News

UChicago chemists invent new way to swap nitrogen into molecules

Louise Lerner — 05/08/2026 - 09:45am

One of the most common types of medicine is a category called small-molecule drugs. This includes the pills you’re used to taking, such as ibuprofen, but the category covers drugs for everything from eczema to cancer.

However, when researchers want to create a new small-molecule drug to treat disease, the process is long and complex—and it starts with making the compound itself to test it.

A new breakthrough by University of Chicago chemists shows how to easily customize molecules by swapping carbon-oxygen pairs for nitrogen atoms. In some cases, the process can be reduced from 10 steps down to just one or two.

The team hopes the finding, published April 30 in Science, could accelerate drug discovery.

“This is another strong tool in the box for the goal of being able to imagine a molecule and then make it—to assemble a molecule as a wish,” said chemist Zining Zhang, a graduate student at UChicago and first author on the paper.

Structure matters

Creating molecules from scratch is hard. It’s not like reaching into a box of loose Lego bricks. It’s more like starting from a box of already partly assembled Lego builds and cobbling those together into the structure you want—with very strict rules about how and when you can take pieces apart.

The structure you’re making matters a lot. When you’re making a drug, tiny changes—like moving a single nitrogen atom—can have huge implications in the final product. That single atom could make the difference between a drug that latches onto the right proteins in the body and one that fails.

But when researchers want to test out different versions of a molecule, to see which one works best, they have to laboriously figure out how to build each new iteration.

“So the question we try to address is, can we find a quicker way to introduce many different structural variations that contain nitrogen atoms?” said Guangbin Dong, the Weldon G. Brown Professor of Chemistry at UChicago and senior author on the paper.

In this case, the scientists wanted to see whether they could figure out a way to easily swap in nitrogen atoms in place of carbonyl groups, a common feature of small molecules that consists of paired carbon and oxygen atoms.

Previously, the Dong lab found a way to more easily move these carbonyl groups around when making a new drug. But they also wanted to give researchers the ability to move nitrogen where needed.

“The location of the nitrogen is important because it is often the piece that interacts with the active site in your body, so we want to be able to move it easily,” explained Zhang.

The group was able to find a simpler method using an ingredient called NAHA, which grabs the carbonyl and cleaves its bond. Then, through a series of moves like choreographed dancers switching partners, the empty space gets filled with nitrogen.

The process is simple, effective and inexpensive, the scientists said. They also noted the design of the technique allows many different types of attachments, known as functional groups, to be compatible, even those that are normally tricky to successfully integrate.

“This was kind of a dream reaction,” said Zhang, “so it was really gratifying to see it work.”

Dong added the group plans to continue pursuing the direction.

“We’d like to be able to swap carbonyl to all of the possible important atoms,” he said.

The other authors on the paper were visiting undergraduate student Zhehan Liang and graduate student Rong Ye.

Citation: “Scanning nitrogen in sp3-rich scaffolds enabled by carbonyl-to-nitrogen atom swap.” Zhang et al,

Funding: National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Bristol Myers Squibb fellowship.

Four UChicago undergraduates awarded 2026 Goldwater Scholarship

Colin Terrill — 05/07/2026 - 11:48am

University of Chicago third-year students Arthur Costa, Shelley Fernando, Mason McCormack and Vincent Wang have been selected as winners of the 2026 Barry Goldwater Scholarship. The four undergraduates are among more than 450 winners selected this year for the award, which aims to help STEM students further their research during the last years of their bachelor’s studies.

The Goldwater Scholarship was created by Congress in 1986 and recognizes undergraduates who intend to pursue research careers in natural science, mathematics and engineering. The prestigious award helps winners cover the cost of tuition, room and board, fees and books up to $7,500.

We spoke with each of the winners about their research and what receiving the honor means to them:

Arthur Costa

Arthur Costa is a chemistry major who wants to know how different scientific disciplines can be combined to solve real-world problems.

“I’ve always been interested in the interface between chemistry and biology,” he said. “Specifically, I’ve been trying to see how we can use chemistry to understand and manipulate biological systems.”

This idea has led him to focus on how we can use this way of thinking to solve problems in the medical field. At UChicago, Costa has worked with doctors, epidemiologists and biologists, and as part of a team in the Genehackers organization to create tools that can be used towards improving global disease detection and treatment.

Tell us about your research.

Most of my work has been in Nobel laureate Prof. Jack Szostak’s lab, which aims to understand how life may have started on Earth in the early days by creating model protocells with materials that could plausibly have been present. The opportunity to work with him has been a tremendous learning experience that has taught me how to think as a scientist.

My research uses small molecules to increase membrane permeability to load nucleotides into protocells and trap them inside. Using this system to load nucleotides increases internal RNA copying yields nearly 10-fold and solves a major problem in origins-of-life research by showing how nucleotides could have entered and accumulated inside those early protocells.

Shelley Fernando

For Shelley Fernando, it all started in the Advanced Biology sequence as a first-year student.

For a final assignment, each student was tasked with choosing a scientific paper and writing a review about it. She decided to write hers on an unpublished preprint covering the mechanisms of DNA-loop extruding proteins and the rest was history.

“I got super excited about these loop extruders and did a deep dive on the subject.”

That curiosity eventually led her to declare a major in biological chemistry and research assistant roles in three different laboratories, all of which study genome architecture and loop extrusion at different levels of abstraction. As she works toward a long-term goal of earning a Ph.D. in molecular biology or biochemistry, Fernando said she hopes for more opportunities to meet scientists and talk about exciting science.

Tell us about your research.

I’m interested in the spatial organization of the genome of the nucleus and the dynamic regulation of the 3D genome architecture. Nearly all the cells in our body have the same genome—genetic information in the cell that is packed in the form of chromatin that can be marked and organized in ways that control which genes are expressed in which cells.

My work at UChicago focuses on the changes in chromatin organization that drive the development of B cells. I hope to use the skills that I am learning here to pursue a PhD project that uses ex vivo microscopy and computational modelling to understand the interplay between loop extrusion and epigenetic state.

Mason McCormack

Space has always pushed the boundaries of human knowledge. The drive to answer these seemingly impossible questions fostered Mason McCormack’s interest in studying distant alien worlds.

“Using cutting-edge technology and pushing the boundaries of what we think we can measure really drew me towards this field,” McCormack, an astrophysics major, said. “The study of space is really a testament to human ingenuity in how much data you can get out of shockingly little information.”

McCormack, the president of the UChicago Space Program, has been an engineering lead of the Polarization modUlated Laser Satellite Experiment (PULSE-A) for the last two years. He also conceived of and secured funding and a NASA grant for the Particle Acquisition from Stratospheric Conditions for Analysis in Laboratory (PASCAL) science balloon experiment and attended international conferences.

McCormack said doing all this at a school without an engineering program was made possible by “the drive and support of my fellow classmates and every professor that has generously given us their time and wisdom.”

Tell us about your research.

My primary research is on exoplanets. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, we are trying to understand what the atmospheres are like on some of the biggest planets we’ve discovered. I run hundreds of atmospheric models based on some planetary and stellar parameters we can observe and a couple of molecules to see if we can deduce the composition of these “hot Jupiters.”

The goal of this research is to find a link between how these planets are formed and their compositions. We know that they couldn’t have been born where they are because they are too close to their stars. The fact that they couldn’t be born where they are currently located opens up the question of how they migrated there from their point of origin. Trying to figure out billions of years of history from a few data points is such a uniquely fascinating problem to be working on.

Vincent Wang

Machine learning is still in its infancy, which is what Vincent Wang finds so fascinating about it. For a technology that has become a household name seemingly overnight, there is much that we still don’t know about it.

“I think a very compelling part of machine learning is that it is a field that has many interesting empirical phenomena that we don’t quite understand,” Wang said.

As a double major in mathematics and computer science, he hopes to use mathematics to better understand why machine learning has improved so much over the past decade in order to make it safer and more rigorous.

Tell us about your research.

I’m broadly interested in finding new ways to understand machine learning theory through mathematics. I’m currently working with Research Asst. Prof. Mahdi Haghifam at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC) on understanding the optimization of algorithms that satisfy differential privacy, which is a mathematically rigorous guarantee that an algorithm does not leak the data it trains over. In the past, I’ve worked on other projects in combinatorics, tropical geometry and numerical methods for solving partial differential equations.

UChicago and TTIC really shaped how I think about machine learning by describing the field through a consistent theory. It gave me an appreciation of how deep the field runs today.

Each of this year’s Goldwater Scholars was supported by the Office of National Fellowships in the College Center for Research and Fellowships, which guides candidates through rigorous application processes and interview preparation for nationally competitive awards like Goldwater. The Center’s team helps students identify and articulate how their unique talents and distinctive paths prepare them to realize a better world.

—A version of this story was originally posted by The College.

Edith Rickert: Novelist, Chaucer scholar and WWI code breaker

Shiloh Miller — 05/07/2026 - 10:08am

Assoc. Prof. Emerita Christina von Nolcken liked taking students on “little jaunts,” trips to the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

There she would show them the famous eight-volume work The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts, by scholars and University of Chicago professors John Manly and Edith Rickert, PhD'1899.

In all her years teaching a course on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, von Nolcken began to realize she knew more about Manly—whose portrait hangs in the English department in Walker Hall—than Rickert, whose face she had never seen.

Von Nolcken went searching in Special Collections for photos but found far more. Rickert, she discovered, was beautiful, well traveled, and well liked, and her writings conveyed a kind of crackling intensity and thoughtfulness.

“This is a really interesting woman,” said von Nolcken, a scholar of Old and Middle English literature.

Her initial curiosity moved her to become Rickert’s biographer, and in 2024 she published The “Lives” and Writings of Edith Rickert (1871–1938): Novelist, Cryptologist, and World-Class Chaucerian.

The book reveals an accomplished scholar and writer who was also partly responsible for one of the most important acts of American code breaking in World War I. Rickert’s scholarly and cryptographic achievements are sometimes not given the same credit as those of her male collaborators, an oversight von Nolcken’s biography seeks to rectify.

Cracking the code

Rickert was born in 1871 and grew up first in the small Ohio town of Canal Dover and later in Chicago.

The first in her family to go to college, Rickert graduated from Vassar in 1891 as valedictorian. She then returned to Chicago to teach high school and pursue a Ph.D. in Middle English at UChicago. Dissertation research called her abroad, and on her 25th birthday she set sail for Europe to explore the British Museum’s collection of medieval romances.

The summer of 1899 took her to Chicago to defend her Ph.D. Among her examiners was John Manly, the “brand-new whiz kid at the University,” as von Nolcken describes him, and the first head of the English department. Right away Rickert “fell desperately in love.” But she nevertheless decided to return to England and establish herself as a writer—publishing five well-received novels, several works of scholarship and many short stories.

In 1909 Rickert returned to America to finance the educations of her three younger sisters. Then, when the United States joined World War I in 1917, she followed Manly to Washington, D.C. to become a code breaker.

Rickert had gained some code breaking experience that same year from her work on the Voynich manuscript, a 15th-century document written in a (still uncracked) cipher, and she had picked up German at Vassar.

Information about Rickert’s code breaking is hard to come by because the 1917 Espionage Act put limits on most outside communication. But it’s clear that she took to the work with diligence and zeal.

After three days of nonstop effort, she and Manly broke the Waberski cipher, found on a paper sewn into the clothes of a German spy intercepted in February 1918 at the U.S.–Mexico border. Known patterns in German spelling, like the fact that the letter c is always followed by h or k, helped them identify patterns. The decrypted message concerned Germany’s attempt to ally with Mexico, reinforcing information in the Zimmermann telegram cracked by the British the year before.

Rickert’s role in breaking the Waberski cipher has been largely overlooked by historians. She is also not widely recognized for her work in the pre-war years revising—and helping write—a series of English grammar and composition textbooks that bear Manly’s name. In fact, after publishing the biography, von Nolcken found a letter in which Rickert says she did all the work on the cipher.

“I can believe her,” said von Nolcken.

Tellers of Tales

After the war, Rickert and Manly embarked on what von Nolcken considers “the most ambitious humanistic project of the early 20th century,” their critical edition of The Canterbury Tales. For this they had to locate and examine every one of the more than 80 extant manuscripts of the tales, in order to reconstruct the version left by Chaucer’s very first scribe.

After purchasing photostats of all the manuscripts, they and their assistants collated them in what became known as the “Chaucer Laboratory” at UChicago. Both Rickert and Manly now taught at the University, where Rickert—like von Nolcken—became a full professor focusing on medieval English literature.

