News: 2023

New Scientist article discusses Asst. Prof. Pedro Lopes and graduate student Jasmine Lu's work to create a smartwatch that is partly made of slime mold, a living entity that must be fed adequately and often enough or the watch will stop working.

Quanta Magazine discusses Prof. Frank Calegari's co-authored paper that provided proof of the unbounded denominators conjecture.

Image: Jaynelon/Quanta Magazine

Researchers from UChicago, ETH Zurch, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard have formed an international, interdisciplinary collaborative to explore how life evolved on Earth and, possibly, other planets.

Assoc. Prof. Edwin Kite and graduate student Alexandra Warren work to model the history of Venus' atmosphere.

Image: Inverse/Shutterstock

Prof. Robert M. Wald discusses new research findings and his studies under celebrated theoretical physicist John Wheeler.

Image: Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine

Lek-Heng Lim uses tools from algebra, geometry and topology to answer questions in machine learning.

Prof. Wendy Freedman is exploring how JWST observations can be squared with the standard cosmological model.

PSD's February spotlight is Sean Hernandez, Assistant Director of PSD Graphics. Sean has been with UChicago for fifteen years.

This month PSD researchers have been recognized for their pioneering discoveries, the quality and innovation of their research programs, and their unique contributions to new fields of inquiry. 
 

Abigail Vieregg, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, shares her passion for building experiments and bringing people together to solve scientific mysteries.

A new study led by University of Chicago geophysicist Sunyoung Park suggests there may be a layer of surprisingly fluid rock located in the Earth’s mantle. The study uses 350-mile-deep earthquake to make elusive measurements of the Earth’s layers. 

UChicago Asst. Prof. Sarah King awarded prestigious Cottrell Scholarship, that honors “outstanding teacher-scholars who are recognized by their scientific communities for the quality and innovation of their research programs and their academic leadership skills.”

Clams that can bore into solid rock show surprising patterns of evolution, UChicago study finds.

Earlier this week, a study made headlines claiming that the mysterious “dark energy” cosmologists believe is accelerating the expansion of the universe could arise from supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies. If true, the connection would link two of the most mind-bending concepts in physics—black holes and dark energy—and suggest that the source of the latter has been under theorists’ noses for decades. However, some leading theorists are deeply skeptical of the idea.

Vaikuntanathan is being recognized “for the development of powerful non-equilibrium statistical mechanical theories to understand the behavior of complex matter ranging from driven systems to biological self-assembly.”