News: 2024

In a new study, researchers found that rain may have been an essential ingredient for the origin of life. This groundbreaking research was conducted by scientists from UChicago's Chemistry Department and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, including Nobel Prize laureate Jack Szostak.
 

Recent findings suggest that dark energy, long believed to be a constant force accelerating the expansion of the universe, may weaken over time. Joshua Frieman comments on this discovery and how it challenges our current understanding of the universe's expansion.
 

Originally from Blue Rapids, Kansas, Assistant Dean of Students Megan Swartz joined the PSD in June 2024 following two years in the Social Sciences Division. Before joining UChicago, she worked at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. We interviewed Megan about her interests and experiences.

"People can come to me for MS admissions and funding questions. You can also come to me if you want to talk about sports, particularly football and baseball!"

Congratulations to Anirudh (Ani) Chiti, who has been named a Brinson Prize Fellow at the University of Chicago in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A new UChicago-led analysis measures universe expansion rate and finds the 'Hubble tension' may not exist. 

For decades, UChicago’s historic Accelerator Building has served as a hub for innovative research, accommodating particle accelerators known as atom smashers, as well as facilities for medical services. The center will be demolished this year to make way for a new building for today’s researchers in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the Chicago Quantum Exchange.
 

A new paper from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Houston Chemical Engineering Department, and Chicago Center for the Origins of Life suggests rainwater could have helped create a meshy wall around protocells 3.8 billion years ago, a critical step in the transition from tiny beads of RNA to all forms of life.

Meet the futuristic new materials developed by UChicago scientists that could soon be all around us. In the Chemistry Department, professor Bozhi Tian and his colleagues devised a soil-like material designed to promote microbial growth. 
 

A new study led by researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh introduced new method for altering vinyl systems, important in drug and materials science. 
 

Chemistry Department and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Prof. Giulia Galli has been named the 2024-2025 Joseph O. Hirschfelder Awardee. This yearly prize honors exceptional work in theoretical chemistry.

New reports say that users of GPT-4o form unusual bonds with the software’s voice response feature. Computer science professor Blase Ur comments on the importance of further research on this subject. 

For years, measurements of the universe's expansion rate have been overshooting the prediction. UChicago astrophysicist Wendy Freedman has played a crucial role in the ongoing debate about the Hubble constant, a measure of the universe's expansion rate.

Nearly 400 miles off the coast of Antarctica, the Earth’s largest iceberg—whose sprawling surface covers more than 1,600 square miles—is spinning like a top. UChicago glaciologist Douglas MacAyeal comments on the dynamic between the ocean and the iceberg. 

As new reports reveal evidence of a large underground reservoir on Mars, suggesting that the planet might still have water, challenges in this research area still remain. In a notable new paper, UChicago scientists propose a new methodology to warm Mars’s atmosphere.

Gene Mazenko, Professor Emeritus in UChicago’s Department of Physics, the James Franck Institute, and the College, who focused on phase transitions and hydrodynamics of magnets, fluids, liquid crystals, and glasses, died in Antioch, CA, on July 7. He was 79.