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UChicago scientists create interactive screens that can appear on demand

Miranda Redenbaugh — 07/16/2026 - 10:31am

Imagine reaching for a record or glancing at a map and seeing a display bloom from a small box, offering interactive guidance—and then vanishing moments later.

A new device, inspired by science fiction and designed by computer scientists at the University of Chicago, lets digital displays bloom from everyday objects and surfaces. The creators hope it’s a step towards creating touch interfaces only when they're needed, and helping technology fade seamlessly into daily life.

The device, named BloomBeacon, consists of a small box with a pair of arms atop it. One arm has LEDs that light up as a display, and the other arm is touch-sensitive; when the device whirs to life, the two arms spin and create an interactive screen where none previously existed. The arms are soft and can be touched while spinning.

The breakthrough comes from UChicago graduate student Willa Yang, supervised by Asst. Prof. Ken Nakagaki in the AxLab—a group known for blending technology seamlessly into everyday life and designing technology that adapts to users, not the other way around.

“Screens are a powerful medium for displaying digital information and supporting interaction, but we either need to carry them, as with phones and tablets, or dedicate space for them in the environment, which creates visual clutter and limits where interaction can happen,” Yang explained. “BloomBeacon blooms into a larger surface only when needed. This keeps our environments responsive without permanent screens or clutter.”

In a world crowded with digital screens, the scientists said they hope this flexible approach could reshape how we access information in homes, workplaces, and public spaces.

Blooming on demand

Inspired by flexible interfaces in science fiction, Yang and Nakagaki asked: what if screens could appear only when needed?

BloomBeacon delivers on this concept, blooming from a slim line atop a small device into a touch-responsive display.

In schools, libraries, and design offices, the scientists imagine BloomBeacon could turn materials like paper maps into dynamic surfaces, offering overlays such as weather or heat maps when context demands. It could also augment a speaker with album art and touch controls, or provide safety alerts at the edge of a shelf; the group demonstrated a use in which BloomBeacon detects when someone reaches for a bottle of chemicals without using safety gloves and displays an alert.

“This can allow everyday environments to become interactive without being permanently filled with screens,” Yang said. “The concept broadens the possibility of where interactive content can be placed and tangibly interacted with.”

‘People should be able to shape their environments’

As technology evolves, the group envisions that faster sensors and smarter algorithms could allow even more dynamic forms. Yang sees future versions collapsing a display down to a dot, ready to bloom when context demands.

“People should be able to shape their environments instead of adapting themselves to fixed technologies,” Yang said.

“When designing interactive devices, the part that excites me most is not only what a device itself can do, but how it should exist in our space, and how to make it effortless for people to deploy. Through that lens, even traditional devices can be reimagined. I hope to design devices that empower people to make their environments work for them on their own terms.”

—Adapted from an article first published by the Department of Computer Science.

Why we still care about the ‘Odyssey’

Tori Lee — 07/16/2026 - 10:09am

“Tell me the story of a complicated man,” opens Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey.

Odysseus, the epic’s hero and complicated man in question, is returning home from the Trojan War when he is waylaid by the gods. For 10 years, the king of Ithaca endures shipwrecks, enslavement, monsters and seduction to return home to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus.

“The Odyssey is a story of how hard it is to come home,” said Emily Austin, an associate professor of classics at the University of Chicago. “This is a supremely relatable human experience.”

Attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer, the epic has been retold, retranslated and readapted countless times. At UChicago, the Odyssey is a foundational text in the undergraduate Core curriculum.

On July 17, director Christopher Nolan’s sweeping, A-list-studded take on Odysseus’s journey home will be released in theaters. Even before its release, the film, shot on massive IMAX cameras, sparked an equally outsized internet backlash on everything from the armor to the dialog to the casting choices.

We spoke with UChicago’s Assoc. Prof. Emily Austin, an expert on Homer, Prof. Patrice Rankine, who studies the intersection of ancient Greco-Roman classics with contemporary issues of race, gender and politics, and the Divinity School’s Prof. Carolina López-Ruiz, a scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions, to understand why we remain so invested in this ancient tale and what this version might say about our current culture.

The following Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.

Why has the Odyssey persisted for nearly 3,000 years as a foundational text in the Western canon? What can we still learn from it?

Austin: The poem is not simply an adventure story, but asks us to really think about what it’s like to be away from home for 20 years—and then to come back.

When Odysseus finally returns, he has lost all his men, arguably through his own fault. His house is no longer in his control; he is at risk of losing his wife, his property, the life he once had as king of Ithaca. And in addition to the 10 years of trying to get home, Odysseus was at war for another 10 years before that.

The poem devotes half of its narrative to the process of Odysseus reintegrating, revealing himself little by little to his loved ones, testing them—and, in the case of his wife, being tested himself—and trying to reestablish his life.

Whether or not we’ve been at war, or in exile, or forced to move, we can relate to this longing for home, for belonging, and the difficulty of achieving it.

Why is Odysseus so compelling as a character and hero?

Austin: Odysseus is often described as “long-suffering” or “much enduring.” Although he has moments where he proves his excellence, the Odyssey also suggests that Odysseus is a different kind of hero.

He is different not only because he is clever and comes up with famous tricks to get him and his companions out of tight spots (the Trojan Horse being the prime example!).

But also, because he suffers a lot, for a long time.

It is telling that the Odyssey begins with Odysseus on Calypso’s island facing a choice between a luxurious, immortal life with the goddess and the continuation of a mortal life, with its suffering.

He chooses a mortal life.

How would people have experienced the poem when it was first composed? What is gained or lost when adapting it into a visual medium?

Rankine: These were so-called occasional poems, oral in composition. Some scholars speculate that their purpose was not only entertainment but also didactic.

We have to imagine the occasion of an epic performance, although common among the elite, for the average person significant. In the case of a major poet known across elite circles in the Mediterranean, as we imagine with a poet of Homer’s sophistication, his presence within your island, your community, your festival, would have been memorable.

What the cinematic medium gives us—and why Nolan undoubtedly would want to film this—is something like the scale and immersiveness that the epic must have had for early audiences. The aesthetic experience is entertainment, but I am certain that speculations about the ‘message’ in the movie will dominate the cultural discussions.

What does it mean, for example, to cast characters in the way that Nolan has?

That’s a great question. Nolan’s choice to cast non-Greek actors, for example, or Helen of Troy (the most beautiful woman in the world) as a Black woman sparked internet chatter and backlash. What might casting choices of a classical text—and the public’s reaction to them—say about contemporary culture?

Rankine: It’s a poorly guarded secret that the return to the classics is always as much about us as it is about the past.

It is no surprise that the internet backlash would inevitably center on race, ethnicity and sexuality. These are the battlefields of our contemporary culture wars, and we project those concerns onto antiquity.

Not only were previous Odysseys decidedly not Greek—Armand Asante was New York-born, of Irish and Italian descent—but we would have to question what it would mean to be Greek in the first place, a term which did not exist at the time of the Trojan War, and was only a vague possibility when the poem was first composed.

Antiquity often is a blank canvas for our projections—or if not entirely blank, certainly with enough space for us to cast ourselves.

Can we read the Odyssey as a religious text?

López-Ruiz: Though the Odyssey is still a very human-centered poem (the first word of the epic is andra or “man”), it is all driven by the will of the gods. Think about how Poseidon sets Odysseus back after he blinds the Cyclops, the god’s son, or how Athena transforms Odysseus so he can reenter his palace in disguise.

In the opening of the poem, Zeus himself says something to the effect of: People always blame the gods, but it is human folly that brings their demise when they knowingly or unknowingly transgress divine laws or cross the gods.

What challenges might a film face when depicting the stakes and norms of an ancient religion?

López-Ruiz: When you put these stories on screen, you have two choices.

Either you make the gods more theologically modern—aloof, abstract entities that characters interact with only by praying, cursing or performing some ritual. For instance, Ridley Scott's Troy (2004) followed this path, but it made the plot almost unrecognizable.

Or, you can go fully Homeric and show them as in the poems—involved, sometimes visible, quarreling among themselves and changing the plot in very specific ways. The risk here is that the gods appear so anthropomorphic that they seem less divine to our modern eyes.

I personally prefer this approach even if it requires more cultural translation. It has more magic, charm and better reflects the theology of the epics.

Chemists shrink gallium nitride, the material behind LED lighting, into nanocrystals

Louise Lerner — 07/15/2026 - 10:35am

Nanocrystals are so useful that they formed the basis of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But for all their usefulness, to date, scientists have only been able to make these microscopic crystals from a limited palette of materials.

A group of chemists with the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory has announced a way to make nanocrystals from a useful class of materials known as metal nitrides—a previously impossible task. Their study, published July 15 in Nature, opens new doors for electronics and other technologies, such as flexible lighting or medical implants.

“We were able to show how to make a series of nearly a dozen materials that could not be synthesized by traditional methods,” said Ruiming Lin, graduate student at UChicago and first author on the new paper.

Metal nitrides are widely used in technology and manufacturing today. For example, gallium nitride is used in nearly all modern lighting, from LED bulbs to laptop screens.

The ability to make nanocrystals out of such materials fundamentally increases what can be done with them. Beyond just rigid films, they could someday be blended into polymers, inkjet-printed, and integrated into fabrics or other flexible devices.

“This expands the boundaries of the field beyond what were previously fundamental constraints, and lays the foundation for the use of nitrides as nanomaterials,” said Dmitri Talapin, the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at UChicago, a scientist at Argonne and the senior author on the paper.

The right solution

Nanocrystals are just what they sound like—very tiny crystals, so small that millions to billions of them could fit on your fingernail. At this scale, materials can often have surprising and useful properties, such as creating bright light or boosting chemical reactions.

In theory, nanocrystals can be made from almost anything. But in practice, that versatility has been elusive.

Lin and other scientists with Talapin’s laboratory wanted to see if they could change that.

In particular, the group focused on metal nitrides. These are made when metals mix with nitrogen, and as a class, they are tough, biocompatible, and heat- and corrosion-resistant.

The resilience of metal nitrides makes them perfect for uses such as consumer electronics. But that same stability presented a problem for chemists trying to make nanocrystals out of them.

When crystals form, their ions must swap around a bit before settling down into their final configurations, like dance partners switching during a square dance. Metal nitrides, though, form extremely strong bonds—like tango dancers—so they are reluctant to change partners.

“If bonds cannot break during this process, that’s a death sentence for nanocrystals,” said Talapin. “Once you make an incorrect bond, everything goes south.”

The solution to the problem came in two parts, the team said.

First, the Talapin lab built on a previous discovery that using molten salts as the liquid in the recipe could stabilize the formation of nanocrystals. Then, experimenting further, they found a “sweet spot” of temperature and ammonia pressure conditions that allowed the metal-nitrogen bonds to detach and reattach more readily.

“This process is very unusual—it goes against every bit of common sense in the field,” said Talapin. “We had to entirely rethink the approach.”

Crystals with many uses

The team showed how to make nanocrystals not only out of gallium nitride, but a range of other related nitrides. These included titanium nitride, which is used in medical implants; niobium nitride, an industrially important superconductor; and molybdenum nitride, a common catalyst.

These materials are not only useful but relatively inexpensive. The team hopes the ability to make them into nanocrystals could expand their utility even further.

“I remember the first time I looked through the electron microscope and saw those crystals,” said Lin. “You always hope something you discovered will wind up in applications. I think there will be many uses.”

Other authors from UChicago included Ningxin Jiang, Wooje Cho, Zirui Zhou, Di Wang, Justin Ondry, Zehan Mi, James Cassidy, Alex Hinckle, Alexander Filatov and John S. Anderson.

The scientists used resources at the UChicago-based National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center; the UChicago Soft Matter Characterization Facility; and Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Citation: “Ammonia pressure controls colloidal metal nitride synthesis in molten salts.” Lin et al, Nature, July 15, 2026.

Funding: U.S. Department of Energy, Samsung QD Cluster Collaboration, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Department of Energy extends contract with UChicago Argonne, LLC

07/14/2026 - 11:00am

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced July 14 that it has renewed its management and operating contract for Argonne National Laboratory with UChicago Argonne, LLC, which manages Argonne for the DOE’s Office of Science.

The new five-year contract, which starts Oct. 1, 2026, will continue the productive partnership between the laboratory and the University of Chicago.

Since its founding in the wake of the Manhattan Project during World War II, Argonne has become a leader in innovative science and engineering that addresses pressing national problems—from medicine, to computing and AI, to advanced nuclear technologies and batteries.

“As a hub that fosters groundbreaking discovery, Argonne provides an essential service to the benefit of the individuals and institutions that comprise the broader scientific community,” said UChicago President Paul Alivisatos, who is the chairman of UChicago Argonne LLC’s board of governors. “I look forward to continuing this partnership and stewardship as together we enter the next era of discovery and impact.”

Under the current contract with UChicago Argonne LLC, which began in 2006, Argonne has expanded and modernized six DOE national user facilities, which are among the most important scientific resources in the world. Together these facilities support nearly 8,000 researchers each year from universities, industry, government and international institutions, and provide world-class capabilities in X-ray science, supercomputing, nanoscale research and materials science.

Argonne is home to the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the world's brightest synchrotron X-ray light source, which enables discoveries in public health, microelectronics, energy, manufacturing and national security.

Argonne was also an early pioneer in computing, having built its first computer in 1949, and has since become a national hub for open-science supercomputing and a leader in harnessing AI for scientific discovery. In 2025 the laboratory deployed Aurora, one of the world’s first exascale supercomputers, alongside a new generation of AI systems built to take on some of the nation's most complex scientific challenges.

“Argonne's mission has always been rooted in a simple but powerful idea: that the best science, pursued by exceptional people and guided by the public good, can change the world,” said Argonne National Laboratory Director Paul K. Kearns. “The strong partnership between the Department of Energy, the University of Chicago, and Argonne has given our researchers the mandate and the resources to prove that idea right—in laboratories, in communities, in industry and in the technologies that power everyday American life. We are enormously proud of that legacy and deeply committed to what comes next.”

Argonne remains at the forefront of nuclear energy innovation, building on eight decades of expertise in the development of next-generation nuclear reactor technologies and recycling of nuclear fuel. The laboratory is widely recognized for next-generation battery and energy storage innovation.

Argonne also is helping the U.S. advance critical quantum technologies and leads Q-NEXT, one of five national quantum research centers, renewed for a second five-year term in 2025. As a driving force in emerging technologies, Argonne strengthens the nation’s scientific and technological competitiveness.

Located in Lemont, Ill., Argonne generates an estimated $2.5 billion in annual U.S. economic impact. The lab employs some 3,800 people and includes 21 research divisions. Its researchers publish roughly 1,700 peer-reviewed articles and secure about 60 patents each year, and staff have earned 150 R&D 100 awards over the laboratory's history.

Court Theatre marks 10 years of ‘spotlighting’ Black playwrights

Tori Lee — 07/13/2026 - 12:19pm

Few know the work of playwright August Wilson quite like director Ron O.J. Parson.

In 2027, the longtime resident artist at the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre will complete Wilson’s famed “American Century Cycle” on the mainstage. The series of 10 plays—one for each decade of the 20th century—documents the breadth of Black life.

This summer, the venerable Chicago artist will step into the role of Wilson himself.

The Spotlight Reading Series, founded by Parson and director Aaron Mays in 2016, aims to resurface lesser-known and rarely produced work by primarily Black playwrights.

Over the past decade, the series has grown from play readings in community centers across the city into multi-day symposia with a dedicated following and robust slate of programming.