“I had her job, in a sense,” von Nolcken said.

After years of worsening health, Rickert died in 1938, two years before the eight-volume Canterbury Tales was published. While the edition is not used widely today, von Nolcken believes that “no one has edited The Canterbury Tales with more care.”

Von Nolcken’s biography is bookended by excerpts from Rickert’s notes towards an unfinished autobiography, My Book, penciled at the very end of her life.

In her own words: “In this life, just as I am, physically & mentally, I have certain powers & certain opportunities not quite like those of anyone else. So with each of us. It is our business to be used to the utmost. And why, I wonder? Because stagnation means atrophy—going backward—& that is the one crime. The perpetual urge in us toward growth & grasp & power & understanding—that is God.”

—This article was originally published in the University of Chicago Magazine.

What a thousand years of economic history reveals about modern growth

Cristi Kempf — 05/06/2026 - 02:16pm

Scholars have long debated what sparked Europe’s economic surge in the mid-18th century.

That debate took center stage recently at the University of Chicago, where an expert panel from the Harris School of Public Policy and Northwestern University—a group including two Nobel laureates—held a wide-ranging and pointed discussion on history’s lessons for growth.

Hosted by Harris’ Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, the April 14 event featured Steven Durlauf, the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor at Harris and the Stone Center’s director; University Professor James Robinson; and Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University’s Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences.

Mokyr won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on the historical origins of sustained economic growth; Robinson won in 2024 for his work linking political and economic institutions with prosperity.

The event offered a rare opportunity to hear three leading academic voices examine the origins of the modern economy and forces shaping its future. The Keller Center's Forum filled quickly, leaving standing room only for the panel moderated by Veronica Guerrieri, the Ronald E. Tarrson Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the UChicago Booth School of Business.

Mokyr described the recent book he co-authored, Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000. Stretching over the millennium, the book argues the two arcs diverged near the halfway mark due largely to differences in culture and social structure. These led China to turn inward as Europe became the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

As China emerged from the Middle Ages, Mokyr explained, extended families, or clans, grew stronger, binding people through kinship. In Europe, the opposite happened. Family ties loosened, replaced by what he called “alternative institutions” of guilds, monasteries, universities and autonomous cities.

This focus on shared purpose over common ancestry created space for strangers to collaborate, for ideas to circulate, for institutions to evolve, Mokyr argued.

Europe became an innovative place where people could challenge authority, question tradition and imagine something entirely new. China remained intellectually vibrant as well, but was less inclined toward radical change.

“You see a very active intellectual community in China, but you don’t see radical ideas or people saying, ‘Let’s overthrow everything and start anew,’” said Mokyr.

Durlauf and Robinson followed him to the podium with critiques that sharpened the debate over how lessons from history connect to economic growth. Both discussed the difficulty of drawing clear conclusions across so many years.

“It’s extremely difficult to disentangle a kind of causal relationship over such a long period of time when so many other things are going on,” said Robinson.

He pointed to “other things” not central to Mokyr’s thesis, such as the voyages of European explorers and the 17th century English Civil Wars, during which King Charles I was beheaded, as critical turning points.

The mid-1600s were “a period of tectonic political change,” Robinson said.

“Radical new ideas came on the table as the fixed and daunting structures of the external world—monarchy, lords, church—crumbled.”

“This was a world turned upside down,” he said. “And from that world turned upside down, all sorts of things started happening: economic things, political things, institutional things, cultural things.”

Durlauf framed the discussion around time, contingencies and inequality.

Different forces, he argued, operate on different timescales. Short-term growth may be driven by factors like technology or savings rates, but deeper forces unfold over centuries. And unpredictable “shocks” can reshape trajectories for generations.

“There are shocks to systems that are so persistent that the theory has to do with the shocks, rather than to the mechanisms themselves,” he said.

He added, “growth changes everything.”

“It creates all these possibilities, but it also creates capacities for stratification,” keeping wealth and power stuck in the same hands.

When conversation turned to the present, Guerrieri said that China’s rapid economic rise was not such a surprise. What is surprising, she continued, is the extent to which Europe is lagging.

Europe lacks a true counterpart to California's Silicon Valley, Durlauf noted, raising an open question about whether the advantages that built the modern economy will carry into the next phase.

—This article was originally published on the Harris website.

Deep in the ice, Antarctic detectors pick up incoming cosmic rays from outer space

Louise Lerner — 05/06/2026 - 11:25am

More than 600 feet below the surface of Antarctica, ultrasensitive detectors picked up the tracks of cosmic rays crashing down from outer space.

The Askaryan Radio Array is a group of sensors drilled deep into the ice. For years, the array has been patiently listening for faint radio signals near the South Pole.

In a study published last month, University of Chicago researchers announced that new analysis techniques revealed 13 events where cosmic rays produce particle showers in the ice. This marks the first time that scientists have detected these particle showers through ice, which offers a chance to study never-before-seen aspects of the phenomenon.

“When these particles strike the ice, they produce a burst of radio waves that is a bit like a sonic boom,” said UChicago postdoctoral fellow Philipp Windischhofer, one of the study’s two main authors.

The Askaryan Radio Array was designed to hunt for high-energy neutrinos, an extremely rare cosmic particle. But new data analysis techniques may be revealing it to be an unexpected boon for the wider study of particles from space. Even after the researchers’ landmark findings, more than seven years of data remains to be studied; scientists hope to learn more about elusive cosmic rays—and perhaps finally catch the signal of a neutrino.

“We’re looking forward to analyzing the rest of the data and hopefully, gaining new insights into the highest-energy phenomena in our universe,” Windischhofer said.

The paper is published in Physical Review Letters.

Visitors from outer space

Neutrinos are extremely difficult to catch, as they very rarely interact with matter. But they are a unique window into the wildest phenomena in the universe, like supermassive black holes and exploding stars.

The Askaryan Radio Array, run by an international collaboration of scientists from the U.S., Europe, and Asia led by Prof. Amy Connolly at The Ohio State University, was designed to pick up such very high-energy neutrinos from space. The first prototype was installed in 2011; UChicago scientists Eric Oberla and Cosmin Deaconu developed and built the newest section, deployed in 2018.

However, as scientists initially analyzed the data that came in from this new instrument, located near the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, they didn’t see any signs of neutrinos.

The signals were coming from the wrong direction. Neutrinos were more likely to be picked up as they traveled upward through the two kilometers of solid ice below the station.

Then-graduate student Kaeli Hughes, PhD’22, noted there were a few neutrino-like signals, but they were coming from above the array. She hypothesized that some might be cosmic rays, but no one had yet developed the analytic tools to confirm it.

Over the following eight years, however, science and analytic tools advanced. And a group decided to take another look at the data.

As they combed through, Windischhofer and graduate student Nathaniel Alden were surprised to see clear hits for a different kind of visitor from space: cosmic rays.

The same extreme events—like supernovae—that make neutrinos also produce cosmic rays, which are actually atoms with their outer layers stripped away to leave just a nucleus. When an incoming cosmic ray strikes an atom on Earth, the collision creates a characteristic shower of secondary particles, which the array’s detectors picked up in the ice.

A big difference between cosmic rays and neutrinos is that cosmic rays have a charge. This means their paths get scrambled by magnetic fields on the way to Earth, so scientists can’t trace them back to whatever supernova or black hole might have spawned them.

But each visitor from outer space has something to tell us.

“By studying what elements these cosmic rays are, you can learn about the abundance of elements in the universe and what is accelerating them to such high energies,” explained Alden.

Early findings help to improve hunt for neutrinos

The array also offers a unique perspective on cosmic rays. For one, it looks at higher energy particles than most other cosmic ray experiments. It’s also the only detector that measures how the signals travel through ice.

“This means the Askaryan Radio Array can probe the very dense inner core of the cosmic ray shower, which is very hard to do with other setups,” said Windischhofer.

Finally, the detection marks the first time that a phenomenon known as Askaryan radiation has been observed by itself “in the wild.”

This type of radiation, first predicted in 1962 by Armenian physicist Gurgen Askaryan, occurs when a particle traveling with very high energy smacks into an unsuspecting atom inside ice or similar material on Earth. The collision produces a shower of secondary particles, which travel through the ice at very nearly the speed of light. This effect had been created artificially in the lab, but it had never before been used to actually detect a particle from the cosmos.

As the team members comb through the rest of the array’s data, they expect to find more cosmic rays, but possibly neutrinos as well.

“In that sense, it’s a nice stepping stone because you haven’t seen a neutrino yet, but now you have seen the same signature that you would expect for a neutrino in your detector, and so you’re able to try out ideas that people have had about how to look for both these particles,” said Alden.

“It is not often that a graduate student walks into your office and shows you a plot that says something truly new about nature that you’ve not seen before,” said Prof. Abby Vieregg, David N. Schramm Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and senior author on the paper.

“Seeing high energy cosmic rays for the first time through their radio emission in ice is important not just for characterizing cosmic rays in a new way, but also for allowing us a glimpse of what the highest energy neutrino signals could look like some day in the detectors we’ve spent years building,” she said.

Citation: “Observation of in-ice Askaryan radiation from high-energy cosmic rays.” Alden and Windischhofer et al, Physical Review Letters, April 17, 2026.

Funding: National Science Foundation, Taiwan National Science Council, Belgian Fund for Scientific Research, Leverhulme Trust, European Research Council, Belgian American Education Foundation.

A conductor's 50-year crescendo at UChicago

Benjamin Ransom — 05/04/2026 - 04:44pm

Editor’s note: This story is part of Meet a UChicagoan, a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community.

With baton in hand, Barbara Schubert steps up to her podium before the University Symphony Orchestra.

The musicians sit at the ready, eyes on their conductor. Tall and poised, Schubert casts her gaze over the players. Then, as she has for the past 50 years, she lifts her arm—and the music starts, rising and swelling to fill Mandel Hall on the University of Chicago campus.

For Schubert, nothing compares to the rush she feels leading the orchestra.

“People say that being a conductor is like having a fatal disease, in that you get bitten by it and then you can't escape because it’s so compelling,” she said. “The exhilaration that comes from experiencing and being an integral part of a live performance, I think is unmatched.”

This devotion to her craft has driven her through a half-century at the front of the ensemble. In that time, she has pushed generations of musicians—students from all fields of study, plus alumni who never quite wanted to leave—to perform works that would challenge even professional orchestras. In the process, Schubert built a community that, for many, has been a defining piece of their UChicago experience.

This May, nearly 100 alumni who've played for Schubert will return to Mandel Hall to take the stage with her again. The Opus 50 concerts, May 9 and 10, are the Department of Music's tribute to her work at the podium and beyond.

Over the course of the weekend, they’ll present music from Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, sit in on open rehearsals and swap stories from five decades as they reconnect with classmates they haven't seen since college.

For some, the orchestra has become a family tradition. Alumnus violinist Alexandra Hobaugh, now a lawyer, met her husband Michael when they were both students in the orchestra. Years later, their two daughters followed them into the orchestra to play with Schubert as well.

"She's created a space for creativity in our lives and helped souls bloom—whether they knew it at the time or not," Hobaugh said.

Schubert as a maestra in the making

The first piece Schubert ever conducted with the orchestra was Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, a tone poem exploring the death of an artist.

It was 1976. A first-year graduate student at UChicago, she asked the conductor at the time—a medievalist scholar leading the orchestra more out of necessity—if she could guest-conduct. He said yes. One thing led to another, Schubert said, and she was appointed full-time.

“When I started out, I didn't have much experience at all,” she said. “I went to conducting camp at the Monteux School to learn the craft, but most importantly, to learn how to immerse myself in the experience of studying, learning and interpreting the score—and then how to translate that to the musicians.”

Monteux, an acclaimed center in Maine, marked the beginning of a serious training arc. By 1985, she was selected for the prestigious Tanglewood Seminar for Conductors, where she worked with Leonard Bernstein and other major figures. Through the decades after, she continued to hone her skills through workshops and collaborations, later serving as president of the International Conductor's Guild.

Outside of the University, she has led the DuPage Symphony for nearly 40 years and was named Illinois Conductor of the Year in 2003. At UChicago, she has dedicated herself to running the Performance Program, providing support to over a dozen ensembles, and is a senior lecturer in the Music Department.

But across her many collaborations with both academic units and performers, every moment that has come to define the orchestra has had Schubert at its center.

