News: 2022

Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science Junchen Jiang received the NSF CAREER Award to study how individual preferences and machine learning can help automatically optimize video quality while also conserving valuable bandwidth. The award, the NSF’s most prestigious for early-career faculty, was one of six awarded to UChicago CS faculty during the 2021-22 cycle.

Famed astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who died March 15, “touched” the sun and the hearts of the Homewood-Flossmoor community, where he lived for more than 50 years. The Chicago Tribune memorializes Parker, recalling his humble dedication to area causes, to nature and to his neighbors.

This month PSD researchers have been featured for their efforts to catch and study neutrinos at a local nuclear reactor, treat cancer with nanodevices made out of DNA, conduct Great Lakes sampling efforts under winter conditions, and recreate conditions in giant galaxy clusters with lasers.

In this AIP Oral History, Walter Massey, chairman of the board of the Giant Magellan Telescope, former UChicago professor and now advisor and trustee emeritus, describes his childhood in segregated Mississippi, his drive towards championing scientific discovery, and contributions across civil rights, science policy, and higher education. 

PSD's March spotlight is Brenda F. Thomas, secretary in the James Franck Institute (JFI) and assistant to faculty members David P. DeMille, Woowon Kang, David Schuster, Peter Littlewood, William TM Irvine, and Linda Young. She is also the JFI Colloquium & Seminar Coordinator and Computations and Science Seminar Coordinator. She has been with the PSD for 28 years.

‘Rubble pile’ asteroids are loose collections of material, which can split apart as they rotate. Science News covered physicist Melody Lim's March 15 presentation at the American Physical Society in Chicago on her experiment to understand the inner workings of such asteroids by levitating plastic beads that form collections, spin and break up.

Prof. Scott Snyder, Department of Chemistry, has been selected for the 2022 Cottrell STAR Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, cited as “an accomplished organic chemist and pedagogical innovator committed to the education of undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students beyond his own lab and classroom.”

The Data Science Institute at UChicago is part of a grant of $4.6M in funding delivered by the Mastercard Impact Fund for data.org’s Capacity Accelerator Network (CAN) that will support the creation of a consortium of diverse higher education partners to amplify social impact through data science.

Prof. Emeritus James W. Truran, who helped lay the foundations for our understanding of how virtually all elements of the universe were created in stars and stellar explosions, died March 5. He was 81.

Great Lakes scientists, including some from the University of Chicago, recently took part in the first coordinated sampling effort of the lakes in winter to understand what disappearing ice might mean for one of the largest freshwater systems on the planet.

Rebecca Maxcy, director of The Financial Education Initiative at UChicago, comments on access and quality in personal finance instruction in high schools. Her group’s tool kit for evaluation of instructional materials and classroom advocacy is recommended.

Prof. Emeritus Michael S. Turner memorializes Prof. Eugene Parker in the @nytimes: "He was Mr. Magnetism...He was the expert on magnetism in the universe and understood it better than anyone else."

Young-Kee Kim, Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, has been elected as a foreign member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.

Geophysical scientist Elisabeth Moyer joined NewsNation to discuss the 'key' to oil independence.

Physicist Sidney Nagel is part of a new exhibition that brings together faculty and artists to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Gray Center's Mellon Collaborative Fellowship in Arts Practice and Scholarship.