For its 10th anniversary, Court is celebrating the series with “A Century of Black Progress.” Ten events throughout August, including film screenings, archival workshops, book clubs and staged play readings, will nod to both the 100th anniversary of Black History Month and the imminent completion of the American Century Cycle with Joe Turner’s Come and Gone this winter.

On Aug. 12, Parson will read the role of August Wilson in his autobiographical play How I Learned What I Learned.

“This 10th anniversary series is an extension of Ron’s work to keep these plays alive, present and available to people,” said Kamilah Rashied, director of engagement at Court who now leads Spotlight. “Now, let’s take it to another level.”

All events are free and open to the public, though reservations are required.

‘People needed to hear them’

When Parson began the series with Mays, he reached back to the playwrights of his childhood: Ed Bullins, P. J. Gibson, Ntozake Shange, Ron Milner.

Their plays—experimental and bold—pushed against racist stereotypes and grappled with the complexity of the Black experience. This surge of art inspired by the struggles of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements is known as the Black Arts Movement.

Though the average theatergoer might recognize the names August Wilson or Lorainne Hansberry, many works by Black playwrights remain noticeably absent from American stages.

“Some of these old plays and playwrights from the ‘60s and ‘70s, a lot of people today don't remember them,” Parson said. “We thought about these plays that were Black classics that needed to be done; people needed to hear them.”

For Parson, who Rashied calls “a living library of plays,” the goal of the series was not only to resurface these classics, but to bring Court Theatre directly to the community.

Starting with James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie in 2016, the series brought professional actors and directors into Chicago neighborhoods. With scripts on stands, they read Joseph A. Walker’s The River Niger in an Englewood YMCA, Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind at the South Shore Cultural Center and Buffalo Hair by Carlyle Brown in Bronzeville.

Brown himself attended the reading.

“He came in for it because he hadn’t seen it in a while,” Parson said. “When the playwright wants to come out and be involved—can’t beat that.”

Some of Parson’s favorite moments from the past decade came from the excitement of older community members.

“They would get up and say: I remember when that came here; I remember when that was over at the Regal,” Parson said. “It just rejuvenated that room.”

‘A life all its own’

Though Rashied attended a prestigious drama program, the first time she’d ever heard of playwrights Pearl Cleage or Ntozake Shange was from her peers.

“I was furious,” she said. “I expected to have a well-rounded education, and I didn't.”

This lack of representation has been “a perpetual thorn” in her creative and professional life ever since. When Rashied overhauled Court’s community programming a few years ago, she decided to make Spotlight a cornerstone.

“For me, [the series] feels like the education I never got,” she said.

To better accommodate the series’ growing popularity—with guidance from its founders—Rashied expanded the series to an annual three-day summer symposium held in Hyde Park.

“Hosting symposia is what academics and art historians do to venerate, commemorate and discuss the significance of artists,” Rashied said. “Changing the series to a symposium was signaling that this Black intelligence needs to be canonized and taken as seriously as Shakespeare.”

This year’s 10th-anniversary festival will kick off on Aug. 7 with a film screening of Black films in partnership with UChicago's Film Studies Center.

In addition to Parson’s turn as Wilson, staged play readings will include “A Womanist Trilogy” of Black feminist plays: Color Struck (1925) by Zora Neale Hurston, A Black Woman Speaks (1950) by Beah Richards and She Talks to Beethoven (1989) by Adrienne Kennedy.

Rounding out the century will be a reading of the recently produced are you ready to smash white things? by Chicago playwright Ireon Roach, presented in partnership with Definition Theatre.

In partnership with Chicago Public Library, the festival will also host several events at local branches. At Harold Washington Library, participants can step into the Black Arts Movement with an exclusive peek into the archives of the Kuumba Theatre Company. At the Woodson Regional branch, participants can explore the Vivian G. Harsh collection and discuss Gwendolyn Brooks’s debut poetry collection, A Street in Bronzeville (1945). At the Blackstone Branch, they can join a book club discussion on Chicago’s theater and dance history.

The festival will culminate with an afternoon of roundtable discussions about Black authorship and placemaking in collaboration with UChicago’s Arts and Public Life.

As for the future, Rashied and Parson hope the plays highlighted by the series can eventually be produced as full-blown productions on Court’s mainstage. Though the series has steadily grown more popular and diverse, the team still hopes to reach new audience members, especially young people.

“For me, Spotlight feels like a family reunion, a little bit of a homecoming,” Rashied said. “It has a life all its own now, which was really the goal.”

Distant exoplanets may be hiding water beyond Webb Telescope’s reach, study finds

Louise Lerner — 07/13/2026 - 10:30am

The planets that appear most common in the universe could have a lot of water—but it could be hiding where telescopes can't detect it, according to a new study led by scientists with the University of Chicago.

Their study examines a vast, mysterious class of worlds known as mini- or sub-Neptunes, which are a little smaller than Neptune. They are the most common type of planet we have catalogued around the galaxy, yet they have no equivalent in our solar system, so scientists must build detailed simulations to try to understand what these planets actually look like.

According to the new analysis, these worlds may have more water than previously thought: water could sink deep inside the planets, where it can’t be seen by even the James Webb Space Telescope.

“It’s very possible these planets are hiding much more water than their atmospheres let on,” said Caroline Piaulet-Ghorayeb, UChicago postdoctoral researcher and the first author on the study.

“It’s an interesting question, both because water is so important for life as we know it, and because it signals we have to interpret the data coming in from new, powerful telescopes in a more nuanced way to really know what’s going on,” she said.

The study is accepted to The Astrophysical Journal.

A planetary puzzle

Most of the universe’s planets—and there are millions if not billions of them out there in our Mily Way galaxy—circle faraway stars, much as we do our sun. These stars far outshine the planets themselves, making such planets difficult to see directly, but scientists have learned to tease out clues about them.

For example, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can catalogue the molecules present on the planet by capturing the starlight that filters through the planet’s atmosphere as it crosses in front of its host star.

“The challenge is, how do we extrapolate from what’s in the atmosphere to what the surface is like?” said Piaulet-Ghorayeb.

The surprisingly large population of ‘mini-Neptune’ planets has been a mystery in particular, since we don’t have an easy comparison in our own solar system: these planets are too dense to be gas giants like Jupiter, but not dense enough to be a rocky planet like ours. They are likely some mix of rock, gas and water, but no one knows exactly how that mix plays out for each planet.

In the last few years, scientists’ working assumption has been that because these planets are warm, their molecules would be fairly evenly mixed, like a well-shaken cocktail. That would mean the readings from the atmosphere give a decent approximation of the molecules deeper inside.

But running the numbers, Piaulet-Ghorayeb and the team found that wasn’t the entire picture.

How to tell what planets are like

Planets are complicated. Even what we know about Earth still involves guesswork—we’ve never managed to drill down further than seven and a half miles, barely a scratch on the crust—and that’s when we’re standing on the planet itself.

So to try to understand what faraway planets actually look like, scientists must build simulations. These combine data from telescopes, our knowledge of planetary science, and the laws of chemistry and physics.

As a case study, the team used a planet known as TOI-270 d, which circles a star in the constellation Pictor. The Webb telescope had picked up readings in its atmosphere indicating the presence of hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide, which should be accompanied by abundant water, the scientists said.

But water behaves very differently under different conditions; it could be frozen, gaseous, liquid or even a supercritical fluid, a strange phase that water can reach at extremely high pressures.

The scientists looked more closely into the conditions under which hydrogen and water mix or separate, and found that the answer depends closely on the exact composition of the mix.

In cold atmospheres, or when water is very abundant as it is on TOI-270 d, for example, water could sink below the lighter hydrogen—where it is then hidden from the sight of telescopes.

With current techniques, we don’t yet have the capacity to confirm or rule out which category planet TOI-270 d falls into, explained study co-author Prof. Eliza Kempton; for now, these types of planets exist in a gray area.

The key ingredient for life

TOI-270 d and planets like it aren’t very likely to be friendly to Earthlings. If they have water, it would be under the immense pressures and temperatures of thick, heavy atmospheres.

But a better grasp of the physics and chemistry of these planets will boost our understanding of how planets form more generally—essential for any search for habitable worlds.

This is particularly true for the mechanisms that would produce and maintain water, which is a key ingredient for life as we know it.

Unfortunately, according to study co-author Assoc. Prof. Leslie Rogers, water is one of the more difficult molecules to pin down.

“Water has an intermediate density, so it could be mimicked with a mix of rock and gas,” she explained. “We’re trying to get any constraint we can for this problem.”

Citation: “A window for water-hydrogen demixing on warm metal-rich sub-Neptunes.” Piaulet-Ghorayeb et al, The Astrophysical Journal.

Funding: NASA, Brinson Foundation, Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Researchers build light-powered ‘artificial leaf’ for wireless medical implants

Emily Ayshford — 07/10/2026 - 09:24am

Plants convert light into energy efficiently through photosynthesis—an ability that scientists and engineers still struggle to match with electronic devices.

Recently, researchers have looked beyond traditional semiconductor materials to create devices using a promising class of materials called nanoplasmonics. These tiny metal structures can absorb and concentrate optical energy and generate energetic charge carriers.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Department of Chemistry developed a nanoplasmonic “leaf,” a wireless bioelectronic device that they used to stimulate nerves and pace heartbeats in an animal model.

The team also showed that their material could be used as a computer-like sensing platform, where users can interact with the screen using invisible light—a potentially secure way to transmit information.

“These materials are very unique and are different from other light-sensitive devices, like photovoltaics,” said Pengju Li, a former UChicago PME graduate student who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. “Through our design, we have increased these nanostructures’ ability to store energy, so now they can potentially be used as new forms of therapy and in new human-computer interfaces.”

The research, published in Nature Photonics, was led by the lab of UChicago chemistry Prof. Bozhi Tian and included researchers from across UChicago, Seoul National University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.

A new kind of bioelectronic

Current light-harvesting devices, such as solar cells, use semiconductor materials to convert sunlight into energy. But these materials have efficiency limits due to the laws of physics.

Nanoplasmonics could theoretically be more efficient. These materials are made from noble metals, such as gold. The metal is combined with titanium dioxide into tiny nanostructures—about 15 nanometers in size—that absorb light.

In these materials, light excites plasmons that decay into energetic electrons and holes. These electrons and holes, called hot carriers, allow researchers to manipulate electrical and chemical processes at the nano level. These structures essentially act as tiny light-powered energy converters, providing electrical energy without the need for wired power sources.

But researchers needed to understand how to design and build these materials to amplify the electrical current from them. For years, Li worked on this problem until he discovered a new idea: a gold nanoparticle surrounded by a hemisphere of titanium dioxide, bottomed by a gold film. The structure absorbs the light, and the gold film acts as a mirror that reflects and amplifies the energy within.

“If you don’t have that gold layer, the light just passes through,” said Yuze Zheng, a co-first author of the paper and a graduate student in the Tian lab. “But having the film amplifies the performance of the material to make it useful for devices.”

After creating the material in UChicago’s Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility, the team tested it in a rat model. They placed a patch of material on the heart and demonstrated that they could control the pacing of the heart by shining light onto it. They also attached it to the sciatic nerve; when light was shined onto the material, it stimulated the nerve—demonstrating a potential therapy for nerve pain.

The material has a performance level of milliamperes per square centimeter—a value that is considered very high for wireless systems. It is as high or higher than comparable semiconductor materials.

“We haven’t seen any other nanoplasmonic device like this that can achieve this sort of performance and perform these useful bio-interface applications,” said Guangqing Yang, another of Tian’s graduate students and a co-first author of the paper.

The future of sensing and stimulation devices

To demonstrate the other possibilities of this material, the team also developed an optosensing platform. Similar to a touch screen, this pixel-less platform responds to light instead of touch. Researchers interacted with the screen using a laser pointer, then used an AI program to reconstruct the patterns they had shone.

“A device like this could change the way people interact with computers,” Li said. “Instead of using touch, you can use light to input certain information. And the light can be invisible, which would improve security. AI can then be used to decode what you wrote. This opens up new directions for our material.”

Next, the team is developing a fully implantable device that could be used for biostimulation for a year or longer. They also hope to develop similar platforms for quantum-based sensors.

“What really makes research like this possible is a collaboration across different research areas,” Li said. “We work with biochemists and biophysicists, people who understand the quantum mechanics of these materials. That collaborative spirit is essential to PME, and it’s something that is really commendable.”

Citation: “Self-organized nanoplasmonic artificial leaf for hot-carrier bioelectronic interfaces.” Li et al. Nature Photonics, June 24, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-01949-5.

Funding: National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, US Army Research Office.

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

UChicago convenes leaders from across country to explore free expression, academic freedom

Ted Gregory — 07/07/2026 - 04:28pm

When the University of Chicago launched the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression in 2023, President Paul Alivisatos said it would be a place where “free expression genuinely serves the seeking of truths, through listening as well as sharing our own ideas.”

As part of its mission, the Chicago Forum created the Academic Freedom Institute, an annual event which invites administrators and academics to learn about topics related to free expression and academic freedom. The Chicago Forum recently hosted 56 attendees from across the country to UChicago to discuss these complex topics from their experiences at college and university campuses—and draw lessons from UChicago’s history of defending and upholding these important academic principles.

During the three-day gathering, participants heard from leaders from across the country as well as UChicago. They examined subjects such as the boundaries of academic freedom, institutional neutrality, current threats and actions against free expression, and cultivating a vibrant student culture of free expression.

“To have the chance to meet with people who are not just practitioners and working in universities across the country, but people from the University of Chicago, who are the established experts in this field and helped build this field, to get their take on some of the things we’re dealing with, was really helpful,” said Eric Johnson, senior advisor at the University of North Carolina System.

Attendees said they appreciated the opportunity to exchange diverse viewpoints openly.

“The community cultivated by the institute fostered open dialogue, critical thinking, intellectual curiosity and civility,” said Belinda Higgs Hyppolite, vice president in the Division of Access and Opportunity at the University of Oklahoma. “It created an environment where participants felt empowered to both challenge and support one another in productive and respectful ways.”

Leaders at the Chicago Forum said they were encouraged by the vigorous debate at this year’s gathering.

“People were really engaged with each other,” said Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the Chicago Forum and the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law, who spoke and moderated discussions at the event. “It was a good example of free expression and felt like we were living the principles we were trying to practice and promote.”

Leila Brammer, director of curriculum at the Chicago Forum and an organizer of the conference, said those kinds of conversations are the goal of the institute as well as the Chicago Forum. She also said the event was an important opportunity for the University to share its history of defending free expression and academic freedom.

“There is a sense of our role externally as a convener of conversations around these values that are at the very bedrock of our existence,” Brammer said, “and we take that role and mission seriously when we think about what we can offer externally to our colleagues across the country.”

The ‘struggle’ of free expression

The Academic Freedom Institute is a key initiative of the Chicago Forum’s mission to promote open discourse, building on UChicago’s core principles of free speech and academic freedom. Teams from participating universities and colleges create a self-report on structures for academic freedom at their campus, and develop plans for implementation after the workshop concludes.

Alivisatos opened the event by discussing UChicago’s longstanding commitment to free expression, which he traced to the founding of the University and William Rainey Harper, its first president. He talked about ongoing challenges in free expression, which he called a “good struggle” that is at the essence of colleges and universities.

Subsequent sessions explored issues around institutional neutrality and UChicago’s landmark 1967 Kalven Report; as well as the Chicago Principles on Free Expression, created in 2014 in response to attempts to limit free speech on campuses across the U.S.