“I'm always really impressed by how Barbara is committed to cooperating and coordinating with other fields,” said David Shepherd, a UChicago alumnus and orchestra bassist since 1989. “Being on a university campus, I think it's so enriching that Barbara helps to integrate us with academic life.”

Though serious in the rehearsal room, she’s also brought a light-hearted approach to her work. She conducted the 1812 Overture by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky at the University's centennial celebration, with then-President Hanna Holborn Gray pulling the rope to "fire" a papier-mâché cannon on cue.

And in 1981, when Mandel Hall was being renovated and the orchestra was displaced into a gymnasium with bad acoustics, she invented what has since become an institution: the annual Halloween concert, complete with a themed program, a costumed conductor and an elaborate entrance down the center aisle.

Now, families across Hyde Park plan their autumns around it. The first Halloween performance is for children, who often arrive in costumes of their own.

Over the years, Schubert has ridden in on a shark for a Jaws-themed program, dressed as Brünnhilde for Richard Wagner, and conducted Gustav Holst's The Planets as Jane Jetson. She declines to disclose what she's planning for next year. The idea, she said, usually arrives in the summer.

"It will come to me in one big vision," she said.

Pushing musical boundaries

On a given evening, the orchestra’s musicians might rehearse with a bomba ensemble from Puerto Rico, learn a new piano concerto co-commissioned by the orchestra itself, or work through the score to a restored 1925 Sergei Eisenstein silent film for its American premiere.

“It challenges me intellectually and emotionally. I like to bring that tremendous diversity to our audiences, but also to our students,” said Schubert. “They like that big challenge that I put in front of them, and that's what keeps us going.”

Universities without a performance degree—UChicago among them—don't typically program like this. But Schubert has spent 50 years doing it anyway, finding music her players may never have seen before and didn’t know they could play. To get them there, she moves quickly in rehearsals to diagnose what musicians need to fix in the practice room.

"She's very good at adjusting to what the orchestra needs at that particular rehearsal," said violinist Anna-Sofia Hobaugh, daughter of Alexandra and Michael, who graduated from the College last year. "She makes sure that we're hitting the benchmarks we need to that day."

A living legacy

Though Schubert will continue at the helm after the Opus 50 culmination, the weekend’s headline performances carry a poetic echo of her earliest days at UChicago.

While she began her University conducting career with a piece about death, she's now celebrating 50 years at the podium with Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.

Eighty minutes long, scored for 100-plus players, including a full chorus and brass section, it culminates in a final movement that moves from despair to transcendence.

“It's an incredibly compelling piece, almost overwhelming in terms of the range of emotions that it expresses and the types of colors that it has,” said Schubert, “so it seemed like a wonderful goal as a culminating event.”

It's a fitting choice for a conductor who has spent five decades insisting that music is not just something you study, but something you do. During the Opus 50 performances, Schubert said she’ll be “concentrating to the maximum on the piece of music at hand.”

“I think it's before and after that I'll be reflecting about the 50 years, but at the moment of conducting, the most important thing is to have my complete focus and the absolute attention to detail that I can muster through every microsecond of the performance,” she said. “After that, I'll probably cry—and celebrate with everybody as well.”

—Reporting contributed by MacKenzie Tucker

UChicago announces 2026 Diversity Leadership Award recipients

05/04/2026 - 04:30pm

The Diversity Leadership Awards honor members of the University of Chicago community who advance the University’s commitment to diversity of thought, perspective and experience. This year’s awards honored programs that foster meaningful collaboration and encourage rigorous engagement.

“The 2026 Diversity Leadership Award honorees embody the spirit and power of collaborative innovation and inclusive engagement that we value deeply at the University of Chicago,” said Waldo E. Johnson Jr., vice provost for diversity and inclusion. “Their work demonstrates how diverse perspectives enrich our academic mission and serves as a reminder of our commitment to advancing a culture of respect, opportunity, and belonging here on campus and beyond.”

Click through the links below to watch a video explaining each project or view them all on our YouTube page.

Logan Center Community Arts, represented by the following leaders from the Logan Center:

Emily Hooper Lansana
Mashaune Hardy
Ndosi Mapula
Elizabeth Myles
Hope Houston

UChicago Youth Internship Program, represented by:

Emily Cracolici, Assistant Director of Career Readiness Initiatives, Office of Civic Engagement

Access UChicago, represented by:

Marquetta Scott, Director, UChicago Access Now
Charnessa Warren, Director, Student Disability Services

El Cafecito, represented by:

Veronica Moraga, Associate Instructional Professor in Spanish

Chicago EYES on Cancer, represented by:

Eileen Dolan, Professor of Medicine; Deputy Director of the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center
Megan Mekinda, Director for Education, Training and Evaluation, UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center
Rosie Huggins, Assistant Director, Cancer Research Education, UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center
Michelle Domecki, Education Program Manager, UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center

The Inclusion Menu, represented by:

Tobias Spears, Associate Dean, Community/Divisional Values

Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Research Center (HAARC), represented by:

Phyllis Timpo, Director of Community Engagement, Outreach and Recruitment, HAARC

UChicago student goes behind the lens at the White House

Colin Terrill — 05/04/2026 - 10:46am

This spring, student journalist Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon dove into the White House press pool with camera in hand.

He had less than a week to make his mark. A third-year history major at the University of Chicago, he’d been invited by New York Times photojournalist Doug Mills—a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a 40-year veteran of the White House press pool—to shadow him on the job.

“I’m not someone who gets overwhelmed easily, but the offer left me speechless,” said Rodwell-Simon.

An avid photographer himself, Rodwell-Simon had just become managing editor of the Chicago Maroon student newspaper. Over four days during spring break in Washington D.C., he got his own press pass that allowed him to attend White House briefings, board meetings and Senate hearings, shooting photos at official events alongside the pool.

Rodwell-Simon had to quickly learn the ins and outs of working in a place where meetings and events are constantly taking place and news can break at any moment.

“I immediately felt like I had a lot more responsibility to use the access that I was given prudently, to uphold the sort of standards that are expected of every other press member when they are on Capitol Hill,” he said.

He landed the opportunity as a Katharine Graham Fellow with the College’s Parrhesia Program for Public Thought and Discourse program. Nora Titone, a senior director at Parrhesia, said the College fellowship challenges students to invite “nationally renowned figures who are exemplars” of the program’s spirit of free expression to visit campus for programming, panels and seminars.

Rodwell-Simon said Mills was “immediately at the top of my list.”

“In covering every president since the Ronald Reagan administration, he has so much knowledge about the way journalism and photojournalism has evolved over that time,” he said.

Mills had already been invited to campus for a joint Parrhesia and Institute of Politics event in May. Titone put Rodwell-Simon in contact with the photojournalist with a pitch to collaborate and feature his work. While working on a plan for an online exhibition before bringing him to campus for several in-person events—including on his Pulitzer-winning photograph of President Donald Trump immediately after he was shot in 2024—Mills extended an invitation to Rodwell-Simon to join him covering various events across Washington, D.C.

Rodwell-Simon said he was “incredibly excited and honored” by the offer. After Mills and the New York Times helped him get his weeklong press credentials, the student journalist kicked off his time in the capital with a chance to witness an impromptu briefing with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt the moment he entered the White House grounds. He also attended several other meetings, from a Trump Kennedy Center board meeting to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the Hill and Oval Office events with both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

While he had few opportunities to interact directly with ranking government officials, Rodwell-Simon was in constant contact with members of the White House press office who helped him get access with press credentials. Members of the press also shared insights on the profession and how to cover each moment, something that helped him find his footing and made him more comfortable to capture these events.

Outside of the importance of the position, Rodwell-Simon also had to learn the limits of his access—where he could go and what he could do in some of the most well-known locations in the world, each synonymous with U.S. history. Throughout it all, he tried to stay grounded.

“I tried to stay focused on the fact that I was there as a reporter and treated it like any other attempt of trying to get a photograph of a subject,” said Rodwell-Simon. “There is certainly a gravity of being in a space with those who hold the highest positions in government.”

Rodwell-Simon learned as much as he could from the journalists around him, taking advice on everything from different ways to capture the best shot to the newest technologies for photojournalists.

“The main takeaway I had from the experience is just how much experience and reputation matters,” he said. “Every journalist or photojournalist is trying to get information and construct the best reporting they can to deliver the most relevant information to their readers. Those skills take time to develop and require trust from both your subjects and the readers.”

He intends to make that lesson matter most as he guides the Chicago Maroon throughout his upcoming last year in the College. As for the exhibition he is assembling of Mills’ work and his future visits to campus, Rodwell-Simon has one goal in mind while in the curation process.

“What I’m interested in is what it felt like for him behind the camera, capturing these images while essentially being part of every president’s inner circle since the 1980s," he said. “Sometimes when you take a photo, you sort of know the impact that it could have and sometimes you don’t. Those are the stories that I am interested in telling.”

Mills will be a guest on campus beginning with the May 6 event “Witness in the White House: How New York Times photojournalist Doug Mills frames the first draft of history” at the Quadrangle Club with a dinner for 70 undergraduates co-hosted by the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, student writers for the Maroon and The Gate student magazine.

He’ll also hold an event open to the public hosted by the Institute of Politics and Parrhesia entitled “The Man who Shot the President being shot: Photographing 7 presidencies with Doug Mills” on May 7 at Ida Noyes Hall before concluding the week with the photography workshop “Breaking Down the Shot: A Photography Workshop with Doug Mills of the New York Times” hosted by Parrhesia and held for undergraduate students at the Smart Museum on May 8.

UChicago chemists 'film' light-matter hybrid particles

Maureen Searcy — 05/01/2026 - 01:15pm

To capture a crisp image of a hummingbird in flight, which can flap its wings up to 200 times per second, a photographer needs a camera with an extremely fast shutter speed.

But what if your target is smaller than a single chromosome and can travel at velocities approaching lightspeed? Conventional cameras, no matter how advanced, are limited by the nature of light. You would need a special device and an innovative method to film such a tiny, speedy subject.

In a study published in Nature Communications, UChicago chemists designed just such an ultrafast “camera.” They used it to capture polaritons—quasiparticles made of both light and matter —moving through a special crystal that can steer their direction.

The researchers observed polaritons traveling across long distances, zipping across a flake of the crystal—providing the matter part of the quasiparticle—without losing energy or fading out as quickly as expected.

“Normally, light interacts with matter in a way that doesn’t care about orientation. It’s all the same in any direction. But what happens when that’s no longer true?” asked Sarah King, assistant professor of chemistry and co-author on the study. “Directly observing polaritons moving in one direction on the nanoscale can help us understand how we can control how light and matter interact.”

The team’s results suggest that the kind of crystal they used is ideal for photonic technology, such as computer chips used in quantum computing that use light instead of electricity. The results also provide insight into the interaction between light and matter.

Opening new possibilities

One challenge to developing advanced, light-based technologies is the ability to control microscopic beams of light.

Pure light is wild—it moves in all directions, spreads out, and fades. But when light fuses with matter as a polariton, it can be more easily manipulated.

For the study, the researchers used hybrids made from photons and a layered crystalline material called molybdenum oxydichloride (MoOCl2, informally pronounced moo-kul).

Polaritons are like little cars that can be steered in a particular direction, and the crystal has special properties that make it even more useful for controlling light. It behaves differently depending on which direction you go. It acts like a conductive metal in one direction and an insulator in another direction.

Imagine roads with curbs and medians. Driving straight down the road is easy, but driving crossways over the curbs would slow you down significantly. Simply rotating the crystal could tune the quasiparticle’s motion and properties—speed, size, distance, direction, and even grip.

Materials with these natural guardrails eliminate the need for engineers to build walls or tunnels to direct the hybrid particles.

“This work could enable technologies that rely on guiding light at extremely small scales, such as advanced optical circuits and high-resolution imaging tools,” said Atreyie Ghosh, a postdoctoral scholar in King’s group and co–first author. “By allowing light to travel farther with less loss while staying tightly confined, it opens new possibilities for more efficient and precise control of light.”

The “camera”

King’s team used a technique called time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy, which combines a laser’s ease of use with an electron microscope’s ability to capture extremely small subjects.

“We know how to control photons—we can control their time, temporal profile, energy, and polarization,” said King. But optical microscopes can’t clearly image anything smaller than half the wavelength of visible light. That is a miniscule distance, yet a light-matter quasiparticle is still a fraction of that size.

“On the other hand, it’s very difficult to control an electron’s time, energy, or polarization,” she continued, “but the diffraction limit of the electron is much smaller. So we’re taking the best of both worlds to image these types of dynamics in space and time.”

