News: 2021

Haynes Stephens, a graduate student in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, has been awarded by the Diversity Advisory Board for his efforts on behalf of diversity and inclusion in the PSD. Read more about his contributions to the Division.
 

As rising sea levels threaten coastal areas, scientists like Reika Yokochi in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences are using an emerging nuclear dating technique to track the ins and outs of water flow.
 

A new project funded through a $3.25 million grant from DoE to UChicago and Argonne National Lab will allow researchers to apply artificial intelligence to accelerate the scientific simulation of complex physical systems, especially those relating to climate change.

The University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange are among the partnering institutions awarded $5 million from the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator. QuSTEAM: Convergence Undergraduate Education in Quantum Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics will be a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional program led by Ohio State intended to revolutionize and create more equitable pathways to quantum science education.

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.

The Big Brains podcast speaks with Paul Alivisatos, the new UChicago president and nanomaterials pioneer. He discusses his field-defining research and how universities can support scientific discovery.

Welcome to the new faculty joining the Physical Sciences Division in '21-22 academic year!

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to develop a new carbon material for better bioelectronics, to engineer organic capsules that vacuum and deliver cargo at will, and to understand how particles might communicate with each other and relate as symmetries.

Assistant Professor Sebastian Hurtado-Salazar of the Department of Mathematics has been awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics “for contributions to the proof of Zimmer’s conjecture.” He shares it with Aaron Brown of Northwestern University. Their work has shown there is a cutoff in how many dimensions a space can have and also have special symmetries called higher-rank lattices.

Scientists are exploring combinatorial rules for new models of the molecular wiring of cells. Assistant Professor Arvind Murugan, Department of Physics, contributed to modeling work that showed how promiscuous systems of molecular interactions could offer advantages over one-to-one sets of interactions.

PSD’s September spotlight is Dave Schmitz, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute and newly appointed Deputy Dean of Diversity and Inclusion for the PSD. Dave has been with the University of Chicago since September 2012.

An interview with Prof. David DeMille, Department of Physics and JFI, recent winner of the Cottrell Plus SEED (Singular Exceptional Endeavors of Discovery) Award for 2021. DeMille discusses the broader questions he is trying to answer with his SEED project, "Developing a New Tabletop-scale Approach to Detect Particles One Million Times More Massive than the Higgs Boson.”

Professor Benoît Roux of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Department of Chemistry, has been elected a Fellow in the Royal Society of Canada. Benoît, who has been at UChicago since 2006 and is Canadian, uses theoretical and computational methods to advance our understanding of the structure, dynamics, and function of biological macromolecular systems at the atomic level.  

Two University of Chicago faculty in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences were among 28 honorees selected for 2021 early career awards by the American Geophysical Union. Associate Professor Malte Jansen, a physical oceanographer, was selected for the 2021 Ocean Sciences Early Career Award for “significant contributions to oceanography.” Assistant Professor Clara Blättler, an isotope geochemist, was selected for the Nanne Weber Early Career Award recognizing “significant contributions to paleoceanography and paleoclimatology.”