One of the more wide-ranging discussions included Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at UChicago; and Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York University School of Law and senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The two discussed what Stone called the “extraordinarily ambiguous” wording of the First Amendment, how free speech and freedom of the press evolved over centuries, especially through landmark Supreme Court cases in the 1960s and ‘70s, as well as more recent assaults on academic freedom and free speech.

For participant Sonja Wentling, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and professor of history at Concordia College in Minnesota, the conference helped her appreciate the dedication an institution must have to free expression.

“Pronouncements alone will not protect or advance free inquiry and expression,” she said. “Those principles have to be rooted in a campus culture that actively sustains, models, and engages in robust conversation, and that requires an ongoing commitment.”

UChicago’s Kiphart Center helps faculty tackle global health, social development issues

Mallory Brabrand — 07/07/2026 - 02:00pm

Complex global problems require complex global solutions. They also necessitate collaboration, coordination, trials and funding. For faculty interested in approaching a global public health crisis from a new perspective, this means managing a whole host of factors across thousands of miles and international borders.

Since 2022, The Susan and Richard Kiphart Center for Global Health and Social Development has sought social solutions to public health’s biggest global challenges. The center leads educational programs for undergraduate and graduate students, engages in community outreach and funds faculty research projects that promote global health equity, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries.

Administered jointly between the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and the Biological Sciences Division, the Kiphart Center supports innovative projects by funding annual faculty research grants that put theoretical ideas into action.

Alan Zarychta, faculty director of the Kiphart Center since July 2025, believes the center is unique not only for its programming, but also for its cross-disciplinary collaboration.

“Kiphart has a real comparative advantage being at the University of Chicago, situated within this intellectual community,” Zarychta said. “There is a culture here of really just focusing on problems, on questions and pursuing whatever knowledge can be gathered to answer them.”

Seeding solutions

The Kiphart Center’s Fund for Research and Innovation in Global Health and Social Development research grants facilitate faculty research all over the world, including Tanzania, China and Uruguay. Each cycle, five to 10 projects ranging from behavioral social studies to ecology and beyond, are awarded up to $50,000. Though this amount isn’t always enough to support large-scale implementation, it is often enough to collect the initial data necessary to propel a study forward.

“We are trying to be a catalyst to help faculty do the work that they're already interested in doing,” Zarychta said.

Where other funding mechanisms value strictly disciplinary approaches, the Kiphart Center seeks imaginative proposals, since public health crises require out-of-the-box thinking.

“We want to encourage people to have multiple viewpoints, from the start of a project through its execution,” Zarychta said.

This approach is facilitated by a faculty advisory committee composed of faculty from a range of departments, including the Crown Family School and the Biological Sciences Division but also the Social Science Division, the Harris School of Public Policy and more. Erick Amick, who has been the executive director of the Kiphart Center since its inception, finds this board drives the grant program in selecting exciting and innovative projects.

“Because we’re an interdisciplinary center, we’re not driven exclusively by a single line of research,” he explained. “That enables us to see what's out there and be bold in selecting innovative projects to address complex issues.”

The faculty committee has also served over the years to ensure that while creative approaches are emphasized, the driving force behind the work is not lost.

“Our focus is the social determinants of health for vulnerable populations and communities around the world, so we can take a very expansive approach,” he said. “Having brought a truly interdisciplinary group of folks together to get ideas and think through challenges that we might encounter, we spend a lot of time speaking with the committee about setting priorities for the kinds of research that we want to fund because we get a broad range of proposals each application cycle.”

In 2023, Leyla Ismayilova, an associate professor in the Crown Family School, received a Kiphart Center research grant to fund pilot-testing for a program in Azerbaijan centered around economic interventions for youth as a means to reduce vulnerability to a range of adolescent risk behaviors, including school disengagement, delinquency, unsafe peer influences and substance use, and to promote positive financial and social habits.

Over her time at UChicago, Ismayilova has been involved in a range of global programs that provide support for faculty. Though there have historically been a variety of certificate programs that focus on global social development, the formation of the Kiphart Center formally established a hub of research and collaboration that faculty interested in global health can reach to.

For Ismayilova, whose larger studies are often funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Kiphart Center grant helped to fund initial testing that would be used to apply for other grants.

“Many studies require pilot data and that's the part that I think is not always easy to get,” she said. “That's where I think Kiphart’s seed grant program comes very much in handy.”

Ismayilova’s project took her to Azerbaijan where she collaborated with Aflatoun International, Bank Respublika and local community-based organizations to adapt an existing model premised on youth savings accounts that incentivize families to save toward education, housing or small business development. The intervention addresses challenges common to many low-resource communities across low- and middle-income countries, where adolescents from families facing economic insecurity often have limited educational and employment opportunities—circumstances that may increase young people’s risk of negative outcomes.

The adapted Aflatoun International curriculum introduced a 12-session social and financial skills course designed to build practical money-management skills while instilling new ideas about entrepreneurship, social responsibility, career pathways and future possibilities for youth.

This educational programming integrated with direct economic intervention not only begins the process of building strong entrepreneurial skills and saving habits for the participants, but also provides them with tangible resources that can be cashed out in the future as adolescents transition into adulthood. This could pay for vocational training, to purchase equipment or pursue other pathways toward economic independence.

Ismayilova is also investigating the impacts of the intervention on the children’s emotional wellbeing, recognizing the strain that family’s financial instability puts on even the youngest members of communities. Many of the children in the trial come from high-risk family backgrounds that expose them to stress, instability and exposure to risky environments, which can further compound the risk of problem behaviors, including substance use.

“Adolescents who are at risk of kind of behavioral problems often for financial reasons, cannot find their way of being integrated in the society and therefore can be at risk for substance use and other kinds of risky behaviors,” she explained. “This program introduces concepts of financial literacy from an early age, but it also focuses on emotional and social skills that are very important in the context of money so that they can be mentally prepared to face these kinds of issues.”

By adapting existing curriculum centered around building financial toolkits for youth, Ismayilova is hoping to find the best suited programming that uplifts youth to dream beyond their current situations. Ismayilova, along with her collaborators, hopes that such interventions will be adaptable to a host of global situations and be able to support youth as they progress through school and think about what's next.

“These adolescents often don't see any other opportunities for growth and development, so they don't see many options for their futures,” she explained. “Through this program, they have a chance to see that alternatives are available, even for them, and that you don't always need to get a university degree in order to have a successful or have manageable life.”

Working with 30 participants over a one-year period across two cities, Ismayilova also examined the effects of an urban and semi-urban setting on the efficacy of the program with the goal of figuring out how to best adapt the curriculum to each situation. With the research grant, Ismayilova was also able to host training sessions with teachers and school psychologists from 11 schools across Azerbaijan led by trainers from the Netherlands and the Teachers Academy Foundation in Turkey.

In line with the Kiphart Center’s mission, Ismayilova’s project seeks to test adaptable social solutions to global public health and social development challenges by creating pathways to opportunity, strengthening future aspirations and fostering hope among youth from low-resource families and communities—factors that may help improve long-term health trajectories and reduce vulnerability to behavioral risks.

Having completed the necessary pilot-testing and data collection of the program with the funds from the Kiphart Center faculty research grant, Isamyilova is now working on a larger-scale application of the program. This will test how support for savings accounts for younger children can build strong foundations for learning, developmental outcomes, future aspirations and longer-term psychosocial well-being.

As the Kiphart Center moves into its fifth year, they are looking forward to finding new ways to spark conversations around global health and social development, whether it be through new study abroad programs for students, symposia for researchers to present their findings or continuing outward-facing programming such as World Health Day.

“We have these complex challenges that cross health and social development in lower- and middle-income countries, and in a lot of cases, it's difficult to think about addressing them from a single disciplinary perspective,” Zarychta said. “The Kiphart Center is really an effort to bring biomedical, public health and social science perspectives together to help improve health and well-being in communities around the world.”

South Pole Telescope analysis releases new catalog of more than 7,000 galaxy clusters

Christina Nunez — 07/06/2026 - 11:45am

Researchers working with data from the South Pole Telescope have released a major catalog of galaxy clusters, giving scientists a powerful new tool for studying how the universe grew and changed over billions of years.

The catalog is based on five years of observations from the South Pole Telescope at the National Science Foundation Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, and involves a collaboration of researchers from institutions around the world, including the University of Chicago.

Using exceptionally sensitive measurements of the cosmic microwave background—the faint afterglow of the Big Bang—the team identified 8,892 possible galaxy clusters, and confirmed 7,190 of them using optical and infrared data.

Of those confirmed clusters, roughly 20% do not appear in any previous catalog. And for 67% of the sample—some 4,824 systems—this marks the first time the hot gas within these clusters has ever been detected, making the majority of the catalog a genuinely new window into the large-scale structure of the universe.

“Our analysis draws on the SPT-3G’s phenomenally deep cosmic microwave background data to open a new window onto the ancient universe,” said lead study author Lindsey Bleem, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory and senior associate at the UChicago Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. “It's a new milestone for cluster cosmology to have this catalog as a resource. It will be the core of many, many studies over the years to come.”

SPT-3G refers to the camera mounted on the telescope, which was upgraded in 2017 with 16,000 detectors built at Argonne. The sample in the newly published study reaches across about 4% of the sky, or 1,600 square degrees, and includes about 1,800 clusters that date back more than 7.8 billion years.

Galaxy clusters are enormous structures containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies, hot gas and large amounts of dark matter, all bound together by gravity. Because they are the largest gravitationally bound systems in the universe, they are useful for probing ideas about dark matter, dark energy and how cosmic structure formed over time.

While earlier surveys have scanned larger areas of sky, the new catalog is remarkable for its depth, showing more faint and distant clusters.

The team found the clusters by looking for distortions they cause in the cosmic microwave background, known as the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. As the cosmic microwave background light travels through a galaxy cluster, high-energy particles in the cluster alter the light, creating a subtle signal that can be detected in microwave observations. The Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect allows researchers to image the clusters as shadows on the backdrop of the cosmic microwave background.

“Building a catalog like this takes a lot of careful checking behind the scenes,” said Kayla Kornoelje, a UChicago graduate student working at Argonne, whose earlier research helped validate signals from a portion of the data featured in the catalog. “A big part of our work was making sure the detections are reliable so that this sample can be used with confidence in future cosmological studies.”

Probing cosmic structure formation

The work also showed that the survey is sensitive enough to study not only the clusters themselves, but also how conditions within them changed over time. The researchers found a strong increase in dust-related emission from cluster environments at earlier times in the universe, helping reveal how activity such as star formation evolved in and around these massive systems.

“With the SPT-3G cluster sample, we will probe the evolution of cosmic structure formation over the past 10 billion years,” said Sebastian Bocquet, senior staff scientist at the Ludwig Maximilian University Observatory in Munich, Germany—a member of the South Pole Telescsope collaboration.

Future work will focus on refining cluster mass measurements and using the catalog to test models of the universe. Upcoming surveys, including observations from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera at the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation-funded Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile and the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, are also expected to provide optical confirmation of even more distant galaxy clusters in the SPT-3G data sample.

The South Pole Telescope is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy and is operated by a collaboration led by UChicago. Optical data used to confirm the clusters came from the Dark Energy Survey, which is jointly supported by the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. More information on the collaboration and the funding for this project can be found here.

Authors on the paper from UChicago include CASE associate Amy Bender and Assoc. Prof. Clarence Chang; coauthors with Argonne include Giulia Campitiello, Florian Kéruzoré and Wei Quan, as well as Zhaodi Pan, PhD’20, a former Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellow.

Additional authors include:

Adam Anderson, CASE associate and Fermilab scientist; Melanie Archipley, postdoctoral researcher; Prof. Bradford Benson; Prof. John Carlstrom (joint appointment with Argonne); Paul Chichura, postdoctoral researcher; Aman Chokshi, former South Pole Telescope winterover; Ti-Lin Chou, former graduate student; Research Prof. Thomas Crawford; Karia Dibert, former graduate student; Kyra Fichman, graduate student; John Hood, postdoctoral researcher; Alec Hryciuk, former graduate student; Tanisha Jhaveri, graduate student; Yunyang Li, postdoctoral researcher; Emily Martsen, graduate student; Tyler Natoli, senior researcher; Yuuki Omori, research scientist; Alexander Pollak, former South Pole Telescope winterover; Research Asst. Prof. Alexandra Rahlin; Aidan Simpson, graduate student; Prof. Abigail Vieregg; and Asst. Prof. Jessica Zebrowski.

Citation: “Galaxy Clusters Selected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in 5 year data from the SPT-3G Main Survey.” Bleem et al.

—Adapted from an article by Argonne National Laboratory

Fossil fish with preserved brain sheds light on ‘bottom of the evolutionary tree’

Matt Wood — 07/02/2026 - 04:25pm

Over 300 million years ago, a minnow-sized fish died and fell to the bottom of the prehistoric swamp near what is now the village of Trawden, in northwest England.

The remains of this tiny fish—known as Trawdenia planti—became fossilized, embedding proof of its existence in a layer of soapstone sandwiched between coal seams in the Burnley Coalfield. By some combination of marine chemistry, mineral composition of the seafloor, timing and luck, not only was the bony skeleton of this fish preserved, but so too were the soft neural tissues of its brain.

The fossil was unearthed in a coal seam by Trawden more than a century ago, but its secrets would take modern imaging to reveal.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by paleontologists at the University of Chicago describes this extraordinary preservation of an early ray-finned fish brain. Using CT scans of the skull and preserved soft tissues, the researchers show how the brain fit snugly inside, unlike other fossil brains that appear too small for the interior brain case. This means the inside of fossilized skulls can serve as a reliable proxy for brain size and shape of such fishes even when brain tissues are not well preserved.

“Soft tissue preservation, in general, is not common in the fossil record, and usually what gets preserved are things like skin or muscles. It's quite rare for neural tissues to be preserved at all because they decay so quickly,” said Abigail Caron, PhD’25, lead author of the study. “So, the importance of this specimen is that we can now study brain evolution in similar fossils where we only have the bony parts or the infill.”

The bush at the bottom of the evolutionary tree

Ray-finned fishes, so called for their thin fins stretched between bony spines, make up nearly 99% of the more than 30,000 living species of fish, and about half of all modern vertebrates.

Scientists understand the origins of birds and modern tetrapods like mammals, reptiles and amphibians fairly well, but the early days of ray-finned fishes are “like a bush at the bottom of the evolutionary tree,” said Prof. Michael Coates, the chair of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at UChicago and senior author of the new study.

The dense thicket of fish species that proliferated after the end of the Devonian period have been difficult to relate to modern groups of fish. But the well-preserved brain of Trawdenia has distinct characteristics, including part of the cerebellum that wraps around the middle of the brain, that suggest a deep-time relationship to some modern fish.

“What we’re learning by looking at the shapes of the soft tissues is that it's not their relative sizes that matter; it's how they're packed together inside the skull,” Coates said. “We might be seeing the earliest radiation of fishes that nowadays are represented by paddlefish and sturgeons.”

From coal mine to CT scanner

This particular Trawdenia specimen was first discovered in 1888 and has a long, adventurous history. Coal miners used to collect fossils dug from mines around Lancashire as novelties, but geologists also studied them because the presence of plant fossils provided a means of mapping productive coal seams.

The rock nodule containing Trawdenia was split in two and ended up at a natural history museum in London as separate specimens, until Coates realized they belonged together.