The set-up works by shooting a laser at the crystal, which produces polaritons and sends them racing down the “street.” The team then shoots another laser at the crystal in a way that does not create hybrids but still ejects electrons. Some of those electrons combine energy with the quasiparticles, and they “light up,” which the microscope can capture in a snapshot.

The team ran the race over and over, waiting longer between starting and taking a snapshot, capturing images at different checkpoints along the quasiparticles’ path. Together, the snapshots form a “molecular movie,” said King.

Through this movie, they saw the hybrid particles travel three times as far as had previously been measured in this crystal.

“It’s astonishing to observe such long propagation lengths in real time,” said Calvin Raab, a graduate student in the King group and co–first author. “We can watch the polariton travel across the MoOCl2 flakes and reflect off the edges of the material. It’s not often you can actually see quasiparticles bouncing around inside a 2D material in real space.”

Material matters

The results are exciting because MoOCl2 is an air-stable material that can be easily peeled apart into high-quality 2D flakes using simple methods, and all measurements are performed at room temperature, explained Ghosh. “The demonstration of long polariton propagation lengths under such practical conditions positions MoOCl2 as a highly promising platform for next-generation optoelectronic devices.”

MoOCl2 is also one of the first materials with direction-dependent rules built into the crystalline structure that can form quasiparticles using visible light, which is useful because “that’s the world that we live in,” said King. “A lot of our technologies have been developed for visible frequencies.”

The work raises several fundamental questions about the crystal: just how reactive are its atoms to light? Can researchers modify its properties? Can they twist and stack layers to achieve different quantum behaviors? Can they further refine and control its electromagnetic properties?

There are many directions the team might pursue in its investigation into this material. Their ultimate goal is to find new ways to control light, said King, and “to interrogate, for example, some of the beautiful work that’s happening here at the University in quantum information science.”

Citation: “Spatiotemporal visualization of long-range anisotropic plasmon polaritons in hyperbolic MoOCl2.” Ghosh, A., Raab, C., Spellberg, J.L. et al. Nat Commun (2026)

Funding: Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

—A version of this story was originally published on the University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division website.

At UChicago event, former U.S. officials warn Iran war is ‘unraveling’ trust in NATO

Julian Veenstra-VanderWeele — 05/01/2026 - 12:53pm

Two months into the Iran war, requests from the United States to its longtime NATO partners for direct military support in the conflict have been largely declined, with some allies publicly criticizing the campaign.

At a recent event at the University of Chicago, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the war is straining relations within the treaty organization—and could even push European allies to consider closer alignment with China.

"It will be impossible to rebuild all of this world order,” Campbell said, cautioning future U.S. administrations of long-term diplomatic consequences. “Do not expect European friends to be grateful that you’re back.”

Campbell was the principal architect of U.S. strategy toward China under the administration of former President Joe Biden. He appeared at UChicago on April 17 with former U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and moderator Prof. Robert Pape for the fifth annual Hagel Lecture on Civil Politics and International Security, hosted by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST).

The two veteran diplomats said the foreign policy of President Donald Trump’s administration has tested relationships with European allies—from tensions over Greenland to divisions over the war in Iran. They both described a critical need for the U.S. to rebuild the post-World War II system of rules and international institutions emphasizing diplomacy rather than war to resolve disputes.

“This world order that we built with our allies is systematically unraveling, and that is so damn dangerous,” said Hagel, a former U.S. senator who served in the administration of former President Barack Obama. “If there were ever a time that America needed allies or friends, it’s certainly now.”

NATO fractures over Iran war

Since the U.S. and Israel first launched joint missile strikes at Iran on Feb. 28, the Trump administration has repeatedly implored NATO members to join the war effort and help secure the Strait of Hormuz. But no ally has committed forces, and while Germany has offered limited logistical support, other nations have made their disapproval clear.

Pape, who is the director of CPOST, said this comes as the administration has “aggressively challenged core pillars” of the international order.

“With the broad tariffs and now the Iran war, the administration particularly challenged the principles of working with allies prior to consequential decisions and only pursuing war as a last resort,” he said.  

Germany was given advance notice of the strikes in Iran, but other allies were not. France and Italy have since restricted U.S. military access, while Spain has gone further—closing its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the conflict.

“Who can blame them?” Campbell said when asked why most allies have refused to help. “They had no consultation in advance and do not understand why they are being asked to help now.”

The Iran war is part of a larger trend within world politics, the speakers asserted—the gap between America and its allies is widening.

“We are essentially isolating ourselves,” said Hagel. “Anybody that says that America doesn’t need anyone else needs to go back to the history books. We are global citizens and interdependent on each other.”

This distance is affecting the relationship even with stalwart allies such as Denmark, said Campbell. The Nordic nation was one of the 12 founding members of NATO in 1949 and has supported numerous U.S. military actions since, including the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, after the Trump administration’s rhetoric about Greenland, Campbell said a new wariness set in. Danish politicians were appalled by suggestions the U.S. might either buy or seize the territory to protect against threats from Russia and China, and NATO members warned such action would effectively collapse the alliance.

At a recent dinner at the Danish ambassador’s home in Washington, D.C., Campbell was told that Denmark now “looks at the U.S. as a potential hostile nation,” Campbell said.

“American leadership is still going to be essential,” Campbell said. “But when we come back and say trust us, will any really smart country ever trust us again?”

Scientists get best-ever look at distant planet’s surface with Webb Telescope

Louise Lerner — 05/01/2026 - 12:13pm

Astronomers have found thousands of worlds in faraway star systems, but one of the questions that’s been hardest to answer is the one that immediately jumps to any human mind: What does the planet look like?

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a group of scientists including several with the University of Chicago has gotten the best-ever look at an exoplanet’s surface.

By analyzing subtle changes in light, researchers found the planet Kua’kua—which orbits a small star in the constellation Indus—has a dark, solid surface, possibly made of basalt or a related type of rock. It probably doesn’t have plate tectonics like Earth does, and very little if any atmosphere.

In addition to providing a glimpse into the planet’s physical appearance, these factors can help us understand the different types of worlds that exist in the universe. They can also narrow the search for potentially habitable planets by revealing whether they’ve ever had water, active geology, or other conditions that might support life.

“This technique can tell us about how the rocks on this planet formed and what processes shaped it over the planet’s lifetime,” said Brandon Coy, a graduate student at UChicago and co-author on the paper. “There’s a lot of cool things we can do with this data.”

The program’s primary investigator was Laura Kreidberg, PhD’16, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, and the first author was Sebastian Zieba of the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

How scientists study an exoplanet’s surface

Though we now know of more than 6,000 exoplanets, they’re generally too small and far away to be directly looked at, even with the most powerful telescopes. Instead, scientists must tease out clues about these planets with clever workarounds.

One of these techniques is known as the “secondary eclipse technique.” In this method, you map the light coming from the system, then wait for the planet to dip behind the star as part of its regular orbit. The difference between the readings is the light from the planet itself. Scientists can use this data to get a sense of the molecules in the planet’s atmosphere and other details.

This technique works well for big gas planets, similar to Jupiter, that are close to their stars.

“Unfortunately, the smaller worlds are harder to see,” said Edwin Kite, associate professor of geophysical sciences at UChicago and a study co-author, “but they’re the ones most relevant to fragile carbon-based beings like us.”

Luckily, scientists have a powerful new tool on their side: “The James Webb Space Telescope has really opened up a new era in characterizing these rocky planets,” said Coy.

Kite, Coy, and the team used the telescope to focus on a planet known as Kuaꞌkua, or LHS 3844 b by its formal scientific name, which is 48 light-years away from Earth, meaning it would take 48 years to travel there even at the speed of light. Kua’kua is about twice the mass of Earth, but is much closer to its sun and zips around it faster—its “year,” the time it takes to complete a full trip around its host star, is the equivalent of 0.5 Earth days.

By analyzing data from three secondary eclipses with different models, they were able to put together a striking amount of detail about the planet.

Kua’kua’s surface appears to be very dark, most likely made up of basalt or similar rock—much like the rock you might see in Iceland or Hawaii. The planet is probably covered in a dark, weathered powder, as our moon and Mercury are. And there’s no signature in the readings for an atmosphere with carbon dioxide, or even a sulfurous one belched from volcanoes.

The color is of particular interest because a lighter-colored surface might have indicated a granite crust, which on Earth, is made in the presence of water and could also have indicated the presence of plate tectonics. It’s been theorized that Earth’s plate tectonics are key to keeping the planet's climate stable and habitable for life, so scientists are keen to understand how common they might be in the other planets of the universe.

Combining the new findings with data from previous missions paints a picture of the planet: a dark, dry, rocky, unmoving surface, with a thin atmosphere if any at all. One side of the planet always faces its star, so that side is constantly cooked by the sun to 1,300ºF and the other side is shrouded in darkness.

You probably aren’t putting Kua’kua on your vacation shortlist. But each planet we learn about tells us more about how planets form—and by extension, how to look for planets friendlier to Earth life.

“We've only got four rocky planets in our solar system, and they're very diverse. Some have atmospheres and some don't, one is habitable and three aren't—and one used to be habitable. So we just don't have a big enough sample size to understand how these objects operate,” said Kite. “The more we learn about these other planets, the better we understand the ingredients that make for stable, habitable planets.”

As for Kua’kua, plans are underway to use the Webb Telescope to try to get a snapshot of how rough the planet’s surface is and other details—which would be another first.

The study made use of observations by the James Webb Space Telescope and the TESS mission, as well as the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

Citation: “The dark and featureless surface of rocky exoplanet LHS 3844 b from JWST mid-infrared spectroscopy.” Zieba et al, Nature Astronomy, May 4, 2026.

Funding: NASA, NSFC, Eugene V. Cota-Robles Award, Nathan P. Myhrvold Graduate Fellowship.

Two UChicago scientists elected to National Academy of Sciences in 2026

04/30/2026 - 09:30am

Two University of Chicago scholars have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, joining other scientists and researchers chosen in “recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”

Profs. Chuan He and Joseph Thornton are among the 120 new members elected this year. They are honored for their groundbreaking work in biochemistry and biology, respectively.

Chuan He is the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

He is an expert in the field of nucleic acid chemistry and biology, in particular RNA modification biology and RNA-mediated regulation. He was the first to champion the idea that modifications to RNA are reversible and can control gene expression. His work is foundational to developing potential therapies that target RNA modification effectors against human diseases such as cancer.

He’s team was the first to identify eraser proteins, which can undo changes made to RNA molecules, which sparked the emergence of epitranscriptome research. They also explained how RNA methylation functions through characterizing reader proteins—processes that known to play critical roles in many types of cancer.

He has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His honors also include the 2023 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the 2023 Tetrahedron Prize, and the 2023 Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year in Life Sciences.

Joseph Thornton is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and the Department of Human Genetics.

Thornton studies the mechanisms by which protein functions evolve. His lab phylogenetically reconstructs the histories of ancient proteins and then synthesizes, manipulates, and experimentally characterizes them. This approach allows them to address fundamental questions about the nature of evolutionary processes, such as how complex molecular systems evolve, how the biophysical structure of proteins has shaped their evolution, and the role of chance and historical contingency in producing the diverse proteins of present-day organisms. His former trainees are now leading evolutionary researchers at institutions across the world.

Thornton also co-directs the University of Chicago’s NIH-funded Genetic Mechanisms and Evolution predoctoral training program and is a founding member of the Ecology and Evolution DEI Committee, a collective of students, faculty, and postdocs devoted to creating a research and educational environment in which students and scientists of diverse backgrounds and identities can thrive.

Previously, Thornton was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the National Council on Science Education’s Darwin Award for advancing public understanding of evolution, the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.

How one researcher took on Chicago's school dropout crisis

Tori Lee — 04/29/2026 - 09:51am

Editor’s note: This story is part of Meet a UChicagoan, a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community.

In the early 2000s, around half of students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduated from high school. While investigating the problem, University of Chicago Prof. Melissa Roderick discovered a key insight: Ninth grade is a pivotal intervention year to prevent school dropout.

This finding catalyzed two decades of research by Roderick and her colleagues at the UChicago Consortium of School Research. Using their research, CPS launched a Freshman On-Track system to monitor 9th graders in danger of slipping through the cracks. It paid off.

In 2023, the school district hit a historic high graduation rate of 85%.

