure out the behavior of molecules and materials. The focus of Galli’s studies is to understand and predict how to harness molecular behavior to improve technology, particularly in the areas of purifying water, speeding up computation and sensing with quantum technology, and perfecting renewable energy technology. 
 

A two-day workshop took place from Oct. 31-Nov.1 at UChicago to raise awareness and generate strategies for the ethical development and implementation of AI and quantum computing. The workshop was organized by the Chicago Quantum Exchange and funded by the Kavli Foundation and the Center for Data and Computing.

Tharzen, a startup founded by UChicago postdoctoral researcher Mikael Mayer and Booth School student Aseem Bhardwaj, aims to make it much easier for businesses to edit and update their websites, using advances in AI and programming.  
 

In four papers published Dec. 4 in Nature, researchers describe a flood of new data from the Parker Solar Probe's landmark mission that will help us understand everything from the nature of stars to improving our forecasting of solar storms that can affect electronics on Earth.  In its first year, the Parker Solar Probe learned new information about two types of major space weather events. It also saw the first signs of the zone around the sun where cosmic dust disappears—predicted decades ago, but never seen—as well as an entirely new phenomenon: bizarre “switchbacks” in the solar wind that flows off the surface of the sun.  

U.S. News & World Report ranked UChicago fifth among top physics programs. Japan, the U.S. and the U.K. are home to the highest-ranked physics institutions.

At a Dec. 10 ceremony in Sweden, John B. Goodenough will be honored for pioneering breakthroughs that led to the widespread use of the lithium-ion battery—and helping spark the wireless revolution. The descendants of his batteries now power modern smartphones and hold the potential to one day sustainably harvest solar and wind power.

In a series of four papers in the Astrophysical Journal, a team of astronomers, including Assoc. Prof. Jacob Bean, proposes a new method of using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to determine whether a rocky exoplanet has an atmosphere. The technique, which involves measuring the planet’s temperature as it passes behind its star and then comes back into view, is significantly faster than more traditional methods of atmospheric detection like transmission spectroscopy.  

UChicago chemists have discovered an efficient method to make tetra-substituted olefins, a kind of olefin with four different attachments—used in everything from medicines to new ways to store data. With the new method, they can easily and precisely select the four different attachments. Additionally, their catalyst cuts the number of steps to make the compounds from around seven to two or three.

In a first-of-its-kind survey, a group of University of Chicago and Princeton researchers found that “dark patterns” on shopping websites were startlingly common—appearing on more than 1 out of 10 sites and used frequently by many of the most popular online merchants. Dark patterns include sites that sign you up for recurring payments under the guise of a free trial, use countdown clocks that warn you a product is running out of stock, or that tell you other people in your area have already purchased the item. 

Prof. Dan Hooper appears on WTTW to discuss the very first moments of the universe. In his new book, “At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of our Universe’s First Seconds,” Hooper explains that there are four big fundamental puzzles stumping cosmologists right now: why does matter exist; what are dark matter and dark energy; and what caused cosmic inflation?
 

This month, PSD researchers have been featured for inventing tiny organic films that could enable new electronics, discovering a new mathematical formula while studying neutrinos, and demonstrating how hackers could use Wi-Fi signals to track you inside your home.