Coates started studying the fossil in the 1990s, first describing its skeleton in detail in a 1999 paper, and later CT scanning it for a 2018 publication with Kristen Tietjen, a scientific illustrator who worked in Coates’ lab and is now at the University of Kansas, and a co-author on the new PNAS study. Caron continued that work for her Ph.D. thesis, applying more sophisticated imaging techniques and computational analyses to learn more about these ancient fish.

The new technology helped the researchers detect signatures of the outer and inner membranes of neural tissues filling the interior cavities of the brain case, including ventricle structures that helped circulate cerebrospinal fluid. 3D models of the skull created from the CT scans show that the brain filled the interior of the skull’s brain case.

Caron said that as imaging technology improves, it’s likely that researchers will be able to learn more about brains and nervous systems in these early fish, even when they aren’t as well preserved as Trawdenia’s—especially now that they know what they’re looking for.

“It's possible that we just didn't have the technology before to look for that kind of signature, but this kind of preservation also would only happen in very special circumstances,” she said.

“There are definitely a lot more specimens out there that have reasonably good brain case morphology than there are specimens with good soft tissue preservation. So, that really expands the data set that you can use to study brain evolution across these different fossils.”

—This article originally appeared on the Biological Sciences Division website.

Thirteen UChicago faculty members receive named, distinguished service professorships in July 2026

07/01/2026 - 11:55am

Thirteen members of the University of Chicago faculty have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships.

Profs. Frederic Chong, Christian Hansen, Augusta McMahon and Marcelo Nóbrega have been named distinguished service professorships; Profs. Megan Applewhite, Luís Bettencourt, Susan Burns, E. Summerson Carr, Henry Frisch, Linda Ginzel, Scott Oakes, Jiwoong Park and Ming-Te Wang have received named professorships.

Their appointments are effective July 1.

Biological Sciences Division

Megan Applewhite has been named the Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Professor in Honor of Mark Siegler in the Department of Surgery.

Applewhite is a board-certified surgeon who specializes in endocrine surgery, specifically focused on the thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal glands. She performs surgical procedures that involve operating on these glands to help manage a wide range of conditions, including thyroid cancer, benign thyroid disease, parathyroid disease and adrenal disease. In addition to her clinical work, Applewhite conducts research on the care of endocrine surgery patients, as well topics at the intersection of surgery and clinical medical ethics. In her role as the associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, she focuses on bioethics education and research ethics, including the challenges surrounding surgical informed consent.

Her work in clinical research, as well as ethics research, has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Surgery, Annals of Internal Medicine, American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, The American Journal of Bioethics and more. She is also dedicated teacher who has guided medical students as they embark on their medical careers and serves as a committed mentor for residents and fellows, inspiring and educating the next generation of health care professionals.

Luís Bettencourt has been named the Lorna Puttkammer Straus Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and the College.

Bettencourt’s research focuses on the theory and modeling of complex systems and the processes that underlie the structure and growth of cities. His work creates multidisciplinary theory and methods that integrate concepts from the natural and social sciences, based on network structures and dynamical processes of learning and adaptation. His research also explores new data and global contexts that allow for quantitative comparisons through time and space to advance our understanding of nature and society.

He collaborates with governments, non-governmental organizations and interdisciplinary researchers worldwide to co-produce new insights and transformative practices for sustainable development. He is a pioneer in the field of urban science and wrote one of its foundational textbooks. His work has contributed significantly to a new sense of excitement about our scientific understanding of cities and processes of development, unifying urban themes over space and time and leading to new insights across complex systems more generally.

Bettencourt is also associate faculty of the Department of Sociology and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the Vienna Complexity Science Hub.

Marcelo Nóbrega has been named the Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Human Genetics and the College.

Nóbrega was recently named chair of the Department of Human Genetics. He is a globally respected investigator whose work has deepened understanding of how noncoding regions of the genome influence gene regulation and human diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, asthma and preterm birth. By combining functional genomics, computational biology and experimental approaches, his research has provided important insights into how genetic variation contributes to complex traits. This work is helping to advance the field of precision medicine and expand opportunities for therapeutic innovation.

In addition to his scientific contributions, Nóbrega is a highly regarded mentor and collaborator who has strengthened interdisciplinary partnerships across the Biological Sciences Division and the University. He is deeply committed to fostering scientific curiosity, collaboration and the development of future leaders in genetics.

He has served as an associate dean for faculty affairs for basic science faculty in the Biological Sciences Division, where he helped lead efforts to promote faculty development, including orientation of new faculty, career development and skill building workshops on such topics as preparing for promotion, scientific writing, grantsmanship, trainee mentoring, leadership training and wellness. He has also served as the chair of the Committee on Genetics, Genomics and Systems Biology, along with several committees focused on recruitment, mentoring and training of graduate students and faculty.

Scott Oakes has been named the first Frank W. Fitch Professor in the Department of Pathology.

A pathologist and cell biologist, Oakes studies the signaling pathways that allow mammalian cells to sense, communicate and respond to intracellular stress and injury. His laboratory has made key discoveries into how these ancient stress-signaling pathways contribute to cancer, diabetes and other diseases, and has designed early therapeutics to control them.

He has a long history of training college students, Ph.D. students, MD/Ph.D. students, postdoctoral fellows and physician-scientists who have gone on to successful careers in biomedical research.

Oakes holds multiple leadership positions in the Biological Sciences Division. As the vice chair of research for the Department of Pathology, he has greatly expanded the Experimental Pathology section through the recruitment of pathologist-scientists. He co-leads the Molecular Mechanisms of Cancer Program at the UChicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is vice dean of clinical science research in the BSD and plays a central role in steering the research enterprise for the division, including the creation of the new Therapeutics Discovery Institute and Hyde Park Labs.

Oakes has won numerous awards for his research, including an HHMI Early Career Physician Scientist Award, American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award, Harrington Discovery Institute Scholar-Innovator Award, American Association for Cancer Research Award, Induction into the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Outstanding Investigator Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology.

Physical Sciences Division

Frederic Chong has been named the Seymour Goodman Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the College.

Chong's research focuses on the design of software and hardware architectures for practical quantum computing. He was the lead principal investigator for the EPiQC Project (Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing), a National Science Foundation Expedition in Computing from 2018-2024. Chong was a member of the National Quantum Advisory Committee from 2020-25, which advised the president on the National Quantum Initiative Program. In 2020, he co-founded Super.tech, a quantum software company, which was acquired by Infleqtion (formerly ColdQuanta) in 2022. In addition to his faculty position, Chong currently serves as chief scientist for quantum software at Infleqtion.

Prior to joining UChicago, Chong was a faculty member and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Davis, from 1997-2005. He was also a professor of computer science, director of computer engineering and director of the Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing at University of California, Santa Barbara, from 2005-2015.

He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. His awards include the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, 17 best paper awards, and both UChicago’s Quantrell Undergraduate Teaching Award and its Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award.

Henry Frisch has been named the Herman C. Bernick Family Professor in the Department of Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute and the College.

Frisch’s early work at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, with Nobel laureate Jim Cronin, resulted in successful searches for point-like substructure of the proton, later shown to be quarks, and for muons from short-lived heavy particles, later shown to contain the charm quark.

Frisch was one of the founding members of the Collider Detector at Fermilab Collaboration, where he concentrated on the trigger electronics and rapid analysis. He was co-editor of the design report, drafted the collaboration bylaws, and co-invented the “Godparent Review” process for detector sub-systems. He led the first precise measurements of the Z and W boson masses, and then searched for events that are highly suppressed in the standard model.

Later, Frisch focused on developing instrumentation for experiments that could be done on the UChicago campus. He and his students set direct limits on the flux of cosmic monopoles, and developed systems for precise time measurements for use in large-area applications in particle and nuclear physics and medical imaging; the work has resulted in 14 patents.

Frisch has served on the Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, on the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel of the Atomic Energy Commission, as divisional councilor of the American Physical Society, as an editor of Physical Review Letters and on the organizing committees of more than 30 conferences. At UChicago, he has served on the Committee of the College Council, as spokesman for the Committee of the Council of the Faculty Senate, and on the Presidential Search Committee of 2005.

He authored a 2025 textbook titled Honors Classical Mechanics: From Special Relativity to Newtonian Physics and has received UChicago’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Provost’s Teaching Award.

Jiwoong Park has been named the James Franck Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the College.

Park’s research focuses on the science and technology of precisely engineered nanomaterials. Among his laboratory’s main goals are building atomically thin integrated circuitry and exploring novel electrical, optical, thermal and quantum properties of two-dimensional nanomaterials. These may lead to the development of advanced devices such as highly efficient solar cells, ultrasensitive bolometric detectors, novel valleytronic devices and molecule-based transistors.

Park’s awards include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the David Turnbull Lectureship. He was named Scientist of the Year by the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has served as chair of the Department of Chemistry for the past three years.

Social Sciences Division

Susan Burns has been named the James Westfall Thompson Professor in the Departments of History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College.

A leading historian of early modern and modern Japanese history (1780s-1910s), Burns is especially known for her work in the history of medicine, law, gender and the body. She is the author of Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan (2003) and Kingdom of the Sick: Leprosy, Citizenship, and Japan (2019). Her third book, Mapping Medical Modernity: Urban Space and Public Health in Tokyo, 1868–1920 (2026), explores the history of medical modernization and public health in late-nineteenth- and early-20th-century Tokyo.

Burns also co-edited Gender and Law in the Japanese Imperium (2013/2014), has contributed numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and guest-edited a special issue of U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal on “Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Context of Modernity.” Her work has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the IIE Fulbright, the Japan Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She currently chairs the Department of History and has previously directed the Center on East Asian Studies.

Booth School of Business

Linda Ginzel has been named the Konstantin Sokolov Clinical Professor of Managerial Psychology.

Ginzel specializes in negotiation, managerial psychology, leadership and executive development. She is an award-winning educator and the author of the best-selling book Choosing Leadership.

She served on the faculty at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is a charter member of the Association for Psychological Science and a member of the Academy of Management.

Her teaching has been recognized with numerous honors across Booth’s programs, including the Faculty Excellence Award, the inaugural Global Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Award, the Phoenix Award, multiple Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Awards, the Emory Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching and the inaugural Master in Management Teaching Award from the Class of 2025.

Beyond the classroom, she is a prominent consumer and child-safety advocate. In 2000, President Bill Clinton presented her with the President’s Service Award in recognition of her work as cofounder of Kids In Danger, a nonprofit dedicated to improving children’s product safety. Linda also served on President Obama's Transition Team and on the board of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

Christian Hansen has been named the Wallace W. Booth Distinguished Service Professor of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied AI.

Hansen is the academic coordinator for Booth’s Sokolov Executive MBA Program and the faculty director of the CAIO program. He studies applied and theoretical econometrics and is co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics.

Hansen’s research has chiefly been in the areas of the use of high-dimensional statistical methods in economic applications, estimation of panel data models, inference using clustered standard errors, quantile regression and weak instruments. His most recent research has looked at the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence as an input to estimation of causal and policy effects.

Hansen’s published work appears in leading journals in economics and statistics including the American Economic Review, Annals of Statistics, Econometrica, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Review of Economics and Statistics and Review of Economic Studies. Hansen has been a Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow at Booth and a National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant recipient.

Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice

E. Summerson Carr has been named the Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, the Department of Anthropology, and the College.

An anthropologist who studies social work and the helping professions, Carr’s ethnographic research has shaped how we understand expertise, professional knowledge and language in institutions. Working at the intersection of sociocultural, linguistic and medical anthropology, her work has especially influenced the study of behavioral health and psychotherapeutic interventions.

Carr’s first book, Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety (2010), traces the cultural and clinical history of American ideas about addiction and sobriety. Her most recent monograph, Working the Difference: Science, Spirit and the Spread of Motivational Interviewing (2023), is an ethnographic study of the rise and spread of a prominent behavioral intervention. She is also the co-editor of the 2016 volume, Scale: Discourse and Dimensions of Social Life. Carr’s current project is a study of full-time “facility dogs” who are employed as full-time workers in human service settings.

Carr is the former president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, the premier scholarly organization in the field

Ming-Te Wang has been named the first Kersten Professor in the Wallman Society of Fellows.

Wang is the faculty director of the Kersten Institute for Urban Education. His research seeks to understand how young people learn, grow and thrive across the many settings that shape their lives, including families, schools, neighborhoods, peer networks and digital spaces. With a focus on diversity, opportunity and equity, his work examines how social and educational environments can either widen or reduce disparities in academic, socioemotional and health outcomes among children and adolescents.

A central feature of Wang’s scholarship is its commitment to research-practice partnerships. He works closely with schools and communities to ensure that research is not only rigorous, but also useful, responsive and actionable. Through these partnerships, his work helps translate developmental science into strategies that support student engagement, strengthen school and family contexts, and promote more equitable opportunities for historically marginalized youth.

Wang has published extensively in leading peer-reviewed journals across child development, education, psychology and health. Since 2020, he has been consistently ranked among the top 1% of highly cited interdisciplinary researchers in science and social science. His scholarship has received national and international awards and recognition for advancing understanding of youth development, educational equity and the conditions that help young people thrive.

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Augusta McMahon has been named the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor in the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, and the College.

McMahon, PhD’93, is an archaeologist who has excavated widely in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, and Yemen, including directing excavation projects at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in Syria and at Lagash in Iraq. She currently directs the ISAC excavations at the important 6th-1st millennium B.C.E. religious centre of Nippur in south Iraq. Her research focuses on late prehistoric and historic Mesopotamia, particularly issues of early cities and urban challenges, social stress and warfare, and sensory archaeology.

McMahon returned to Chicago in the autumn of 2022 after teaching in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge since 1995.

As America turns 250, how the Declaration of Independence endures

Andrew Haffner — 06/29/2026 - 04:17pm

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted a document introducing a new nation to the world, composed of 13 “free and independent states.”

This Declaration of Independence, read to crowds gathered in town squares across the colonies, announced the ideals “of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—words that 250 years later, make the Declaration one of history’s most quoted and enduring texts. But what did the Declaration mean to the colonists 250 years ago, and how has its meaning changed along with the nation?

To explore some of the biggest questions about the nation's founding, we turned to four University of Chicago scholars: Prof. John Mark Hansen, a political scientist who studies American democracy and participation; Prof. Alison L. LaCroix, a legal historian and constitutional law expert; Prof. Steven Pincus, a historian of Britain and its empire; and Prof. Eric Slauter, a scholar of early American literature and culture who is currently curating a Newberry Library exhibition on the Declaration.

In this edited Q&A, they examine what the Declaration meant to colonists in 1776—and how its meaning has changed as the nation grew.

When the Congress declared that “all men are created equal,” what did readers in 1776 understand that to mean? How does that differ from how we read it now?

Slauter: In 1776, the claim that “all men are created equal” was a philosophical premise to establish the right of revolution. For many today the words represent a foundational promise.

It took generations of Americans to bring these words to the center of our understanding of the Declaration of Independence and to transform a manifesto of secession into a charter of liberty, equality and rights, but that process started as soon as the Declaration hit the streets in 1776.

So, who noticed the equality claim? A few American Loyalists and British writers, who scoffed at the distance between the high-sounding pretensions of Congress’s theories and the practice of slavery. A writer in a London newspaper in September 1776 described the Declaration’s philosophy as utter “nonsense.” He lectured Congress on the meaning of the word “unalienable” and how out of place it was in the Declaration: “where there are Slaves,” he noted, “Liberty is alienated.”