Roderick, the Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, has spent a career devoted to urban school reform. Her research on CPS led to new interventions, strategies, and partnerships that have improved graduation rates and helped create a pathway to college—making a profound and sustained impact in the lives of thousands of young people.

Now, on the eve of her retirement, Roderick leaves behind a legacy that has reshaped how Chicago educates its most vulnerable students.

“Melissa wants educational systems to work for all students. Her research was instrumental in improving CPS attendance and graduation rates,” said Crown colleague Prof. Julia Henly. “This is a key legacy that should make her—and all of us at the Crown Family School—extremely proud.”

‘What does the research say?’

Growing up in Fall River, Massachusetts, one of the poorest cities in the state, Roderick recalls entering high school with five neighborhood friends. By 11th grade, she was the only one left.

“Basically, I’ve been working on this problem since I was 14,” she said.

Roderick’s research on 9th grade formally began as a young researcher on a national dropout prevention program. Staff were debating when the best time was to catch kids before they dropped out. One administrator turned to her and asked: “You’re the hotshot Harvard researcher. What does the research say?”

The question seemed simple enough. Answering it was difficult. National data sets didn’t start early enough and school systems like Boston had no pre-high school electronic grades.

So, she decided to go home.

As part of her dissertation research, Roderick spent weeks in the records building basement back in Fall River. She identified a 4th-grade cohort of 757 students from homeroom registers and hand copied their transcripts.

The results were extraordinary. Grade declines were so dramatic in the transition to high school that she initially thought she must have made a mistake merging the files.

She hadn’t.

After publishing her dissertation in 1991, Roderick came to Chicago to join the faculty of the Crown Family School, then the School of Social Service Administration. With start-up support from Crown and a team of doctoral students, she was determined to understand the story behind the numbers.

Roderick’s research team followed 100 students from three elementary schools as they moved from 8th grade into CPS high schools, interviewing them regularly—something she had never done as a quantitative researcher.

“Melissa taught me that you have to be on the ground,” said former student Susan Stone, now the dean of the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, “with students, their parents, teachers, principals and district leaders, to fully see opportunities and hazards.”

A familiar pattern emerged. When the seemingly stable cohort of 8th graders entered high school, things took a turn.

“They went into 9th grade, and they all fell apart quickly,” said Roderick, who now had the evidence she needed. “Ultimately, the graduation rate of students in my qualitative sample matched the graduation rate of their larger cohort. If we were going to do something about the dropout problem, we had to focus on 9th grade.”

From research to practice

Roderick’s unique qualitative and quantitative blend became a hallmark of her research, leading to her directorship at the Consortium on Chicago School Research and two decades of research on the 9th grade transition.

In 2006, CPS leadership began a new initiative focused on increasing the number of 9th graders “on track” for graduation—an indicator developed by the Consortium. Freshmen are considered “on track” if they have enough credits to move on to the tenth grade and have earned no more than one F.

The centerpiece of the initiative was a new tracking tool that allowed high schools to monitor freshman grades and attendance—and intervene quickly when students began to have difficulty.

That same year, Roderick cofounded the Network for College Success with high school principals Mary Ann Pitcher and Sarah Duncan. The network helps school leaders use data and create effective systems to monitor and support students around freshman-on-track and college enrollment.

The results were immediate.

Between 2007 and 2017, the 9th-grade OnTrack rate increased by 28%. Roderick and Consortium researchers also found that increased on-track rates led to increased graduation rates.

“Melissa is this force of nature,” said Arne Duncan, former CEO of CPS. “She’s passionate about fighting for kids and really trying to do the right thing. Unequivocally, she made me better—she made my team better. I’m forever grateful for her contributions.”

‘Do it for the kids’

Colleagues praise Roderick’s sharp insights delivered with her characteristic directness.

Her passion to conduct research with real-world impact—to “do it for the kids”—has inspired generations of students and educators.

“What has always distinguished Melissa’s work is her unwavering commitment to ensuring that research makes a difference where it matters most—in the lives of young people,” said Prof. Deborah Gorman-Smith, dean of the Crown Family School. “She didn’t just identify the importance of the ninth-grade transition; she translated that insight into tools and practices that schools could use, changing how they support students and, in turn, changing trajectories for thousands of young people. That is the mark of a truly extraordinary scholar.”

Roderick’s work—and her emphasis on building systems—continues at the Kersten Institute for Urban Education, the To & Through Initiative, the Network for College Success and research at the Consortium.

“Melissa pushed us all to think not only about the quality of the analysis, but about what responsibility we had to educators,” said Shanette Porter, Learning and Development Group director at the Consortium. “She asked questions like: What will this help educators see that they couldn’t see before? How will this move the system forward?”

Through it all, Roderick says her time at Crown was instrumental to her career path.

“At the Crown Family School, they care about solving problems. It enabled me to be who I was,” she said. “If someone were to write a sentence about me 20 years from now, it would be: She was a Crown School faculty member.”

Court Theatre’s ‘Out Here’ rebuilds the queer musical from the ground up

Tori Lee — 04/28/2026 - 10:55am

In a typical musical, it’s normal—expected even—for someone to burst into song. But in Out Here, an original production premiering at Court Theatre, the Tony Award-winning theater on the University of Chicago campus, characters don’t take a single note for granted.

Under the beautifully lit frame of a house (one that feels purposely under construction), characters meditate on when, why and even how they sing.

Out Here, which celebrated its world premiere on April 18, follows Dawn, a 50-something-year-old who wants to divorce her husband Brian, reunite with her ex-girlfriend Robin and have everyone be ok.

“This musical aims to adapt the complexity of ‘changing scripts’ mid-life into an equally complex musical-theater form,” said bookwriter and lyricist Leslie Buxbaum, a professor of the Practice in the Arts on the Committee on Theater & Performance Studies at UChicago.

Incubated at UChicago with support from the Neubauer Collegium, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and within the classroom, the experimental work purposely plays with form—testing boundaries between singer and actor, musician and character, audience and performer.

Though the production takes on modern and classic themes—family drama, rekindling old love, a coming out story—its creators hope to deconstruct, “queer” and rebuild them in a brand-new way.

“There's room for art to become more dialogical, more complex,” said Out Here dramaturg Prof. David Levin. “And I think the University of Chicago is the perfect laboratory space for precisely that kind of exploratory work.”

Out Here runs through May 10 and tickets are on sale now.

Making a UChicago ‘Undo-sical’

In 2019, Buxbaum started writing with no expectations. Inspired by events in her own life, and accounts of other mid-life folks living their own, a play began to take shape.

“This is a story that hasn't been told a lot,” said Buxbaum. “It’s about a woman confronting their role as a mom, their sense of belonging to their home and what they've built.”

At an early point in the creative process, a thought popped into her head: What if I put music to this? What would it do?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Buxbaum participated in Zoom workshops with other theater professionals where she met composer and musician Erin McKeown. As they began to collaborate, McKeown was struck by something unusual in Buxbaum’s script. Typically, lyrics in musical theater are capitalized or italicized. But here, it wasn’t clear what was sung and what was spoken.

This initial formatting gray area inspired a years-long creative experiment.

“We developed a process for deciding where the songs should go, which was totally different than anything I'd ever done before,” McKeown said.

The two joined up with Levin and brought the project to UChicago with support from the Gray Center, which has since 2011 been a forum for experimental collaboration between artists and scholars. Levin and Buxbaum jointly directed the Center during its first five years.

After securing a year of Mellon Fellowship funding in 2022-23, the trio—known affectionately by members of the production as “the tripod”—began to tinker, dubbing the project not so much a musical as an “Undo-sical.”

“‘Undo-sical’ seemed like it captured the energies of invention, of reimagination,” said Levin, a scholar of German opera, film, theater, dance and performance. “We were taking on the form of the musical, playing with it, and, ideally on the other end, reassembling it.”

The lack of pressure around a production timeline enabled the tripod to fully experiment. McKeown created a soundscape with dog bones and typewriters. The margins of Google Docs filled with overlapping comments. Through a series of workshops and staged readings, the tripod brought in other artists, actors, musicians and students.

They wrote and rewrote.

In 2024, the project received additional funding from the Neubauer Collegium’s Arts Labs, another program invested in nurturing innovative arts practice and research on campus.

“Historically, universities have been a really big player in the incubation of new work,” Buxbaum said. “To write something and then gradually get all of this participation, support, enthusiasm and investment, I can't even describe how powerful that is and how grateful I am for it.”

Students on set

As part of the Gray Center Mellon fellowship, the tripod co-taught a new UChicago course called “(re) Queering the American Musical.” Jo Selmeczy, then a first-year student in the College, had never taken a Theater and Performance Studies course before they joined.

“The course was a combination of intense performance theory that David was spearheading, on-your-feet exercises that Leslie was leading, and Erin was having us devise these mini songs,” said Selmeczy, now in their fourth year. “All of these things were entangled in this one class. I loved it. I thought it was so awesome.”

After the course, Buxbaum invited Selmeczy to participate in a workshop for Out Here. They were responsible for reading out the stage directions alongside a company of professional actors. It was the first time they’d seen professional theater in action, which they found both “exciting and inspiring.”

Selmeczy’s college career continued in tandem with Out Here’s development. As they participated in more staged readings, got deeper into theater studies, the musical continued to morph. During the show’s run, Selmeczy will help facilitate the public programming.

“The conceptual work we were doing as a tripod was always in dialogue with not just our colleagues, but also our students,” Levin said. “The students have been essential, utterly central, to the ethos of the work that we've been doing.”

Selmeczy says Out Here was also their first introduction to dramaturgy. Now officially “dramaturgy-pilled,” Selmeczy is currently an intern at Court and has served as dramaturgical assistant for several productions. After graduating this spring with a joint B.A./M.A. in the arts, they will spend this summer at the Oak Park Festival Theatre as a dramaturg.

“It's really been a big turning point for me in terms of how I'm thinking about my career post college,” they said.

Levin says the role of the dramaturg in Out Here is to help the work stay true to the original vision. For the tripod, this means making formally complex, amusing, and imaginative art that lives in “the here and now,” a near-constant process of remaking—even in front of audiences.

“I make theater as a live art form,” Buxbaum said. “This is happening in this moment, with these people, in this room. Yes, the show will be repeated night after night, but it always changes.”

—Tickets for Out Here are available for purchase on the Court Theatre website.

UChicago Medicine to study impact of Formula 1 racing season on performance

04/27/2026 - 12:24pm

Formula 1 racing pushes drivers and their teams to the edge, mentally and physically.

To better understand how they perform under intense pressure, the University of Chicago Medicine and the TGR Haas F1 Team have partnered for a long-term study examining the cumulative demands of a racing season on the mind and body.

Now underway, the “Human Engine” project tracks members of the Haas F1 team aims to develop evidence-based strategies to improve overall health and performance in the as high-stress, sleep-disrupted environments.

The collaboration is the first in Formula 1 to be conducted alongside an academic medical center, bringing clinical and research expertise to the study of team-based performance in elite motorsport.

“Over the course of a season, team members face continuous travel, disrupted sleep cycles and sustained cognitive and physical demands,” said Vineet Arora, the study’s principal investigator and dean for medical education at the UChicago Pritzker School of Medicine. “Our goal is to understand how these factors interact over time and to develop targeted interventions that support performance, recovery and well-being. What we learn here has the potential to shape how we support teams in other environments.”

While Formula 1 is recognized for its driver fitness and engineering innovation, little is understood about the mechanics, engineers and staff who support race operations. They must perform as they travel across time zones and work overnight under intense pressure.

"Formula 1 is an incredibly demanding environment, not only for drivers, but for everyone working within the sport," said Ayao Komatsu, team principal of the Haas F1 Team. "As a team, we're always looking to better understand how those demands affect our people and how we can create an environment where our people can operate at their best—both on and off track."

The study involves voluntary participation from traveling Haas F1 team members across functions. UChicago Medicine researchers will use wearable devices, validated surveys and interviews to assess a wide set of health metrics and team dynamics in real-world racing conditions.

The research team includes specialists in sleep medicine, neurology, psychiatry and behavioral science. Led by Arora, they are Kenneth Lee, Jennifer Ghandhi, Alejandra Lastra and Aashna Sunderrajan. All data will be de-identified and analyzed in aggregate.

The research builds on UChicago Medicine's expertise in sleep medicine, circadian health and performance in high-stakes environments, including landmark studies on fatigue, shift work and decision-making in demanding clinical settings. The same questions are increasingly relevant in health care, where teams operate under similar demands.

