News: 2022

This month PSD researchers were featured in the news for climate research findings that the Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern, creating a living smartwatch that runs on slime, and seminal contributions to the development of a quantum internet.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was the first to successfully replicate the process of how the sun makes energy, on earth –nuclear fusion ignition. UChicago Astronomy & Astrophysics professor Dr. Don Lamb helped develop a computer code to do experiments on the kind of lasers like the one used to achieve fusion ignition.

Two postdocs, Yanzeng Li and Alexander Strang, have been named recipients of the 2022-2023 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Yuji Suzuki, SM’70, a longtime supporter and former Council member of the Physical Sciences Division, established the Yuji and Lorraine Suzuki Postdoctoral Research Fund in 2016 to recognize outstanding postdoctoral researchers. The award provides a salary top-off.

UChicago Ph.D. student Jasmine Lu and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Pedro Lopes built a smartwatch that runs on Physarum Polycephalum, a species of slime mold. 

Researchers say they now know why the Southern Hemisphere is so much stormier than its northern counterpart, adding their discovery could help explain future climate change projections.

As part of The Day Tomorrow Began, UChicago News explains the meaning of quantum internet—a network of quantum computers that will someday send, compute, and receive information encoded in quantum states.

Elizabeth Kelley, a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, was honored with the 2023 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award, which recognizes graduate students who show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in the areas of equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.

Sidney Nagel, the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago, is accepting the 2023 American Physical Society Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research. The award, sometimes referred to as the ‘lifetime achievement Oscar of physics,’ recognizes “contributions of the highest level that advance our knowledge and understanding of the physical universe in all its facets.”

Prof. Don Lamb comments on UChicago’s contribution to the net energy gain for nuclear fusion breakthrough achieved by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

Sanjana Curtis, a postdoc in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, wrote an article for Scientific American describing new evidence on how cosmic cataclysms forge gold, platinum, and other heavy members of the periodic table.

Walter Massey, senior advisor to the president and emeritus trustee of the University of Chicago, former Morehouse College president emeritus and former Bank of America chairman, discusses being raised in segregated Mississippi, building the Giant Magellan Telescope and whether or not we're really alone in the universe. 

Prof. Robert Rosner was a guest on WTTW Chicago Tonight commenting on a breakthrough by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. For the first time they produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain.

The Earth’s Southern Hemisphere is more stormy than the Northern Hemisphere. But why?  New research led by University of Chicago professor Tiffany Shaw offers an explanation and shows the asymmetry is only growing.

Prof. David Awschalom of physics was among 30 of the country’s best quantum scientists who met at the White House on Dec. 2 to discuss the global quantum race.

Fred Chong, the Seymour Goodman Professor in the Department of Computer Science, was elevated to IEEE Fellow in the organization’s 2023 class. The distinction was given to Chong for “contributions to the field of quantum computer architecture, compilation and optimization.”