More interesting is the reaction from a small number of abolitionists in the new nation. They asked: Could the Declaration of Independence truly mean what it said? And what did those “self-evident” truths promise the enslaved? Rev. William Gordon seems to have been the first to get those questions into print, in a newspaper in Boston in October 1776, pointing explicitly to the fact that Congress had appealed to “the Supreme Judge of the World” for the rectitude of their intentions.

Were Americans then “acting hypocritically”? Gordon was hardly alone in asking, and we believe that months earlier a young Black soldier named Lemuel Haynes placed the sentence that has since become a creed on an unpublished antislavery manuscript. The White minister was, however, the first to get a printer to emphasize those words with italics and invite readers to hear them differently: “all men are created equal.”

What kind of state did the Declaration's signers actually want when they broke from the British?

Pincus: The Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration wanted an activist state. They deplored the recent abandonment by Britain’s Tory governments of a developmental approach to their colonies.

Prior to 1760, the year of George III’s accession to the Crown, American colonists believed that Britain had sought to promote the development of its North American colonies and appreciated that they formed the most dynamic part of the imperial economy.

After 1760, however, Britain’s governments sought to decrease the massive and growing sovereign debt by shifting more of the tax burden onto the colonists. In particular, they placed constraints on North American trade, limited migration into the colonies and prevented the reorientation of the North American economy.

The Committee of Five members were furious that George III had vetoed a series of colonial acts aimed at restricting the slave trade. In their view, the persistence of the slave trade encouraged a colonial economy that would concentrate wealth in the hands of the large planter and tend toward oligarchy. They wanted a government that would actively promote liberty and prosperity for the majority of the population.

The Declaration isn't law—and yet many treat it as if it’s part of the Constitution. What is its legal status, and why has it remained so central to American constitutional argument?

LaCroix: The Declaration isn’t part of the U.S. Constitution as a formal matter, given that the Declaration was written in 1776, well before the Constitution was written in 1787.

But the Declaration was very much viewed by the American revolutionaries as a constitutional document in the broader sense of a framing agreement that would make day-to-day governance possible. In fact, at the same time that the Continental Congress appointed the committee that drafted the Declaration, it created two other committees: one to develop a plan for forming foreign alliances, and one to draw up “the form of a confederation” with the Articles of Confederation, which were America’s first crack at a constitution.

Since then, the Declaration has become one of America’s founding documents, a category that also includes the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), and perhaps also documents that predated the U.S. Constitution but were formative for its drafters, such as England’s Magna Carta (1215) and the English Bill of Rights (1689).

The Declaration was written to be circulated—printed, posted, read aloud. How did ordinary people actually encounter it in 1776?

Slauter: Congress voted on independence on July 2. Later that day, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first newspaper to report that Congress had declared the colonies “FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES.” This short revolutionary notice appeared on the back page of the paper, sitting beside an advertisement offering a reward for the recapture of a Black man named Ishmael who escaped his enslaver and declared himself free and independent.

On July 4, 1776, John Dunlap became the first person to set the phrase “all Men are created equal” in type. As some of the authors of the Declaration of Independence stood in his Philadelphia printshop, the Irish-born printer used sheets of Dutch paper to craft a broadside for distribution in America and Europe. He selected upper-case letters imported from Britain for the document’s most important sentence: “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”

But likely many more people would have heard rather than read the Declaration. Its text was first proclaimed publicly from the State House (now Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on July 8. On July 9, George Washington ordered it to be read to the army in New York “with an audible voice.”

Even before those public proclamations, on July 6, the text appeared for the first time in a newspaper. On July 8, Dunlap put it on the front page of his own newspaper. By Aug. 2 the text had appeared in over 30 newspapers across the new states. In nearly two-thirds of those the egalitarian words of the Declaration sat by notices advertising the sale of human beings or rewards for the return of those who had emancipated themselves.

The iconic text many picture when they think of the Declaration, the words written on animal skin, was not signed until early August, after the news had reached ordinary people across the new nation.

How did “the pursuit of happiness” end up in the Declaration? What did it mean to Jefferson's contemporaries—and what does it mean now?

Slauter: These words could be found in several well-known texts. A half-century earlier a young Benjamin Franklin even set that exact phrase in type in a book about natural religion, and we know that John Adams read that book and that Thomas Jefferson owned it.

Some commentators have simply assumed that Jefferson intended this phrase to be a revision of the last part of John Locke’s phrase “lives, liberties, and estates.” But in truth Jefferson was working from another text, the draft version of a declaration of rights for Virginia principally written by George Mason and already circulating in Philadelphia newspapers when Jefferson was drafting the Declaration.

Mason placed “pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety” alongside “the Means of Acquiring and Possessing Property” in his list of natural rights. The phrase thus spoke beyond property.

In Jefferson’s version, I’d say “pursuit of happiness” stands in the Declaration’s short enumeration of natural rights as a placeholder for other important freedoms.

This includes the individual right of freedom of conscience, and as a seed for the collective right of revolution: the right “to alter or to abolish” an old government and replace it with a new one that better secures “Safety and Happiness.”

Political parties as we know them didn't exist at the founding. How did they come about, and how did they reshape the system the founders built?

Hansen: Political divisions, James Madison wrote in Federalist 10, are “sown in the nature of man.”

Madison and the other designers of the Constitution tried everything they could to mitigate their effects. The “parties” that emerged within a decade were elite coalitions supporting and opposing President John Adams. There were also such factions during George Washington’s presidency, but it was not as divisive. These early coalitions weren’t parties as we think of them today, organizations that nominate and support slates of candidates for office.

That function emerged from supporters and opponents of President Andrew Jackson, his supporters becoming the Democratic Party and his opponents the National Republicans and shortly the Whigs. The first national nominating conventions chose candidates in the 1832 election.

The main reason for their appearance was the extension of suffrage beyond a narrow elite to include almost all adult White males, the first “mass suffrage” in the world, as noted above. Mass suffrage necessitated mass mobilization of voters, hence the organization of enduring organizations dedicated to electing their candidates.

Set against other events such as England’s Glorious Revolution or the French Revolution, what was distinctive about the American Revolution and its founding document? Why didn’t we see the reinstatement of monarchy in some form here?

Pincus: Revolutions in general come about when the old regime decides for whatever reason—geopolitical weakness, or comparative economic underdevelopment—to modernize the state. This makes it possible for their critics to agree on the need for reform but reject the specific proposals put forward by the government. The decision by the old regime to modernize left conservatives, those who would defend the old regime, with no place to turn. In the case of Britain in the late 18th century, George III and his Tory ministers had decided the best way to pay down the sovereign debt was to transform the imperial state into one that compelled the colonies to pay for the cost of wars that had been fought to protect the colonies.

This new desire to tax the colonies and restrict their foreign trade provoked uprisings across the empire—in Ireland, in South Asia, in Britain itself, as well as in North America. The patriots, as the opponents of this new Tory program for the imperial state were called, were victorious only in North America and in Ireland because the Tory government marshaled its resources to defend India and Britain.

Patriots across the empire wanted to limit the power of the Crown, insisting the king and his government needed to be constrained by laws. Because George III, in the view of the North American colonists, had broken through the norms that limited the power of the executive, they designed a government that would have more formal limits on that power. The president, or executive, that the Americans created was intended to be more formally delimited than the English king.

Meanwhile, patriots in Britain agitated for radical parliamentary reform. Patriots in Ireland insisted on legislative, judicial and political independence of the Irish Parliament.

The American Constitution’s creation of the presidency was of a piece with these reforms. What was distinctive about the American Revolution was not its corpus of ideas—these were shared by patriots across the British Empire—but rather the patriots’ victory against the Tory government of then-Prime Minister Frederick North. The American Revolution needs to be understood as part of a pan-imperial program for radical state reform in the form of limiting the power of the executive so as to create a government that would serve the interests of the people, understood as a mass public of consumers.

How did most Americans identify themselves when the country was founded—as citizens of individual states, or of the United States? How has that changed in the intervening years?

LaCroix: If we could go back in time to the 1760s and '70s in Boston or Charleston, we would find a lot of people referring to themselves as “British North Americans” and invoking the “rights of Englishmen”—especially when they were challenging, say, the power of Parliament to legislate for the colonies, rather than allowing the local colonial assemblies to regulate.

In the early 19th century, there was a lot of discussion of what American-ness meant, including many, many orations and essays on topics like “American literature” and “American government,” sometimes celebratory and sometimes a little anxious. Of course, state affiliation was always important; Jefferson, for example, put the law of states other than Virginia in the category of “Foreign Law” when cataloguing his library.

In the period between the Founding and the Civil War, how did Americans invoke the Declaration—and who got to claim it?

LaCroix: Different generations have emphasized different parts of the Declaration that seem responsive to the issues of their specific moment. In the beginning, the most important aspects of the Declaration were the “bill of particulars”—the colonists’ complaints against King George III—and the announcement that the U.S. was stepping onto the world stage as its own independent nation. In the early 19th century, the “all men are created equal” idea increasingly entered public discourse in the context of debates about democracy and extending the vote (to all White men, rather than only property holders), and the entrenchment and expansion of slavery.

In 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln called for Americans to embrace both the Declaration and the Constitution as the “political religion of the nation.” Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass invoked the Declaration’s equality principle to challenge slavery’s defenders, and to rebut proslavery uses of the Constitution. Most famously, in his Gettysburg Address of 1863, Lincoln used the Declaration as the starting point for American history in order to recommit his war-weary listeners to the nation’s dedication to “the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Scholars sometimes refer to the period after the Civil War as a “second founding” of the nation. How did the first founding compare to that second founding?

LaCroix: It’s important to remember that the whole category of “founding” can really only be applied after the fact, and that designating any period as a “founding” invites debate about when it began and ended. The three “Reconstruction amendments,” as the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are known, fundamentally reshaped American constitutional structure and rights. And they also changed the text of the Constitution itself, which is both important on its own terms and also obvious to anyone who reads the Constitution.

But as I argue in my book The Interbellum Constitution, Americans of the early 19th century, living between the first and second foundings, had their own distinct understanding of what the Constitution was and what the founding had meant, even though they didn’t change the literal text of the Constitution. So while I think both the 1770s-80s and the 1860s-70s count as “founding” moments, we shouldn’t assume that outside of those moments, everything just stayed the same—or that the only source of constitutional meaning is the text of the document.

Looking across 250 years, when did American participation in democracy surge—and what drew people in?

Hansen: There are many ways to participate in a democracy. From the outset, the First Amendment enumerated four essential “process rights.”

These are “freedom of speech [and] of the press” and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Much of the story of American democracy has been the exercise of rights other than the right to vote, particularly through the organization of associations: political parties, civic groups, lobbying groups, trade associations, labor unions, social movements and so forth.

Americans had a genius for coming together in private associations, Alexis de Tocqueville argued, calling it the “mother science” of democracy in America. And it was these rights that the American people used to extend access to the right we all identify as the sine qua non of democracy, the right to vote. The Constitution did not guarantee a right to vote, leaving it to the states to confer the franchise. It was closely limited in the first decades of the republic to property holders and taxpayers.

The restrictions fell away as new states and the original 13 competed for settlers and for the political support of the merchants, mechanics, farmers and laborers whose cooperation was essential to the development of the country. But the franchise was also hard-won by the efforts of associations dedicated to egalitarian principles, such as the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement and the women’s suffrage movement.

Competition may push AI firms to favor speed over safety, new study finds

06/29/2026 - 09:45am

As AI systems become increasingly powerful, policymakers around the world are grappling with a difficult question: How can society encourage innovation—and the now-plausible race to truly intelligent AI—while managing potentially catastrophic risks?

A new working paper by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Wioletta Dziuda of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy suggests the answer may depend as much on economics as on technology.

With co-author Mattias Polborn of Vanderbilt University, the researchers developed a model of competition among firms racing to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), systems that could perform a wide range of cognitive tasks at or beyond human levels.

Their analysis focuses on a central trade-off facing industry and policymakers: resources devoted to moving faster are resources that cannot be devoted to making advanced AI systems safer.

“We started by thinking about market structure,” said Bueno de Mesquita, who is dean and Sydney Stein Professor at Harris. “Should there be one firm? Should there be many firms? Eventually, the paper became more broadly about understanding the incentives driving safety and speed, and what policy levers governments might use to shape those incentives.”

The model begins with two assumptions. First, firms believe there is enormous value in being first to achieve AGI. Second, while AGI could generate tremendous benefits, many researchers and industry leaders also acknowledge the possibility, however uncertain, of catastrophic, existential outcomes if advanced systems are developed or deployed unsafely.

One of the paper's central findings is that a high degree of competition can make the race to AGI riskier. As more firms enter the market, each firm devotes a larger share of its resources toward speed and a smaller share toward safety. The result is faster development and a higher probability of harmful outcomes.

“The more firms you have, the riskier the race becomes as the firms try to outpace one another,” said Dziuda, an associate professor at Harris who also serves as deputy dean for faculty and research.

“Our model challenges the assumption that more competition necessarily produces better outcomes. While competition often benefits consumers and spurs innovation, we show that in a race where being first carries enormous rewards, competition can also create incentives to cut corners on safety.”

In effect, the paper describes a classic collective-action problem. Individual firms may prefer a slower and safer race, but competitive pressure makes it difficult for any one company to slow down on its own.

The researchers find that firms can sometimes benefit from credible commitments to slower, safer development. If one company can convincingly commit to investing more in safety and moving more cautiously, competitors should respond by slowing down as well. The result is a safer race overall—and one that can leave all participants better off.

In other words, being the firm that brings about catastrophe is bad for business, but the negative consequences affect everyone, whether your firm did it or not.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the model suggests there may be circumstances in which firms continue racing even when the expected value of achieving AGI has become negative.

“Why would they still race?” Dziuda asked. “Because other firms are racing. If a catastrophic outcome occurs, whether they're in the market or not, they're affected anyway. So, they may as well participate and hope to be the one that wins."

That dynamic helps explain a conundrum that has emerged in recent years in which some leaders of AI companies have publicly warned about the risks of advanced AI—including with calls for stronger regulation—while also investing billions of dollars to develop such technology.

“These findings offer a new way to think about public calls for AI regulation,” Bueno de Mesquita said. “Calls for industry-wide rules need not be interpreted solely as acts of public-minded restraint. In some circumstances, firms may support regulation because common constraints reduce pressure to sacrifice safety in order to keep pace with rivals.”

The paper examines several policy interventions that have become central to debates about AI governance, including restrictions on computing resources, industry consolidation, public investment and government participation in AI development.

The authors find the effects of these policies are often complex and interconnected.

For example, many proposals focus on limiting access to computing power or other key inputs. But the researchers’ model suggests resource restrictions are not always helpful. In some market situations, especially one where there are fewer players, providing firms with additional resources may actually improve safety outcomes by allowing developers to devote more resources to safety alongside capability development.

“We discovered that the answer isn't always to tax or restrict resources,” Dziuda explained, “it can be a combination of policies that seek to limit the number of competitors and then offer support so that they have room to pursue both safety and new capability.”

The working paper also finds merit in publicly supported AI development. A government-sponsored AI project designed to prioritize safety rather than speed could improve overall outcomes by providing a safer pathway to innovation while encouraging private competitors to behave more cautiously. Switzerland is now advancing a similar model.

—This article originally appeared on the Harris website.

UChicago-backed startup hub Third Coast Foundry marks grand opening in San Francisco

06/26/2026 - 11:49am

The University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation celebrated the official launch of the new San Francisco-based Third Coast Foundry innovation hub on June 23 with a ribbon cutting and Midwest Deep Tech Demo Day.