“The modern Formula 1 schedule is demanding both physically and socially, with extensive travel, jet lag and time away from home,” said Dan Martin, lead performance coach of the Haas F1 Team. “We want to better understand these stressors and use that insight to support health, career longevity and overall team performance.”

The program will begin with longitudinal data collection across the race season, followed by the development and testing of targeted strategies to support sleep, recovery and resilience. Over time, effective approaches will be incorporated into team operations.

Insights from the research are expected to inform broader applications beyond motorsport, including health care, emergency response and other fields where teams must operate effectively under sustained pressure and fatigue. Peer-reviewed publications and broader research outputs are planned following the study's completion.

This initiative builds on UChicago Medicine's sponsorship of the Haas F1 Team, established in 2024, which made UChicago Medicine the first and only health care provider to serve as an official team partner in Formula 1.

—This article was originally published on the UChicago Medicine website.

As Chicago's sports teams angle for new deals, students offer a playbook

Tyler McGaughey — 04/27/2026 - 11:00am

The Chicago Bears and other professional sports teams are rethinking their ties to the city.

This year's Harris Policy Innovation Challenge asked competitors to find new ways to negotiate.

In the annual contest, teams of master's students from the Harris Public Policy School at the University of Chicago pitch proposals aimed at major civic issues—in this case, how the city can adopt a more “win-win” stance to sports investment. Students Charlie Schraw, Christina Tsai and Liz Williams won with a sweeping call to restructure how the city uses its public money to fund stadium deals and set terms with teams.

“Our plan allows the city to come to the negotiating table with leverage, not desperation,” said Williams. “We’re not asking Chicago to construct a wealth of new development—we’re asking it to better use what it already has. We sincerely hope the city considers this plan.”

In their proposal, the team called for the establishment of a new Stadium Securitization Corporation (SSC), modeled after Chicago’s Sales Tax Securitization Corporation (STSC).

The SSC would wall off old and new stadium debt from the city's broader finances, with a legal framework for dedicated stadium revenues to flow straight to bondholders. Pointing to the success of the existing STSC in improving the city’s credit on sales tax debt, the winning team said the same structure could steadily reduce what Chicago owes on its stadiums.

The winning plan also included considerations ranging from hiring requirements for local residents, as well as commitments for affordable housing, public transit access and climate resilience. It would also require alignment with Chicago’s Climate Action Plan and a minimum LEED Gold rating for sports facilities.

Schraw, Tsai and Williams also proposed that stadiums guarantee at least 150 days of annual usage, with 20% or more of those days reserved for community groups. They also called for a 30-year non-relocation covenant for pro sports franchises, aiming to ensure long-term benefits for the city.

The three finalist teams pitched their ideas to a slate of judges from the worlds of business, city government and community development.

They were: David Wells, former CFO of Netflix; Bill Conway, alderman of Chicago’s 34th Ward; Tovah McCord, executive director of Nicor Illinois Community Investment; Mike Parker, former Americas Infrastructure Leader of Ernst & Young; and Derek Douglas, president of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Civic Committee.

“Every year, our student competitors rise to the occasion with the rigor, thoughtfulness, and depth of their solutions to a pressing local issue,” said Research Professor Justin Marlowe, who directs the Center for Municipal Finance and leads the challenge. “The focus of this year’s contest—the multifaceted issues surrounding Chicago’s professional sports teams—is deeply rooted in the city’s municipal checkbook and civic heart.

“Our finalists this year all delivered novel and deeply considered approaches to a topic of huge significance to the city’s finances—and, indeed, its pride.”

The policy competition began in 2023, with previous installments focused on the city’s unfunded pension liabilities and revitalizing the Loop.

This year’s contest takes place amid a historic era for the city and professional sports, as teams including the Bears, Fire, Sky and Red Stars are all reassessing their relationships with the city.

The Bears’ possible exodus from the city took a recent step forward as the Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill granting the team property-tax certainty should they build a new stadium in suburban Arlington Heights.

Marlowe said this year’s theme brought “fascinating real-world twists and turns” related to the city’s professional sports teams.

“As one example of the real-world importance of the topic, Illinois State Representative Kam Buckner had to leave his seminar with the HPIC participants early so he could head straight to a negotiation session with the Bears,” he said. “It was a perfect illustration of how our students navigated what happens when the landscape changes right in front of you.”

Nearly 90 UChicago students comprising 16 teams took part in the contest, engaging in a six-month seminar where they worked closely with mentors from the public and private sectors.

They also attended lectures from speakers including Steven Mahr, the city of Chicago’s acting CFO, and Danny Ecker, commercial real estate reporter at Crain’s Chicago Business, providing new perspectives and broadening the ideas they brought to their proposals.

The other finalist teams pitched major governance updates of their own.

The proposal from Andres Camacho Baquero, Alison Collard de Beaufort, Joe diTomasso and Taha Rashid included a call to require a voter referendum for any new public subsidies and a long-term restructuring of Soldier Field’s ownership. It also proposed shifting costs and control to private franchises—while keeping teams in the city through long-term lease agreements. Under their plan, Chicago would retain public ownership of pro sports stadiums while offering the tenants full operational control.

The plan presented by Anna Chaeeun Koh, Firouz Niazi and Lyndsey Wang proposed a dual-track model: a new Chicago Sports Authority that would issue revenue-backed bonds to fund stadium-adjacent infrastructure like transit and public space, paired with public minority equity stakes in the teams themselves. The bonds would be repaid from stadium-related revenues rather than the city's general fund.

While the judges deliberated on the three presentations, the finalists fielded questions from the audience and news reporters on subjects including land use, sustainability and transportation policy.

“The annual Policy Innovation Challenge is a vivid illustration of so much of what is best about Harris,” said Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, dean and Sydney Stein Professor at Harris. “These students have not only engaged in serious, engaged thinking and data analysis—they have really gotten their hands dirty to tackle a major real-world policy problem. That is what we are here to do.”

—This article was originally published on the Harris website.

Bernard Roizman, pioneering University of Chicago virologist, 1929–2026

Matt Wood — 04/23/2026 - 02:05pm

Bernard Roizman, the world’s leading expert on herpes simplex virus and the Joseph Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, died April 13 at the age of 96.

Over a career spanning seven decades, Roizman reshaped the field of virology through his work on the herpes simplex virus, commonly referred to as HSV—a common, lifelong infection responsible for a range of human diseases. He mapped the virus’s genome, defined how it infects host cells, and developed DNA-based techniques that revealed the roles of specific viral genes in infection and replication.

His work laid the foundation for efforts to develop vaccines against HSV, as well as gene therapies and anti-cancer treatments that use modified forms of the virus. Over the course of his career, he authored more than 650 peer-reviewed publications, a body of work that both shaped and reflected the evolution of modern virology.

More than his discoveries, Roizman was renowned for his approach to science itself. He viewed it “as an opportunity to discover the designs in the mosaics of life,” pursuing questions that revealed overarching themes and underlying patterns as opposed to filling in the details.

“Bernard was not only a towering figure in microbiology and virology, but he was also a devoted champion of the University of Chicago, where his passion for discovery and mentorship shaped generations of scientists,” said Shabaana Khader, the Betty and Bernard Roizman Professor and Chair of Microbiology at UChicago.

“As the holder of the endowed Betty and Bernard Roizman Chair, I am deeply honored to carry forward his legacy of excellence and intellectual courage. He will be deeply missed by all who had the honor of knowing him.”

‘My second love at first sight’

Roizman was born in Romania in 1929. His early life was shaped by the upheaval of World War II, including years of displacement, deprivation, and survival as a refugee as his family fled advancing armies across Eastern Europe. This eventually brought his family to the United States in 1947, where they settled in Philadelphia and he enrolled at Temple University.

Science was not his first calling, however. “The truth is that as I was growing up I wanted to be a writer,” he wrote in a 2015 autobiographical essay. “My aspirations came to an end when, in order to speed up my graduation from college, I took courses in microbiology. It was my second love at first sight—that of my wife preceded it.”

Roizman married Betty in 1950 and remained deeply devoted to her throughout their 70-year marriage. He took care to ensure that others recognized her warmth and gift for conversation, often directing attention toward her rather than himself.

He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Temple before attending the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he received his Doctor of Science in 1956. After serving on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, he joined the University of Chicago in 1965 and spent the next 52 years there, where he was dedicated to scientific discovery and mentoring the next generation of scientists.

The birth of molecular epidemiology

In the late 1950s, Roizman pioneered methods for purifying herpes simplex virus DNA and describing its unique structure.

Among his most consequential discoveries was that HSV gene sequences vary among unrelated individuals, but are identical among related individuals infected with the virus. These “genetic fingerprints” enabled the tracing of viral transmission from person to person, giving rise to a field that would be known as molecular epidemiology.

Using this approach, Roizman demonstrated that nurses in hospital maternity wards were inadvertently transmitting HSV between infants by failing to wash their hands between patients. His findings led directly to changes in hospital practices and a dramatic reduction in neonatal HSV infections.

Roizman later used early DNA editing techniques to manipulate the HSV genome, identifying the functions of many of its 84 genes, particularly those essential for viral replication. Among these was an enzyme that became a key target for antiviral drug development.

He also discovered ways to harness HSV’s biology for therapeutic purposes. He engineered forms of the virus that lack its ability to damage the central nervous system, but retain the capacity to selectively infect and destroy cancer cells. He further demonstrated that modified HSV could serve as a vector for delivering and expressing foreign genes, advancing the development of gene therapy.

A legacy of teaching

Roizman prioritized mentorship, and his influence extended far beyond the laboratory. Over his career, he trained generations of scientists who went on to establish research programs across the United States, Europe, and Asia, extending his impact throughout the global scientific community.

Beginning with his 60th birthday and continuing every five years thereafter, his former students and postdoctoral fellows returned to UChicago for scientific symposia to celebrate his continuing contributions to science, a testament to the lasting impact he had on their lives and careers.

Those who trained with Roizman frequently recalled acts of generosity that extended well beyond science—support offered quietly and without expectation of acknowledgment.

He often said that the true measure of his work was the young scientists he mentored and shaped. “What lasts are not the scientific reports, but rather the generations of scientists whose education I may have influenced,” he wrote.

In his later years, he took particular pleasure in visits from former trainees and colleagues, and in the conversations about science that continued long after his formal career had ended. He retired from the University of Chicago in 2017 but remained active in teaching and mentoring students in virology.

In 2021, the Roizmans endowed the Bernard and Betty Roizman Professorship at the University of Chicago, an enduring commitment to future generations of scientists in the field he helped define. Khader is the first faculty member to hold the distinction.

Roizman was elected to numerous prestigious scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, the National Academy of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (Medicine) and an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

While Roizman’s contributions to science were extensive and profound, they reflect only part of his legacy, family members said: Those who knew him experienced a man of unwavering integrity, humility, and quiet generosity—deeply attentive to others and committed to elevating the people around him.

—Adapted from an article first published by the Biological Sciences Division.

How do AI ‘judges’ compare to human ones? It's complicated, says a UChicago scholar

Mark Cohen — 04/23/2026 - 01:55pm

As AI rapidly works its way into the legal system, Prof. Eric Posner is asking a pointed question: What happens when machines fill the role of a judge?

That question drives much of Posner’s research as the Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair at the University of Chicago Law School. He was elected by his faculty peers to share his findings in the Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture, a prestigious annual address at the University.

Speaking on April 16 in a packed Friedman Hall at the Rubenstein Forum, Posner offered a probing examination of how large language models are already influencing legal decision-making—and why, despite their growing sophistication, they are unlikely to replace human judges anytime soon.

Introduced by University President Paul Alivisatos—who described the Ryerson Lecture as “the ultimate celebration” of UChicago scholarship—Posner began with a note of cautious realism.

While U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts recently predicted that “human judges will be around for a while,” Posner pointed to growing evidence that AI is gaining a foothold in judicial workflow. Surveys suggest a majority of federal judges report using AI tools in some capacity, and some have openly acknowledged experimenting with them.

In one example, a federal appellate judge consulted an AI model to help interpret whether installing an in-ground trampoline qualified as “landscaping” under an insurance policy.

“I just want people to know that I did this,” the judge wrote, describing the AI’s answer as helpful, even though the issue ultimately did not determine the outcome of the case.

Beyond isolated uses, Posner highlighted the emergence of AI-driven arbitration platforms, including one developed by the American Arbitration Association. These systems promise faster and dramatically cheaper dispute resolution, raising the prospect that AI could first gain traction not in courts, but instead in private adjudication.

At the same time, Posner emphasized that AI is already influencing litigation in less welcome ways. Courts are increasingly receiving filings with AI-generated text containing fabricated legal citations, often referred to as “hallucinations,” prompting sanctions and ethical concerns.

Against this backdrop, Posner turned to the core of his lecture: a series of experiments testing how AI “judges” compare to human ones.

How AI handles legal questions

Drawing on prior scholarship in legal realism, Posner and his collaborators examined whether decision-makers follow legal rules strictly—a “formalist” approach—or are influenced by broader considerations such as fairness or sympathy in a “realist” approach.

In one study, human judges evaluated a war crimes case involving sympathetic and unsympathetic defendants. The result was that judges were influenced, at the margins, by the attributes of the defendant.

But AI models behaved differently.

“The AI was a formalist,” Posner explained. “It simply followed the law. It disregarded the degree of sympathy that one might have felt.”

The pattern held across additional experiments. In a complex “choice of law” scenario, where courts must determine which jurisdiction’s law applies, human judges produced inconsistent outcomes and occasionally made factual or legal errors. By contrast, AI models applied the governing rules with complete consistency and without mistake.

Yet that apparent strength, Posner suggested, may also be a weakness. Studies have shown that law students, like AI, tend to apply the law in a rigid formalistic fashion.

“Would you want law students to be judges?” he asked.

For Posner, the comparison underscores a deeper truth about the legal system—human judging is not, and has never been, purely mechanical. From the legal realist critique of the early 20th century to contemporary debates over originalism, scholars have long recognized that judicial decisions are shaped not only by rules, but by judgment, experience and social context.

AI, by contrast, is trained on the “official story” of law—the formal reasoning found in judicial opinions—without access to the underlying motivations or institutional dynamics that shape real-world decisions.

Limits of AI in judging

Posner identified three main obstacles to replacing human judges with AI.

First, AI systems cannot reliably explain their own reasoning. While they produce plausible legal arguments, “it’s not clear that the reasons are the motivations for their actual decisions,” he said.

Second, judging is embedded in a complex institutional structure. Courts operate within hierarchies, interact across jurisdictions and respond directly or indirectly to political and social pressures.

“Human judges are part of this enormously complex institutional structure,” Posner said, one that would be difficult to replicate artificially.

Finally, he pointed to what he called the “paradox of the official story,” the gap between how judicial decisions are publicly justified and how they are actually made.

AI systems, trained on formal legal texts, may faithfully reproduce the rhetoric of judging without capturing its reality.

Even so, Posner acknowledged reasons for optimism about AI’s role in the legal system.

AI platforms are remarkably effective at identifying patterns across recurring fact scenarios, a core feature of legal reasoning. They also produce polished, coherent opinions that can be difficult to distinguish from those written by humans.

Despite these advantages, Posner remains skeptical that AI will displace judges. More likely is a quieter transformation—judges will increasingly rely on AI tools behind the scenes, even if they do not always publicly acknowledge it.

Posner finds the prospect of continued human involvement in judicial decision-making both essential and reassuring, especially in the event of a close call that could go either way.

“I want a human to flip the coin so we can argue about it,” he said. “I don’t want an LLM to do that.”

—This article was originally published on the Law School website.

Three UChicago scholars elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

04/22/2026 - 11:30am

Three members of the University of Chicago faculty have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. They are Profs. William Baude, Elisabeth Clemens and Alison LaCroix.

These scholars have made breakthroughs in sociology and law, studying issues spanning the rise of interest group politics to constitutional law and the rise of American federalism. They join the 2026 class, announced April 22, which includes more than 250 artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors.

The academy, founded in 1780, is an honorary society that recognizes and celebrates the excellence of its members as well as an independent research center convening leaders from across disciplines to address significant challenges.

William Baude, SB’04, is the Harry Kalven Jr. Professor of Law and faculty director of the Constitutional Law Institute.

Baude teaches a range of subjects such as federal courts, constitutional law, election law, conflict of laws and elements of the law. His current research interests include judicial remedies available against the federal government, the Supreme Court's emergency docket and the legacy of William Winslow Crosskey.

The co-editor of two textbooks, The Constitution of the United States and Hart & Wechsler's Federal Courts in the Federal System, Baude is also a podcaster and blogger at Divided Argument.

Elisabeth Clemens, AM'85, PhD'90, is a professor of sociology and a former master of the Social Sciences Collegiate Division.

Her research explores the role of social movements and organizational innovation in political change. Clemens' first book, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925, received best book awards in both organizational sociology and political sociology.

She is also co-editor of Private Action and the Public Good, Remaking Modernity: Politics, History and Sociology, Politics and Partnerships: Voluntary Associations in America's Past and Present, and the journal Studies in American Political Development. She is now completing Civic Nation, which traces the tense but powerful entanglements of benevolence and liberalism in the development of the American nation-state.

Clemens has served terms as chair of both the political sociology and comparative historical sociology sections of the American Sociological Association, as a member of the Social Science Research Council Program on Philanthropy and the Third Sector, and as president of the Social Science History Association for 2012-13.

Alison LaCroix is the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law and an associate member of the Department of History.

LaCroix is a scholar of U.S. legal history specializing in constitutional law, federalism, and 18th- and 19th-century legal thought.

LaCroix’s second book is the prize-winning The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce, and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms. Supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, the book examines the transformation of U.S. constitutional law between the nation's founding and the Civil War. She is also the author of the prior The Ideological Origins of American Federalism.

In 2021, former President Joe Biden appointed her to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. She is also slated to deliver the address for this year’s UChicago Convocation ceremony on June 6.

UChicago team wins funding to develop AI weather forecasts for underserved areas

Casey Keel — 04/22/2026 - 11:05am

Millions of farmers around the world rely on rain for their crops, but don’t have access to accurate weather forecasts that could help them decide when to plant, when to harvest, what crops to plant, and when to use inputs like fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation.

A new project funded by the Laude Institute's inaugural Moonshots program—a research competition that asks how AI should be used to solve humanity's hardest problems—aims to change that.

The interdisciplinary group, led by researchers with the University of Chicago, is working to develop AI-based forecasting technology to support farmers and citizens around the world to plan agricultural decisions, public health decisions, and avoid extreme heat.

The hope is to deliver forecasts that combine AI weather and climate models, data from developing countries, and metrics that are explicitly designed to reflect farmer and public health concerns.

“AI is redefining what’s possible in modeling the Earth system. For example, it allows for the development of faster and cheaper weather forecasts that can be tailored to local needs, making them a game changer for developing countries on the frontlines of climate change,” said project member Pedram Hassanzadeh, UChicago Associate Professor of Geophysical Sciences.

“By bridging disciplines and moving the rapidly advancing theoretical work of AI and climate scientists beyond the lab—just two years after our team helped co-develop FourCastNet, the first pioneering global AI weather model—this project will deliver transformative tools to harness this AI-driven revolution and better prepare vulnerable communities for the climate realities they face today,” said Hassanzadeh, who directs the AICE: AI for Climate program, a collaborative initiative led by UChicago's Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth and the Data Science Institute.

Hassanzadeh is one of four UChicago scientists on the project, along with Michael Kremer, the University Professor in Economics and the Harris School of Public Policy and Nobel laureate and Ian Foster, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory; the project is led by Rebecca Willett, the Worah Family Professor of Statistics and Computer Science in the Wallman Society of Fellows and Faculty Director of AI in the Data Science Institute.

Providing ‘human-centered’ AI weather forecasts

The team is actively working on partnerships to reach hundreds of millions of additional beneficiaries. Through partnerships with the Asian Development Bank, the researchers have already initiated conversations with officials from four other countries in Asia.

Hassanzadeh’s team also runs a training program on AI-based weather forecasting for officials from Meteorological Offices, with five countries (Bangladesh, Chile, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria) participating in 2025 and a further five (Colombia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Senegal) scheduled to participate in 2026.

For the Laude seed grant, Foster, Hassanzadeh, Kremer, and Willett said they are developing software systems to make the forecasting and circulation of forecasts simple and user-friendly so that other countries can incorporate their own data.

The interdisciplinary team will develop new benchmarks that enable easy assessments of different AI forecasts across countries using their own local data, as well as AI tools that will yield more accurate forecasts and uncertainty estimates.

“Human-centered AI weather forecasts have the potential to save lives and boost prosperity by providing accurate, actionable information to millions in developing economies,” said Willett. “We are delighted by the Laude Foundation’s support of this effort to translate state-of-the-art AI methods to massive societal benefits for the people most exposed to climate risk.”

The Laude Institute backs computer science researchers turning breakthroughs into real-world impact from early-stage ideas to open-source projects and multi-year labs. Anchored by a $100 million pledge from founder Andy Konwinski, the co-creator of Apache Spark and co-founder of Databricks and Perplexity AI. Its Moonshots program selected eight teams to receive $250,000 seed grants, with each team competing for $10 million to fund a three-to-five-year lab to scale the open-source system globally.

—Adapted from an article first published by the Data Science Institute.

At UChicago event, Russian journalist Maria Pevchikh talks Kremlin investigations and Navalny’s legacy

Julian Veenstra-VanderWeele — 04/21/2026 - 12:59pm

For the past five years, journalist Maria Pevchikh has kept an eye on the political elites of her native Russia from a state of self-exile.

Pevchikh is the head of investigations at the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), a watchdog group created by the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. For this, she tracks the hidden wealth of the country’s oligarchs across foreign bank accounts, compounds and superyachts—work that has been difficult under the authoritarian rule of President Vladimir Putin.

“Investigations when the entire world is against you, this is our daily reality,” she said.

Pevchikh shared her work at an April 8 event organized by the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression in partnership with Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity at the UChicago Law School and the Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. Speaking with political scientist Scott Gehlbach, the Elise and Jack Lipsey Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy, Pevchikh was frank about the realities of her style of journalism under authoritarian rule.

She explained that amidst increasing censorship, repression of free speech and legal pressures, independent media was especially important to hold power to account.

“You didn’t hear any contradictory news for 26 years,” she said, urging the audience to stay “alert” when engaging with news media. “Never get used to it [the corruption]; never think that one story is too small.”

Investigating under censorship, after Navalny’s death

For Pevchikh and the FBK, just getting their journalistic work to an audience can be a challenge.

Since 2019, the Russian government has required all internet service providers to install hardware that allows the government to directly block content. Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, such restrictions have increased, with social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram completely blocked.

There are still ways for the population to access these sites, with virtual private networks (VPNs) allowing some Russian users to bypass the internet restrictions. Some sites like TikTok are intermittently accessible even without a VPN.

The FBK is able to get their content out through these windows of accessibility. Pevchikh described it as a “whack-a-mole” situation, with the foundation constantly adapting to shifts in censorship.

“Where are people getting their information from? You take the information to that source, to the people,” she said.

Social media repression within Russia has made the foundation’s work more difficult, but Pevchikh’s self-imposed exile has also created challenges.

In 2020, Pevchikh traveled to Siberia with Navalny for an investigation there. During his flight back to Moscow, Navalny fell ill. He was hospitalized immediately upon landing and medically evacuated for treatment in Germany—where medical officials announced he had been poisoned with a chemical nerve agent.

After months of treatment, Navalny returned to Russia and was arrested upon arrival. The FBK was declared an “extremist” organization and dissolved by the state; Navalny died in a Russian penal colony in 2024.

The events of the poisoning were depicted in the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny, for which Pevchikh was an executive producer. The dramatic turn brought worldwide attention to the FBK’s cause, but also fed Pevchikh’s fear. She left Russia on Navalny’s evacuation flight and never went back.

“What we lost with our exile was our ability to film inside Russia,” Pevchikh said.

In earlier investigations, the FBK had filmed the massive compounds of Russian elites with paragliders and drones. These visuals made the alleged corruption tangible.

“When people got to actually see, that’s when everything changed,” Pevchikh said.

But with the loss of direct access, the foundation has adapted by shifting its focus abroad, investigating the overseas assets of Russian elites.

Pevchikh worked to locate Putin’s superyacht, which she found docked in Italy when Russia first invaded Ukraine. Working on a tip from Pevchikh, Italian authorities seized the yacht and have held it ever since. Since her exile in 2020, Pevchikh and the FBK have been able to prompt the arrest of billions of dollars’ worth of assets.

Gehlbach asked Pevchikh to “connect the dots,” asking what motivates her to keep doing this work.