The events brought together founders, investors, sponsors and leaders from the eight partner universities behind the hub to celebrate the launch and showcase deep tech innovation emerging from the Midwest.

The ribbon cutting included leadership from each of the eight partner universities behind the facility, as well as San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.

“Universities bring incredible energy,” said Lurie. “They bring new ideas and new people into our city. They strengthen the culture of innovation that has defined San Francisco for generations, and that is exactly what we want more of here in downtown San Francisco.”

“Third Coast Foundry is about creating new opportunities for university-backed founders and researchers from the Midwest to build relationships with investors and partners in the Bay Area,” said Samir Mayekar, managing director of the Polsky Center. “Our universities have deep research expertise, talented founders, and strong startup ecosystems. This shared San Francisco presence gives them another pathway to connect and grow.”

Later that evening, the Midwest Deep Tech Demo Day brought 40 startups in front of Bay Area investors at the INSEAD San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation. The event drew more than 200 attendees, including founders, partners, sponsors and investors that collectively manage more than $110 billion in capital.

The startups that presented are backed by the Midwest universities that are part of Third Coast Foundry, including the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, The Ohio State University, Purdue University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Washington University in St. Louis. Their technologies ranged across advanced materials and manufacturing, cleantech and energy, semiconductors, robotics and spacetech, quantum, healthtech and medtech, AI and more, and included ventures founded by students, alumni, faculty and researchers.

“Tonight is the culmination of a shared effort to connect startups from the Midwest with the investors, customers, and networks that can help them scale,” said Mayekar to open the event.

Victoria “Vic” Woo of the INSEAD San Francisco Hub for Business Innovation welcomed attendees and emphasized the Midwest’s strength as a region known for building durable, high-growth companies.

“The Midwest is one of the most important regions in the U.S.,” Woo said. “It is filled with builders, entrepreneurs and operators who build things that last and scale—and that’s exactly what we need today.”

UChicago President Paul Alivisatos spoke to the investors in the room, saying the event reflected a rare level of cooperation across major research institutions.

“It’s not every day that eight universities come together like this,” he said. “We’ve come together with a deep spirit of cooperation because we know we can bring to the Bay Area a level of founder that you will be excited about.”

He also shared words of encouragement.

“To all the founders here, we’re so excited about what you’re here to pitch,” Alivisatos said. “I’ve been there myself. Sometimes you may need to give a few pitches, but we’re all behind you.”

Both events were part of a busy launch week of activities, giving a preview of what the new San Francisco hub is designed to make possible—connections between Midwest founders and the investors and partners needed to accelerate their growth.

“Third Coast Foundry was created to make these connections more consistent, more intentional, and more impactful,” said Mayekar. “These events show the strength of what our universities can do together—and the caliber of founders emerging from the Midwest.”

Learn more about the startups that presented. For more information about how to get involved in the next Midwest Deep Tech Demo Day, contact Amelia Salter.

—This article originally appeared on the Polsky Center website.

Distinctive brand names pay off for wine producers, study finds

Eric Berkman — 06/24/2026 - 10:25am

Thousands of wines in France’s Bordeaux region carry similar-sounding names, many adopted long before modern trademark law took effect.

That crowded field gave University of Chicago Law School Prof. Jonathan Masur a rare chance to test a long-held assumption that having a unique brand name provides value to an enterprise. That’s why trademark law exists and why companies spend so much money and expend so much effort protecting their brands.

However, there’s historically been very little empirical evidence to prove the underlying assumption, since intellectual property laws have been so successful at preventing the proliferation of brands with similar names. Because brand owners tend to take aggressive legal measures to protect their mark from a competitor seeking to poach it, there are few markets with a critical mass of similar-sounding brands.

This has made it difficult to study the impact of similar- and dissimilar-sounding brand names and generate a better understanding of the benefits that brand distinctiveness actually provides.

Until now, that is. In a paper published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Masur and his coauthors Christopher Buccafusco of Duke University and Ryan Whalen from the University of Hong Kong turned Bordeaux's tangle of overlapping names into a natural experiment—and found that having a name that stands out in the crowd indeed allows a wine producer to charge higher prices.

Their findings also indicate that this holds true for cheap, mid-price and highly expensive wines alike.

“This shows that there is real value to a brand in maintaining a linguistically dissimilar trademark,” said Masur, the John P. Wilson Professor of Law and a wine enthusiast. “It also implies that when we think about whether a trademark is dissimilar or not for purposes of trademark law, we should think not only about whether it’s similar to the nearest competitor, but how it compares to multiple other linguistically similar products.”

A fundamental question in trademark law

The paper stemmed from a prior research project in which Masur and his coauthors examined linguistic similarities among the names of wines in different regions. In comparing Bordeaux wines to other regions, they found that the names of Bordeaux wines overlapped linguistically to a much greater extent than did wine names from other areas.

For instance, more than 100 different wine-producing chateaux (wine estates) in the Bordeaux region use the word “croix” (cross) in their name, including three named “Châteaux la Croix,” two named “Château de La Croix,” and one named “Château Lacroix.” In fact, only about a quarter of producers have names that don’t include words found in the names of other producers. In some cases, these names date back hundreds of years and cannot be challenged under current trademark law.

Wondering what kind of effect this had on the marketplace, the authors sought to obtain data on wine prices and wine ratings and examine how linguistic similarity among wine names might impact their prices.

“This is a fundamental question in trademark law, and in marketing, because the point of trademarks is to allow customers to distinguish between different products,” Masur said. “So, what happens if products have very similar names and consumers can’t distinguish between them?”

A statistical test on the Bordeaux wine market

While they had the data on wine names, the authors faced the bigger challenge of obtaining data on wine prices and scores. Fortunately, WineSearcher.com, a search engine for wine purchasers, proved to be a valuable resource.

WineSearcher provided a dataset of Bordeaux wines that included the wine name, the producer’s name, the vintage, the initial sale price and the average rating by a professional critic on a 100-point scale. Pulling from this data, the authors generated a computational measure of linguistic similarity, based on the number of consecutive characters any given wine shared with the 10 other wines that had the most similar names.

Because the price of a wine depends substantially on its perceived quality—the scores it receives from critics—the authors sought to determine the effect of name distinctiveness on price while controlling for a wine’s quality.

In other words, among wines that possessed a given rating from critics, the question was whether wines with more distinctive names would command higher, lower, or equivalent prices to wines with more common names.

“Access to the data on prices, critic ratings and name similarities was critical in allowing us to perform this statistical test,” Masur noted.

Their results indicated that brand name distinctiveness among Bordeaux wines was indeed associated with a price premium: Wines with more distinct names commanded higher prices, even after controlling for the wines’ quality. Interestingly, this effect was true for both lower-rated (and cheaper) wines and higher-rated (and more expensive) wines, and everything in between.

While the authors’ empirical methods didn’t allow them to establish causation, the results provided at least suggestive evidence of a marketing advantage for wines with distinctive names.

“We didn’t expect that the positive relationship between distinctiveness and price would be consistent across the entire spectrum of quality,” Masur said. “We thought it was possible that lower-priced wines might benefit from having similar names to more highly-rated wines. But that turned out not to be the case. That finding was particularly surprising and particularly interesting.”

Legal implications

Masur and his coauthors suggested in their paper that these results have important implications for trademark law and policy. In particular, their evidence supported the idea that trademark congestion is harmful because brands with similarly named competitors tend to face a pricing penalty.

While trademark law already seeks to address this by making it harder for companies to register marks in “crowded fields” of linguistically similar brands, the authors said trademark law could go further by making it more difficult and expensive to register descriptive and suggestive marks that are more likely to have similarities to existing ones.

Additionally, the results suggested that courts should rethink the type of evidence used to prove infringement.

“We hope [the paper] causes people to think more comprehensively about linguistic congestion in an entire market,” Masur said.

—This article originally appeared on the UChicago Law website

Peter B. Littlewood, condensed matter physicist and internationally recognized leader, 1955–2026

Maureen Searcy — 06/23/2026 - 10:09am

Peter B. Littlewood, a distinguished condensed matter physicist and internationally recognized leader of research institutions, died June 15. Littlewood, the chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago and the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor in Physics and the James Franck Institute, was 71.

Littlewood’s research shed new light on the quantum behavior of superconductors, superfluids, semiconductors, and other collective phenomena; he also made contributions to optics, biophysics, and neuroscience.

But while he was a theoretical physicist by trade, Littlewood was highly interested in translating scientific discoveries into the real world and worked to do so—first at the famed Bell Laboratories, later as head of the Cavendish Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, and through multiple collaborations across disciplines throughout his career.

“Peter was a visionary scientist citizen, always looking to advance ambitious work,” said UChicago President Paul Alivisatos. “I got to know him first when he was director of Argonne as he championed the study of the brain and neurosciences with the advanced imaging and computational tools of the lab. In the years since, he relentlessly challenged us to look further, doing so with humor and high expectation.”

“Peter’s scientific depth was matched only by his extraordinary generosity and vibrant wit,” said longtime colleague Young-Kee Kim, the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor in Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute. “Known internationally for his transformative work on collective phenomena in condensed matter physics, his approach to science was deeply collaborative, always seeking to connect complex physics to real-world advancements. Over the years, his unwavering support—of me personally, as well as his profound commitment to our department, our students, and the community—left an unshakeable foundation.”

“Physics is what physicists do”

Born in 1955, Littlewood described growing up on a small farm near Shoreham in southeast England as an only child: “I spent most of my young life plowing, and it gives you a lot of time to think,” he said, and somewhere along the way he decided he wanted to become a scientist—and to go to Cambridge to do it. “I don't know why I even thought that because none of my family had ever been to university, but it turns out that if you just want to do things, sometimes they happen,” he said.

He earned a BA in natural sciences (physics) from the University of Cambridge in 1976. Littlewood spent a year at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar before returning to Cambridge to complete his PhD in physics in 1980, under the supervision of Volker Heine. After a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, he joined their technical staff and became head of their theoretical physics research group in 1992.

Littlewood described Bell Labs as a formative institution for science—an industrial lab that was conducting fundamental research. There he applied his physics knowledge toward theoretical engineering, working on projects including holographic data storage, the theory of optical fiber capacity, and the development of acousto-optic switches.

He returned to the University of Cambridge in 1997 as the director of the Theory of Condensed Matter group and later became head of the Cavendish Laboratory and Department of Physics.

Littlewood’s research included superconductivity and superfluids, strongly correlated electronic materials, collective dynamics of glasses, density waves in solids, and applications of materials for energy and sustainability.

With his growing interest in energy research, Littlewood moved to the Chicago area, joining Argonne National Laboratory in 2011 as Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences and Engineering and the University of Chicago as a part-time faculty member. He was a key contributor to the Institute for Molecular Engineering (now the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering), which was established that year in partnership with Argonne to address some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Littlewood went on to serve as Argonne’s Director from 2014 to 2016. During this time, he helped lead landmark projects in fields such as energy storage and high-performance computing. He also guided a multi-year lab modernization plan, bringing state-of-the-art research facilities to the Argonne campus. In addition, Littlewood strengthened collaboration between Argonne and UChicago, and he was instrumental in advancing the region’s innovation ecosystem.

“Peter was a brilliant scientist whose impact extended far beyond his research and leadership,” Argonne Laboratory Director Paul Kearns said. “He was deeply respected, admired, and beloved by colleagues across Argonne and the broader scientific community. I was fortunate to work closely with him and will always remember his curiosity, warmth, and commitment to helping others succeed. His legacy lives on in the laboratory he helped shape and in the many people he inspired.”

In 2017, Littlewood returned to UChicago as a full-time faculty member. In recent years, his research activities included the dynamics of non-equilibrium and driven systems, particularly those that exhibit transitions between different types of synchronization. This included quantum systems, such as lasers and light-matter condensates, as well as classical active matter such as flocks, and artificial neuronal systems.

“Peter was striking in the breadth of his knowledge and enthusiasm for all areas of physics, as well as its extensions to diverse areas of science and technology. His expertise was in condensed matter physics, the physics of collective phenomena—what are the emergent properties of systems with large numbers of components that underlie diverse behaviors—from magnetism to neural computation,” said colleague and collaborator Margaret Gardel, the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and PME, and director of the James Franck Institute and the Center for Living Systems.

“His style is one I attribute to the ‘Bell Labs’ model, where finding connections between disparate systems can lead to disruptive advances in understanding. For Peter, this meant working on problems in strongly driven quantum systems and neuronal signaling,” Gardel added. “His enthusiasm for finding these connections was infectious.”

Also a fellow of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and a member of the Center for Living Systems and the Neuroscience Institute, Littlewood defied categorization of his field. He believed that “physics is what physicists do.”

A uniting force

Littlewood had a reputation for inspiring people to collaborate in powerful and productive ways: “Peter was a very generous soul with a gift for bringing people, especially younger researchers, together to work on interdisciplinary projects,” said colleague and collaborator Vincenzo Vitelli, Professor in Physics and the James Franck Institute, and Scientific Director of the CNRS-UC International Research Center. “I cherish the work we did together on nonreciprocal systems as the most precious moment of my career, both scientifically and personally. In typical Peter style, it brings together ideas from quantum mechanics and neuroscience.”

“Peter was a hero in my field when I was a graduate student; when I joined the Physics faculty at UChicago, I was still a little intimidated by him. His warmth and dry humor melted that, and we became close colleagues and friends,” said Stephanie Palmer, Professor in Physics, Organismal Biology and Anatomy, and the Neuroscience Institute. “From number theory to native plants, he took delight in life in all its forms. It was an honor to hood his most recent PhD graduate on June 6, Cheyne Weis, and share the photos with him, with just the right ‘Peter-esque’ mix of bemusement and joy.”

In addition to his research and leadership positions, Littlewood served on advisory boards of several institutes, including the Simons Foundation, the Flatiron Institute, the Paul Scherer Institute, the Carnegie Institute for Science, the Max Planck Institutes at Halle and Hamburg, the London Centre for Nanotechnology, and the U.K.’s Faraday Institution, of which he was a founding executive chair. He became a visiting professor at University of St Andrews in 2022.

Littlewood wrote or co-authored over 270 publications and held seven patents. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and the World Academy of Sciences.

In October of 2025, Littlewood was awarded the Institute of Physics Gold Medal - Richard Glazebrook Medal and Prize in recognition for his exceptional leadership throughout his career.

“To lead and build research organizations is a privilege,” said Littlewood. “It’s a special joy to create institutional and societal impact.”

In addition to his scholarly accomplishments, Littlewood was a skilled pianist. He was passionate about classical music and spent much of his free time attending concerts and opera, as well as enjoying Chicago’s theater and art. He was also a keen traveler and loved attending conferences abroad and taking road trips.

Littlewood is survived by his wife Elizabeth and his children Chris and Sophie.

—Adapted from an article published by the Physical Sciences Division. Additional remembrances can be found from the Simons Foundation and Argonne National Laboratory.

Powerful seismic waves from Japan’s 2011 earthquake struck Earth’s core and bounced back up, moving island eastward

Louise Lerner — 06/18/2026 - 10:00pm

In 2011, Japan reeled from the effects of a devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake.

But unnoticed in the chaos resulting from the quake, its major aftershocks and the tsunami it caused, something strange happened. About 16 minutes after the earthquake, but before the aftershocks hit, Japan’s GPS stations registered an eastward lurch—across the entire country—but unconnected to any specific quake or aftershock.