“I’m after some accountability and some justice,” she said, and “the only mechanism we have to do this is to cut them off from their money.”

Alison LaCroix named speaker for UChicago’s 2026 Convocation ceremony

04/21/2026 - 11:00am

Prof. Alison LaCroix has been named the speaker for the University of Chicago’s Convocation on June 6, as part of the campus-wide celebration of the Class of 2026.

A renowned scholar of U.S. legal history specializing in constitutional law, federalism, and 18th- and 19th-century legal thought, LaCroix is the Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the Law School. She is also an associate member of the Department of History and has been a member of the UChicago faculty since 2006.

“I’m tremendously honored to address the Class of 2026 at this year’s Convocation,” LaCroix said. “Gathering the University community to celebrate our graduates’ accomplishments and to send them forth on their next endeavors gives us a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how integral the life of the mind is to the values of American democracy.”

LaCroix is the author of The Ideological Origins of American Federalism (2010) and The Interbellum Constitution: Union, Commerce and Slavery in the Age of Federalisms (2024). The Interbellum Constitution, which examines a transformative yet overlooked period in U.S. history between the War of 1812 and the Civil War (1815 to 1861), was awarded two major book prizes: the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association and the SHEAR Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

LaCroix is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of American Constitutional History and the American Journal of Legal History and has served as a member of the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History.

In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed her to a bipartisan commission to examine possible reform to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2018.

Information about Convocation weekend

The 540th campus-wide Convocation celebration—the annual “calling together” of the UChicago community—will begin at 9:15 a.m. June 6 on the Main Quadrangles. Convocation weekend begins on June 5 with the College’s Class Day ceremony, which will honor graduating students and will include an address by Tony Award-winning playwright David Auburn, AB’91.

Ceremonies for the College and UChicago’s schools and divisions will take place from June 4-7. For more information and event schedules, visit the Convocation website.

UChicago physicist Clay Córdova awarded 2026 New Horizons Prize in Physics

04/20/2026 - 03:18pm

University of Chicago physicist Clay Córdova has been named a recipient of the 2026 New Horizons in Physics Prize for his work in quantum field theory.

He was recognized alongside three colleagues: Thomas Dumitrescu of UCLA, Shu-Heng Shao of MIT, and Yifan Wang of New York University.

The New Horizons prize, which is given to early-career scientists and mathematicians who have already made a substantial impact on their fields, includes an award of $100,000.

The prizes are part of a larger set awarded by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founding sponsors: Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. Sometimes referred to as the “Oscars of Science,” the Breakthrough Prizes are presented annually in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.

Córdova and his colleagues were cited for “generalizing the notion of symmetry in various ways, and for exploring the consequences of these generalized symmetries, in quantum field theory, particle physics, condensed matter physics, string theory, and quantum information theory.”

“I am very happy to receive this prize!” Córdova wrote. “It means a great deal to have this work recognized, because it grows out of deep questions about quantum field theory, symmetry, and phases of matter that I have been lucky to explore with my wonderful collaborators.

“Most of all, it encourages me to keep pursuing ambitious ideas at the frontier of theoretical physics.”

Córdova is a theoretical physicist focusing primarily on quantum field theory, a unifying framework for a broad array of physical phenomena. His research has involved aspects of particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity, as well as related topics in mathematics.

Córdova holds a PhD in physics from Harvard University. Prior to joining UChicago, he was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a Long-Term Member at the Institute for Advanced Study.

The collaboration that conducted the Muon g-2 experiment—led at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago—was also recognized this year with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The Muon g-2 experiment provided the world’s most precise measurement to date of the muon, one of the fundamental subatomic particles.

A history of breakthroughs

Breakthrough Prizes have previously been awarded to multiple University of Chicago-affiliated researchers.

These include mathematician Alex Eskin in 2019 for the “magic wand” theorem; physicist Craig Hogan, who received the Breakthrough Prize in 2015 for his work on the High-Z Supernova Search Team that helped prove that the universe is expanding faster and faster over time; several scientists in 2019 who were part of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration that created the first image of a black hole; Daniel Holz and Hsin-Yu Chen in 2016 for their work as part of the LIGO collaboration that made the first detection of gravitational waves; and in 2023, to two scientists who discovered a fundamental way that cells organize while teaching a course at the UChicago-affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory. UChicago scientists were also part of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, which was recognized in 2025.

The New Horizons Prize was awarded in 2025 to Ewain Gwynne for mathematical contributions in the field of conformal probability; in 2023 to Hannes Bernien and colleagues for developing methods to control individual atoms; in 2022 to mathematician Sebastian Hurtado-Salazar for proving the Zimmer conjecture; in 2019 to physicist Michael Levin for “incisive contributions to the understanding of topological states of matter and the relationships between them;” and in 2016 to mathematician André Neves for contributions to several areas of differential geometry.

Fermilab Muon g-2 experiment receives Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

04/20/2026 - 03:17pm

A tiny elementary particle called the muon has won a big prize: the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Researchers with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory—which is affiliated with the University of Chicago—are among the winners of this year’s Breakthrough Prize, one of the world’s most notable and prestigious scientific awards that celebrates new scientific discoveries.

The 2026 award in Fundamental Physics recognized three generations of the Muon g-2 experiment, which provided the world’s most precise measurement to date of the muon, one of the fundamental subatomic particles. The experiment began at CERN in the 1970s, shifted to Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 1990s and concluded at Fermilab with final publication in 2025.

“I’m proud of the role Fermilab played in the Muon g-2 experiment, which is set to stand as the most accurate measurement of the muon for years to come,” said Fermilab director Norbert Holtkamp. “Fermilab has a strong role as a collaborator and integrator, and this was demonstrated by our work with our colleagues at CERN, Brookhaven and institutions from around the world.”

The Breakthrough Prizes, sometimes called the “Oscars of Science,” recognize the world’s top scientists. The $3 million prize is being awarded to the hundreds of collaborators who contributed to publications reporting key results from CERN, Brookhaven and Fermilab.

Also awarded this year was UChicago physicist Clay Córdova, who won the New Horizons prize for pioneering work in quantum field theory.

Exploring the quantum realm

The three generations of Muon g-2 experiments were designed to measure the magnetic moment of the muon with ever-increasing precision, exploring the quantum realm where particles briefly appear and vanish—and where even tiny deviations could point to entirely new laws of nature outside of the current Standard Model of Particle Physics.

The latest and most precise measurement of the muon’s magnetic moment was announced in 2025 and was important because it provided a sensitive test of the Standard Model of particle physics.

Fermilab led the most recent stage of the experiment that reused a 50-foot-diameter superconducting magnetic storage ring from the Brookhaven National Laboratory experiment when it was transported on a land-and-sea journey in 2013 from Long Island, New York, to Fermilab in Illinois.

In 2021, the first result from the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab confirmed a two-decade-old measurement from Brookhaven, revealing a tantalizing tension with established theoretical predictions—while new calculations continue to refine what the Standard Model itself expects. The second run at Fermilab further improved the precision measurement. The third and final result in 2025 was in perfect agreement with the experiment’s previous results and proved to be the world’s most precise measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly.

The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki and have been sponsored by foundations established by them. Selection Committees composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates in each field choose the winners.

Fermilab is managed by the Fermi Forward Discovery Group for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science; Fermi Forward is a partnership of the University of Chicago and the University Research Association, with industrial subcontractors.

—Adapted from an article published by Fermilab.

Coming to campus this spring? Check out these exhibitions.

Tori Lee — 04/17/2026 - 01:50pm

Catching up with old friends during Alumni Weekend? Supporting your graduate during Convocation? Looking for a fun, free activity on a rainy afternoon? Whatever your reasons for coming to campus, a wealth of exhibitions at the University of Chicago has got you covered.

From African modernism to the colorful art of Alma Thomas to the intellectual life of Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, check out these exhibitions open this spring.

A Bestiary of Ancient Nubia

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures | 1155 E 58th St. | Open April 16 – August 16

Ancient Nubia, a region located along the Nile in what is today southern Egypt and northern Sudan, lived in symbiosis with animals. Companions of daily life, sources of artistic and religious inspiration, subjects of trade, familiar even in the afterlife, animals in the ancient world had their place at the top of society and power.

From the lion to the crocodile, from the ibis to the ibex, from cattle to insects, A Bestiary of Ancient Nubia presents a world-first panorama of animals in ancient Nubia from the A-Group culture to the medieval period (3800 B.C.E.–900 C.E.).

Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart

Smart Museum of Art | 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. | Open March 24 – July 5

In February 1999, UChicago Prof. Wu Hung opened his first exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art. The field-defining Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century—and many more exhibitions Wu curated in the ensuing years—forged new avenues for situating Chinese art within a broader global contemporary framework.

Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart reflects on the enduring adaptability of contemporary art from China as it continues to grow within and beyond cultural and academic institutions.

Bringing together artworks acquired by the Museum over the last three decades, archival materials, ephemera, and new work, Beyond Boundaries explores how artists navigate and challenge physical limitations across cultural, environmental and political terrains.

Black Culture in Chicago

Logan Center for the Arts, Cafe Logan | 915 E 60th St. | Open April 17 – July 30

Black Culture in Chicago, a photography exhibition by internationally renowned photographer Mark Joseph and director Ada Nivia López, began with a question: Who gets to define how a community is seen?

Chicago has been shaped by those who arrived carrying memory, culture, and hope. This collection stands in respect of the contributions of African Americans and their enduring legacy.

Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smart Museum of Art | 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. | Open March 24 – July 5

Alma Thomas (1891–1978) is a singular figure of twentieth-century American art. She developed her form of abstraction—characterized by the dazzling interplay of pattern and hue—late in life, after retiring from a long career as a schoolteacher. Her vibrant and rhythmic art transcended established genres, incorporating elements of gestural abstraction and color field painting and creating a style distinctly her own.

Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas draws on the extensive holdings of the artist’s paintings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and offers an intimate view of Thomas’s evolving practice during her most prolific period, from 1959 to 1978.

History on the Edges: Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Caribbean

Regenstein Library, Special Collections Research Center | Open April 20 – August 21 | Gallery hours: Weekdays, 9 a.m. – 4:45 p.m.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, professor emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, passed away in 2012 at the age of 62. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti into a family of professionals and intellectuals, Trouillot is best known for his magnum opus, Silencing the Past, which meditates on the question of power and the production of history in colonial archives, academic writing, and popular memory.

Through his personal archive of writings, manuscripts and ephemera, this exhibition traces Trouillot’s intellectual development alongside his status as a Haitian national exiled by the Duvalier dictatorship and an anthropologist who understood history to be shaped equally by peasants and professional historians.

Mike Cloud & Nyeema Morgan: Story Structure, Pt. 2

Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society | 5701 S. Woodlawn Avenue | Open April 7 – June 28

The Chicago-based artist couple Mike Cloud and Nyeema Morgan deploy starkly divergent aesthetics. Cloud’s work is steeped in effusive colors and symbols, while Morgan’s tends toward minimalism. Yet despite these formal differences, both artists share an interest in works that explore the complexity of communication.

This exhibition features a mixed-media installation continuing Morgan’s “Studies for Traps” series alongside Cloud’s signature multi-dimensional paintings and a jointly produced sound work.

Sightlines, Ghosts, and Other Stories of the Impossible

Arts Incubator | 301 E. Garfield Blvd. | Open March 26 – July 25 | Gallery hours: Thursday–Saturday, 1–5 p.m.

Jess Atieno’s (the 2023 Arts + Public Life Artist-in-Residence) latest exhibition considers the shifting legacy of African modernism through the afterlives of independence-era architecture.

Once positioned as markers of a newly imagined modern Africa, many Brutalist and modernist structures now exist in states of weathering and transformation, revealing modernism as unstable, incomplete and continually renegotiated.

In dialogue with Black diasporic histories across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, the work engages water, sound and circulation as spatial forces that complicate architectural permanence.

2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition: Too Much, Not Enough

Logan Center for the Arts | 915 E 60th St.

Part 1: Open May 1 – 16 | Part 2: Open May 22 – June 7

The University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts and Logan Center Exhibitions present the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition Too Much, Not Enough in two parts, featuring works (in Part 1) by Jef Biesinger, Faye Yingfei Liang, Olivia Isabel Rosato and Kiana Shahnia; (in Part 2) Otis Boat, Maya Janine D’Costa, el n.k. lee, Zihan Qiu and Hyeseul Song.