A new analysis of data from the quake, led by University of Chicago geophysicist Sunyoung Park, suggests an extraordinary answer: The waves from the earthquake traveled downwards to the Earth’s core and then back up, displacing the tectonic plates further. This permanently moved the entire island of Japan eastward by up to six millimeters.

Seismologists knew that large waves from earthquakes can travel through the Earth and even reverberate off the core. But this is the first time the phenomenon has been identified to have caused tectonic plates to slip near the Earth’s surface.

“It’s striking because this is both an unprecedented length and area for a seismic event, and it is a previously unrecognized source of seismic hazard,” said Park.

The study is published in Science on June 18.

Traveling to the core and back

The 2011 earthquake, localized off the coast of the Tohoku region of Japan, ranks among the strongest ever recorded; the combination of quake and tsunami killed 20,000 people.

It was also one of the most thoroughly documented. Because Japan has a long history of earthquakes, the country has thousands of monitoring stations. Scientists immediately began poring over the data recorded to try to understand what happened, and hundreds of papers were published.

But years later, a strange wiggle in the data was still bothering Park, an assistant professor in the UChicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences.

After the quake itself, but before the major aftershocks, GPS had stations picked up a sudden shift eastward. This shift didn’t correlate with any of the aftershocks registered at the surface. But, strangely, it was registered at precisely the same time by stations across Japan.

“Most of the time, we would see an offset like this when there's actual earthquake happening. But here there was no known aftershock at this time, so we were quite curious,” Park said.

With collaborators Hiroo Kanamori of Caltech and Luis Rivera of the University of Strasbourg, Park began to rule out possible causes.

An undersea landslide didn’t fit the data—too localized. Same problem for a slow slide at one of the faults.

Instead, the team came to believe it was due to a wave of energy from the quake that had radiated downwards through the planet, struck the Earth’s outer core—which is a liquid metal alloy—and reverberated back up to the crust. There, it triggered another slip along two major plate boundaries around Japan.

The journey down and back up, about 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers) round-trip, took about 15 minutes.

Broadest seismic event on record

Even as we get better at understanding and predicting hurricanes or tornadoes, earthquakes have remained difficult to study. They occur infrequently—especially large quakes—and take place over a very large area. And of course, most of the action takes place deep below ground, or worse, under the ocean, where few measurements are possible.

Scientists, including Park, are coming up with new and innovative ways to study seismology. But the recent finding adds a wrinkle to our understanding of large quakes and tectonic plate movement.

Taking place over an area stretching about 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers), the newly identified event is the broadest seismic event ever recorded. It released about the same amount of energy as a 7.5 magnitude earthquake.

It is also the first on record to involve multiple major tectonic plate boundaries; it took place at both the intersection of the Pacific and Okhotsk plates, and the other between the Philippine Sea and Eurasian plates.

It wasn’t immediately noticed, the authors said, because seismic sensors are designed to look for the shorter, high-frequency signals that accompany more typical quakes felt on the surface.

“There was also a ton of noise going on in the aftermath of the 9.0 quake,” Park explained.

But by comparing both GPS and seismic data from stations across the country, they were able to tease out the signal.

Park thinks it’s likely that vigorous shaking from the original quake weakened the plate boundaries, which then made it easier for the later-arriving wave from the core to re-activate the area around the main quake, as well as trigger new movement along plate boundaries further away.

“This indicates that large earthquakes can influence the fault even after the main shaking is over,” Park said.

Overall, the scientists said, it’s clear we still have much more to understand about large quakes and tectonic plate behavior.

“This is adding an entirely new angle of seismic hazard we didn’t know about before,” Park said.

Citation: “ScS-triggered slip on megathrust interfaces after the 2011 MW 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake.” Park, Kanamori, and Rivera, Science, June 18, 2026.

Funding: Sloan Research Fellowship, University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology.

Nutrient in breast milk helps boosts immune system development in mice

Matt Wood — 06/18/2026 - 12:23pm

Trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), the most abundant trans fatty acid found in human breast milk, helps boost immune system development and has long-lasting effects on immune system health in mice, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago.

The study, published in Science, showed that nursing female mice fed a diet enriched with trans-vaccenic acid (TVA) passed the nutrient to their pups, leading to increased production of immune cells during early development. Genetic analyses also showed that TVA exposure during breastfeeding reprogrammed immune cells to improve responses to pathogens. Mice that were nursed on TVA-enriched milk responded faster to infections with viruses or common bacteria, even into adulthood.

“It’s common knowledge that breastfeeding is important for neonatal immune development and overall health, but breast milk is so complex that it seems almost impossible that one single molecule would be sufficient to change a baby’s immune development,” said Jing Chen, the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine at UChicago and one of the senior authors of the new study. “So it was very surprising to see that during this crucial stage of development, one nutrient derived from the mother’s diet and delivered through breastfeeding has such a tremendous effect.”

Long-term immune imprinting

Trans-vaccenic acid is a long-chain fatty acid found in meat and dairy products from grazing animals such as cows and sheep. The human and mouse body cannot produce TVA on its own, so it must be obtained through diet. In a 2023 study, Chen and his colleagues found that it improves the ability of CD8+ T cells to infiltrate tumors and kill cancer cells in adult mice. Because TVA is also abundant in human breast milk, the researchers wanted to understand how it might influence immune development early in life.

In a series of mouse experiments, the team fed nursing mothers a diet enriched with TVA. The nutrient was passed on to their pups through breast milk, where it promoted the development of a broader and more effective immune cell population, particularly CD4+ T cells that are important for adaptive immunity.

Working with Chuan He, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry and a senior author of the study, the researchers also conducted genetic analyses that revealed how increased TVA helped reprogram CD4+ T cells in the mice in a way that shifted their natural immune responses to favor fighting off microbes and other pathogens, instead of responding to antigens. Later experiments showed that when mice raised on TVA-enriched breast milk were exposed to the flu virus or Salmonella, they responded more quickly and had better survival rates than controls.

Interestingly, this advantage appeared only when mice were exposed to TVA during breastfeeding. Pups that were exposed to TVA via the mothers’ diet during pregnancy but were then nursed by a foster mother who was not on a TVA-rich diet did not have these improved responses to infection.

“We saw that only postnatal exposure to TVA through breastfeeding is important to train the neonatal T cells, and this can have long-lasting imprinting effects,” Chen said. “Even in adulthood, when we challenged the mice with influenza, the ones that were exposed to higher TVA levels during breastfeeding responded better when battling the infection.”

Chen also partnered with Erika Claud, the Stephen Family Professor of Pediatrics and director of the UChicago Center for the Science of Early Trajectories, who studies the biology of early-life development on long-term health and wellbeing. Claud’s work with the SET Center complements Chen’s longstanding interest in the impact of nutrition on immune system development and health outcomes. The research team worked with the Metabolomics Platform at the UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, led by Hardik Shah, to analyze TVA levels in breast milk and blood samples from human nursing mothers and infants from a biorepository maintained by the SET Center.

They found that higher TVA levels in breast milk were closely linked to higher TVA levels in infants’ blood. In preterm infants, levels of circulating TVA correlated with similar shifts in immune responses to those the researchers saw in mice. Higher TVA levels in human breast milk were also associated with reduced risk of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic inflammatory lung disease that affects premature infants with underdeveloped lungs and increased susceptibility to respiratory infection.

‘A question that has huge health impact’

Chen said working with partners like He, with his extensive experience with RNA sequencing and epigenetic analysis, and Claud, with her expertise on early infant development, was crucial to the success of this study. “This was truly ‘team science.’ It definitely reflects the great collaborative environment here at UChicago,” he said. “That's our strong suit, with three different departments working together to address a question that has huge health impact.”

With multiple studies now showing the immune benefits of TVA, particularly in the early-life period, Chen said he hopes there will be more research on the possibilities for supplementing diets with TVA during pregnancy and breastfeeding or adding it to infant formula. The team wants to investigate other fatty acids and nutrients found in breast milk to understand their benefits as well.

“There are close to 40 fatty acids in total in breast milk, along with hundreds of other components,” Chen said. “So, I think it's safe for us to say that we believe there could be additional fatty acids and nutrients that can do something similar.”

The study, “Maternal trans-vaccenic acid shapes neonatal T cell development and early-life immune imprinting,” was published June 18, 2026 in Science. It was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the Ludwig Center at UChicago, the Sigal Fellowship in Immuno-oncology, and the Harborview Foundation Gift Fund.

Additional authors include Hao Fan, Zhong Zheng, Kaitlyn Oliphant, Jiacheng Li, Cheng Wei Ju, Brandon Trandai, Jiayi Tu, Freya Q. Zhang, Rukang Zhang, Zhicheng Xie, Chunzhao Yin, Chufan Cai, Megan S. Kennedy, Tess McNeely, Candace Cham, Robert B. Hamanaka, Gökhan M. Mutlu and Eugene B. Chang from UChicago; Ryan Mack and Jiwang Zhang from Loyola University Chicago; Lei Dong from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Rui Su from the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope; Camilia R. Martin from Weill Cornell Medicine; Brian T. Layden from the University of Illinois Chicago; and Hongbo Chi from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

—This story was originally published on the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division.

Nadya Mason appointed as UChicago’s vice president for research

06/17/2026 - 04:30pm

Distinguished physicist Nadya Mason, dean of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, has been named UChicago’s vice president for research, President Paul Alivisatos announced. Her appointment is effective July 1.

In this role, Mason will serve as UChicago’s chief research officer, leading the University’s research partnership activity and the full range of critical support functions that enable faculty scholarship across campus and beyond.

The Robert J. Zimmer Professor of Molecular Engineering, Mason has served as dean of UChicago PME since joining the University in October 2023. The following fall, she was concurrently appointed to the role of interim vice president for science, innovation and partnerships. Her new appointment broadens the scope and impact of her previous interim role to benefit the University’s broader research mission.

“In her time as dean and interim vice president, Nadya has already helped advance major research partnerships and create new opportunities for faculty,” Alivisatos said. “Our scholarly community deserves a chief research officer whose vision matches their ambitions, and I am confident that Nadya will bring her expertise and dedication to bear toward elevating the whole of our research enterprise in the years to come.”

As dean, Mason led UChicago PME through a period of substantial growth and change. She oversaw a landmark partnership with IonQ, which included major investments in quantum infrastructure on campus, and the establishment of the IonQ Center for Engineering and Science.

The new building will principally house UChicago PME, including expanded space for the school’s materials, immunoengineering and quantum research.

During her tenure, she also secured a $21 million gift to establish a new field pioneered by the visionary Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine, and shepherded the development of 20,000 square feet of new laboratory space for UChicago PME faculty at the Hyde Park Labs complex, which also houses state-of-the-art space for the University’s Biological Sciences Division.

In her role as interim vice president, Mason deepened connectivity across the University’s research enterprise and strengthened external partnerships. That work will grow in her new role, which includes leadership of Science Strategy, Corporate Engagement, and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. It also will include research support in the Office of Research, including University Research Administration, Lab Safety, Research Integrity, the Research Computing Center and Research Development Support.

“Research is how universities transform ideas into knowledge and knowledge into impact, and stepping into this role means I have the honor of supporting that mission across the entire University,” Mason said. “Serving as dean of the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering has been a great privilege, and I look forward to partnering with scholars across campus to continue to build upon UChicago’s eminent research enterprise.”

Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker expect to name an interim dean of UChicago PME in the coming weeks, and will share more information about a formal search process that will launch in the fall.

Why do some Americans support tariffs, even when it costs them?

Sarah Kuta — 06/16/2026 - 10:15am

Tariffs tend to increase prices for consumers and provoke retaliation from trading partners.

Yet such protectionist taxes remain popular enough with some U.S. voters that the administration of President Donald Trump won office on a platform that prominently featured tariffs.

The desire for exclusivity may help explain why, according to economists Alex Imas and Heather Sarsons of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Working with the London School of Economics’ Kristóf Madarász, they found some Americans support protectionism, despite its costs to them, because they value limiting foreign consumers’ access to U.S. products.

The work builds on past research from Imas and Madarász, who find people derive value from consuming or possessing goods that others want but do not have, a motive they call mimetic dominance-seeking. This behavior, they argue, helps explain numerous market anomalies, from restaurants that intentionally limit their seating capacity to fashion brands that price their sneakers in the thousands.

Imas, Madarász and Sarsons wondered if the phenomenon might also be influencing international trade.

“A lot of nationalistic and protectionist policies have this flavor of making things more exclusive,” Imas said. “Particularly in the case of tariffs, it’s the market that becomes more exclusive.”

The researchers conducted two surveys in the U.S. to test their predictions. In both, they began by measuring respondents’ “exclusionary preferences” by asking them to bid on an item in scenarios in which either one, two or three other participants would be barred from purchasing it. Roughly 40% of respondents were classified as having exclusionary preferences based on their willingness to pay more as the degree of exclusion increased.

For the first survey, the researchers randomly assigned 1,500 respondents to one of two groups and asked them to rate their support for a tariff policy. One group evaluated a 15% tariff that would raise prices at home. The other group considered the same tariff but was also told the policy would boost domestic production and would not harm the targeted foreign country, which could find another trading partner.

The researchers randomly used Canada, China or Mexico as the target country. In addition, they asked all respondents to evaluate a stimulus policy that would result in the same price increase as the tariffs.

In the second survey, the researchers asked roughly 200 respondents to evaluate a broader set of exclusionary nationalist trade policies. For example, respondents shared how much they agreed with the statement: “We should buy from foreign countries only those products that we cannot obtain within our own country.”

A noneconomic motive for favoring tariffs

In a survey, respondents with exclusionary preferences—deriving satisfaction when others are excluded from goods or opportunities—were more likely to support a 15% tariff when they believed it would harm foreign consumers.

Respondents with and without exclusionary preferences were similarly supportive of tariffs that did not harm the targeted trading partner. But those with such preferences were about 12 percentage points more likely to support harmful tariffs than others were.

The same people were more likely than others to support tariffs that harmed trading partners than stimulus policies that caused the same price increases. They were also more likely to endorse policies aimed at preserving a consumption gap between the U.S. and China, even when those policies would raise prices for Americans. And they believed the U.S. should come out on top in trade relations.

These patterns held true across foreign trading partners and when accounting for party affiliation and zero-sum thinking, or the belief that one person’s gain must be another person’s loss. This suggests the differences stem from the desire for dominance, rather than animosity toward specific nations, political leanings or cognitive biases.

Taken together, the findings offer a new lens for understanding economic nationalism. Multiple forces shape voters’ preferences, but a preference for exclusion is a significant factor that deserves consideration, said Imas.

Anyone trying to understand the politics of tariffs “needs to think about more than just the utilitarian pleasure or pain people get—if that was the case, support for tariffs would make absolutely no sense,” he added.

“You have to think about social factors and preferences. It’s not just my utility; it’s also how I perceive my place in society and the world.”

—This article was originally published by the Chicago Booth Review.

What to read during summer 2026

06/16/2026 - 09:00am

Looking for your next summer read? Look no further.

UChicago News asked the 2026 winners of the Quantrell Awards and Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring Awards for their recommendations.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin and Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

I think these two books are excellent examples of the power of the mind. Human curiosity is forever drawn to two realms: the physical universe and the inner workings of the mind. Both are sources of profound beauty and endless fascination. These books showcase the beautiful products when we use the mind’s power to probe these mysteries and explore the relationship between the mind and the external world.

—Prof. Wei Wei

“Funes the Memorious” from Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

My recommendation is a short story, one I have sometimes used in class, “Funes the Memorious” from Jorge Luis Borges’s book Ficciones. The story is about a young farm worker who, after an accident, acquires a perfect memory. Borges shows us the astonishing things Funes can do with this gift, but also its strange uselessness. I will not spoil the story here, except to say that it beautifully illustrates an idea that is central to science in general, and to economics in particular: understanding the world is hindered by including every detail of it. Understanding means learning what to abstract from, what to simplify, and what to leave out.

—Prof. Fernando Alvarez

Intuition by Allegra Goodman

I love academic novels, and Allegra Goodman’s Intuition is better than most. It explores the ambitions and uncertainties of a cancer research lab, where the drive for success in the face of grant shortages yields both elation and suspicion when experiments yield promising results. My favorite part of Intuition is Goodman’s nuanced depiction of humanness among those working mostly behind the scenes of scientific discovery.

—Prof. Jeffrey Stackert

Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: A Great Scholar’s Hidden Past and his Protégé’s Unsolved Murder by Bruce Lincoln

Secrets, Lies, and Consequences is a murder mystery whose intrigue rivals that of an Agatha Christie novel. It is also a serious historical work that reflects soberly on the long shadows of the twentieth century’s worst political offenses. The book takes on the troubled past of the famed scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade, and his ties to one of the strangest events in the University of Chicago’s history: the assassination of Ioan Culianu in Swift Hall in 1991. Perhaps the only detail more surprising than Lincoln’s theory of the crime is the fact that he taught himself Romanian just so that he could write the book. It’s a captivating read!

—Prof. Jeffrey Stackert

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

This is a book so short you could devour it in the course of a single day. I have read it many times and keep coming back to it as the years go by. Set in the north of England more than a century ago, it tells the story of a Great War veteran who arrives in a small village to restore a medieval mural. Among many things, it is a book about the joys of skilled labor, the healing properties of great art, and the pleasures of unexpected love. The story is brief and simple yet deeply affecting in a manner that is difficult to describe, shot through with emotion and beauty, leavened with dry wit and a sense of the absurd. A Month in the Country is unfashionable in the best possible way; a poor fit for our brash, impatient and mendacious times. I keep copies of it on hand to give away to close friends and loved ones.

—Assoc. Prof. Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

Want more recs? See recommendations from previous years.

Public school closings in Chicago linked to more gun violence in nearby neighborhoods

Matt Wood — 06/15/2026 - 01:15pm

In 2013, Chicago Public Schools closed 49 elementary schools—the largest mass public school closure in U.S. history at the time.

A new study from researchers at the University of Chicago and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that in addition to limiting access to education, the school closures also led to increases in gun violence.

Using data from the Chicago Police Department, the researchers showed that neighborhoods near a school saw a 9.9 percent increase in shootings in the years following its closure, compared to similar neighborhoods. These neighborhoods, mostly on the city’s South and West sides, also experienced increases in weapons violations and firearm-related assaults and batteries.

While the city and school district said that the closed school buildings would be sold and repurposed as community centers, housing, or business ventures, 26 of the 49 buildings remained vacant as of 2023. Neighborhoods surrounding these long-vacant buildings saw slightly larger increases in shootings, at 10.2 percent.

“We wanted to look at the effects of these closures not just as creating vacant buildings, because schools represent so much more as a community institution across generations,” said Thomas Statchen, a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and lead author of the study, published in Social Science & Medicine.

“They are public spaces that are used for building community by hosting events after school and providing a gathering place,” Statchen said. “When that is lost, it can impact the way neighborhoods function in ways that, as we saw in this study, could lead to increased rates of firearm violence.”

Evictions, closings disrupt cohesion and resilience

Earlier this year, Statchen published a similar study in JAMA Network Open showing how increases in eviction rates in neighborhoods were associated with more shootings. That study drew from data collected by the Chicago Department of Public Health, showing that evictions disrupted the social cohesion and resilience of communities. Closing a school compounds this effect because of the vital role schools play in anchoring their neighborhoods.

“Closing a school is like evicting an entire community of social networks,” said Elizabeth Tung, Associate Professor of Medicine at UChicago and a co-author of both studies. “You're taking a place that was so meaningful to a group of people, and now they're no longer able to congregate there and build their lives around it.”

Because the Chicago school closings happened at the same time, they provided a unique opportunity to study the before-and-after effects on gun violence in the surrounding communities.

The researchers used Chicago Police Department data from 2010 to 2019 to understand the trends in gun violence leading up to the school closings in 2013. After controlling for differences between neighborhoods where schools were closed and where they were not, researchers estimated how those trends would have continued had the schools remained open, compared with actual crime data in the years following 2013.

The 2013 school closures primarily affected low-income students of color, particularly Black students. Other studies have shown that the education of students displaced from their schools suffered in the short term. The researchers said that the new analysis shows how the decision to close schools impacts students and their communities far beyond access to education.

“When officials decide to close schools, they must ensure a concrete reuse plan is co-developed and co-implemented with residents from the start,” said Mudia Uzzi, Bloomberg Assistant Professor of American Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and senior author of the new study.

“Most school closures happen in neighborhoods that are already under-resourced and long disenfranchised, so losing a school hits them twice as hard. Leaders have a responsibility to turn closed school buildings into spaces that strengthen community well-being, so every neighborhood has a fair chance to thrive,” Uzzi said.

Citation: “The 2013 Mass Public School Closure and Firearm Violence in Chicago: A Quasi-Experimental Difference-in-Differences Analysis,” Statchen et al, Social Science & Medicine, June 3, 2026.

Funding: Bloomberg American Health Initiative, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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

Scientists show how particle interactions control flow of soft materials—like ketchup

Amber Rose — 06/12/2026 - 10:45am

Sitting in a restaurant, you reach for the ketchup bottle, eyeing the basket of fries in front of you. You give the bottle a shake, then a tap. For a moment, nothing happens—the ketchup clings stubbornly to the glass. Then, all at once, it lets go and rushes out, sometimes in a steady stream, sometimes in a messy surge that threatens to flood the basket.

That awkward moment when ketchup stops behaving like a solid and suddenly starts flowing like a liquid is called “yielding.” Scientists see the same kind of behavior in many everyday and advanced materials, from toothpaste, paints and concrete to 3D-printing inks and electrodes used in next-generation batteries.

Yet what actually causes a material to hold its shape one moment and suddenly let go the next has been surprisingly hard to pin down, especially deep inside dense, opaque fluids where particle motion is difficult to see.

In a new study from researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, scientists used powerful X-ray beams and sophisticated computing resources to track “ketchup-like” materials as they yielded and flowed.

They found that tiny differences in how particles attract or repel each other can make a material flow smoothly, flow in uneven bands, or even stop flowing and turn solid again while under stress. The results could help engineers design better consumer products and more reliable manufacturing processes by precisely controlling when and how soft materials begin to flow.

“Yielding is the transition from solid-like behavior to liquid-like behavior,” explained Argonne assistant physicist Hongrui He. “By applying a force or stress, we are able to manipulate the state of matter. There is no perfectly solid or perfectly liquid material — everything is somewhere in between, and yielding is the shift from one to the other. Given enough time, even a mountain can behave like a very slow-moving fluid.”

A particular question

To study this transition, the team created two closely related materials, both made of tiny particles suspended in liquid. In one, the particles were prepared so they mostly repelled each other. In the other, the researchers added a salt solution that subtly altered the particles, so they were weakly attracted and tended to stick together.

At Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, the size, composition and surface charge of the samples were carefully characterized to ensure that any changes in flow behavior came from particle interactions rather than changes in the particles themselves.

When the samples were not under stress, they looked almost identical. The striking differences only appeared when the researchers applied force and watched how each material flowed.

“When the particles repel each other, the material changes shape in a very even way,” He said. “It flows in a predictable way, without forming large weak spots inside.”

The picture changed when the particles were made slightly attractive. In this case, the particles tended to clump together into dense regions, leaving behind pockets of empty space. Under stress, some parts of the material started to move while neighboring parts stayed stuck. The material split into “shear bands”—regions that flowed at different speeds.

“In the attractive system, parts of the material are almost frozen while other parts are flowing,” said Wei Chen, a chemist from Argonne and a CASE scientist at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. “That leads to more complex behavior, such as delayed yielding and resolidification, which you do not see in simple fluids.”

Delayed yielding occurs when a material resists flow for a while after a stress is applied and then suddenly begins to move. Resolidification is the opposite: the material flows for some time and then abruptly stops and behaves like a solid again, even though the applied stress has not changed. These effects help determine whether a material spreads smoothly in use or instead suddenly stiffens, leading to problems such as clogs in industrial processes.

To uncover what was happening inside the materials, the researchers combined standard rheology—measurements of how a material flows and changes under stress—with a technique called X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy at beamline 8-ID at the Advanced Photon Source, a powerful accelerator at Argonne.

While rheology measurements revealed how the whole sample responded, the spectroscopy, which uses a very bright X-ray beam, allowed the team to track tiny fluctuations in scattered X-ray signals that revealed how groups of particles move over time.

“The unique aspect of our approach is that we can measure the motion of the small particles and the overall material response at the same time,” Chen said. “That allows us to directly connect microscopic dynamics to macroscopic behavior in real time.”

Even with these tools, experiments alone cannot capture every detail of the particle motion. To fill in the picture, the team used computer simulations to model dense suspensions of many interacting particles under flow, making it possible to track the motion of individual particles. Simulations were performed on Bebop, a high-performance computing cluster at Argonne’s Laboratory Computing Resource Center.

“In experiments, the material is dense and opaque, so you can’t track every single particle,” said Heyi Liang, a research associate at Argonne and postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago. “With simulation, you can. We built the simplest model that still captures the most important parts, including delayed yielding and resolidification. We then used it to understand what is happening at the boundaries between flowing and non‑flowing regions.”

The simulations showed that weak junctions between shear bands—areas where particles are less well connected and have more room to move—play a key role. Under small stresses, these junctions hold, and the material creeps slowly. As stress continues, some junctions suddenly fail, allowing bands of particles to slip past each other, producing delayed yielding. As the system continues to evolve, new junctions form and lock the structure again, leading to resolidification.

By tying these microscopic events to measurable quantities from experiments, the team built a consistent picture that matched both.

“Our findings bridge the microscopic and macroscopic worlds of soft matter,” said one of the study’s coauthors, Juan de Pablo, New York University executive vice president for Global Science and Technology and executive dean of the Tandon School of Engineering. “By directly visualizing how particles interact and reorganize as these materials yield, we can now connect nanoscale dynamics to large-scale mechanical behavior. This gives us a framework to design and tune the flow properties of soft materials with unprecedented precision.”

Other contributors to this work include Miaoqi Chu, Zhang Jiang and Suresh Narayanan from Argonne, and Prof. Matthew Tirrell from Argonne and the University of Chicago.

Citation: “Bridging microscopic dynamics and rheology in the yielding of charged colloidal suspensions.” He et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oct. 17, 2025.

Funding: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences.

—Adapted from an article originally posted on the Argonne National Laboratory website.

Celebrate Juneteenth 2026 at UChicago in the community

06/10/2026 - 02:41pm

On June 19, 1865, “General Order No. 3” was read in Galveston, Texas, bringing news of freedom to enslaved people more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Now a federal holiday, Juneteenth marks the abolition of slavery in the United States.

The following events, supported by the University of Chicago 2026 Juneteenth Celebration funding program, recognize the holiday and offer a chance for meaningful reflection and community engagement.

Saturday, June 13

Knit and crochet with the Committed Knitters
11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Arts Lawn, 337 E. Garfield Blvd.

Spend the day with the Committed Knitters for a fun-filled knit fest that celebrates freedom, creativity and collective care—one stitch at a time. Free and open to seasoned stitchers or the crafting-curious. Complimentary snacks and drinks, special giveaways, free yarn and needles provided for all participants.

Friday, June 19

Celebrate at the DuSable Black History Museum
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
DuSable Museum and Education Center, 740 E. 56th Place

Join The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center for its annual Juneteenth celebration, the Museum’s largest community event of the year. Enjoy a day filled with live music, wellness activities, educational and cultural programming, family-friendly experiences, and shopping with local vendors.

Saturday, June 20

University of Chicago Service Center & Woodlawn Botanical Nature Center Community Gardening
Noon-6 p.m.
Woodlawn Botanical Nature Center, 63rd Street between Stony Island and Harper — the community garden space behind Hyde Park Academy High School

This multi-generational celebration includes a network of community gardeners, conservationists, public artists, and youth development practitioners for neighborhood and community engagement. This event includes gardening, arts and crafts, and performances by local artists. Anyone interested in attending or volunteering can contact Nick Currie (ncurrie@uchicago.edu).

Monday, June 22

Uncovering Legacies: Juneteenth and the Historical Impact of Slavery on Science and Society
Noon-1 p.m. (reception to follow)
Billings Auditorium, P-117, Mitchell Hospital, 5815 S. Maryland Ave.

The Office of Culture, Belonging and Community Care at UChicago Medicine is hosting a Juneteenth event centered on the intersection of history, science, and racial justice, featuring Spencer Annor-Ampofo, a distinguished researcher and journalist. Annor-Ampofo will present his research on the historical legacy of slavery in scientific practices. This event also includes a panel discussion and community engagement activities.

Thursday, June 25

Reimagining Space, Memory, and Liberation: A Juneteenth Program with Amanda Williams
Noon-1 p.m.
Gordon Center for Integrative Science, 3rd floor Atrium, 929 E. 57th St.

Join the UChicago Department of Radiology’s Diversity & Inclusion Council at a Juneteenth event featuring artist Amanda Williams, a Chicago-based visual artist, architect, MacArthur Fellow, and UChicago Laboratory Schools alumna. The event will consist of a keynote lecture, moderated discussion, and community dialogue centered on how histories of slavery, segregation, and systemic disinvestment continue to shape urban landscapes—particularly in Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods.

Saturday, June 27

Liberating Love: A Juneteenth Celebration of Black Sexual Health
11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The Village, 1525 E. 55th St., Suite 310

Hosted by the Center of HIV Elimination, this free, community-centered event will feature educational workshops and a body positivity movement session.

Monday, June 29

Chapbook Creation with the Logan Correctional Center
6-9 p.m.
Walls Turned Sideways, 2717 W. Madison St.

Join the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture for a Juneteenth celebration and distribution of writings from women at Logan Prison titled Untold Truths.

Sunday, July 12 to Sunday, August 2

Digital Storytelling Initiative: Film Screen & Discussion Series
1-4 p.m. every Sunday
Logan Center for the Arts, Rooms 201 and 901, 915 E 60th St.

Join the Digital Storytelling Institute at the Logan Center for the Arts, for a four-session Screening and Discussion series that supports and encourages open dialogue about Black independent filmmaking. Each session includes a free film screening and a discussion about the film in the context of viewers’ experiences, beliefs and tastes.

Saturday, July 25

Community Mural Project
1-4 p.m.
Logan Center for the Arts, Gidwitz Lobby, 915 E. 60th St.

Join the Logan Center for the Arts Community Mural Program for its opening event to celebrate the Community Mural Project. This event is the culmination of a four-part workshop where participants experience the power of painting a community mural together. Murals are a form of public art that cannot be separated from the communities in which they’re placed. They bring people together and showcase what makes communities unique, which is why this Community Mural Program is perfectly positioned to highlight and celebrate the expansive and diverse legacy of Juneteenth.