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Study gauges efficiency of Affordable Care Act at reducing uninsured rates

08/14/2026 - 11:09pm

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010—known now mostly as the ACA or Obamacare—dramatically expanded publicly supported health insurance coverage across the United States. But how efficiently did those gains translate into fewer people being uninsured?

A new paper by University of Chicago Research Professor Robert Kaestner with Anuj Gangopadhyaya of Loyola University Chicago examines that question by looking not only at whether more people gained coverage, but where that coverage came from.

The ACA’s efficiency, the authors find, depends heavily on who is being covered. For the lowest-income adults, the ACA’s coverage provisions translated almost directly into fewer uninsured people. As income rises, the relationship becomes weaker, and public support is more likely to replace existing employer-sponsored insurance rather than insure someone who previously lacked coverage.

“This research sheds light on a key aspect of the Affordable Care Act, which is the law’s ability to increase access to health insurance,” said Kaestner, an economist at the Harris School of Public Policy.

“While the law did reduce uninsured rates among the lowest-income adults, the research also shows that it shifted a significant number of people who already had health insurance to new plans under the ACA—certainly not the intent of the policymakers, who sought an efficient mechanism for lifting the number of insured people in the United States.”

Using data from the 2008-2024 American Community Survey, the authors study changes in uninsured rates, Medicaid and Marketplace coverage, and employer-sponsored insurance among adults ages 19 to 64. Their analysis focuses on how those relationships varied by income level, across states and over time.

Eligibility for public support is linked to the federal poverty level, an income measure used to determine eligibility for programs and subsidies. These include Medicaid and financial assistance for Marketplace health insurance plans.

The dollar amount changes by household size and is updated annually.

In 2026, for instance, the federal poverty level is $15,960 for an individual and $33,000 for a family of four.

People with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level qualify in all states for premium tax credits that lower monthly premiums for Marketplace plans. People with incomes up to almost 1.4 times the poverty level may qualify for Medicaid, if they live in a state that has expanded it.

People with incomes below the poverty level generally do not qualify for Marketplace savings. For adults in households below 150% of the federal poverty level, or $49,500 for a family of four, nearly all the increase in public coverage via the ACA came from people who had previously been uninsured.

That pattern changed at higher income levels. For adults with incomes between 151 and 400% of the federal poverty level, $132,000 for a family of four, each percentage point increase in public coverage was associated with about a 0.6 percentage point decrease in uninsured rates and about a 0.4 percentage point decrease in employer-sponsored insurance.

The authors describe this shift as “crowd-out”: public coverage did not always newly insure someone, but in some cases replaced coverage that had previously come through an employer.

The paper argues this distinction matters for evaluating the ACA’s efficiency. If public subsidies extend coverage to people who were uninsured, the policy directly reduces the uninsured rate. But if publicly supported coverage replaces employer-sponsored insurance, the number of uninsured people does not fall—instead, the payer simply changes.

The authors find a clear income gradient. Among adults below 150% of the federal poverty level, public coverage gains translated almost directly into fewer uninsured people. But among those with incomes above 250% of the federal poverty level, the tradeoff was closer to 1.5 people receiving publicly supported coverage for every one-person reduction in the uninsured rate.

The paper also finds that crowd-out was larger among groups more likely to have employer-sponsored insurance before the ACA, including parents and married adults. For parents and married adults with incomes between 250 and 500% of the federal poverty level, the authors estimate the ACA supported approximately three people for each newly insured person.

“This finding gets at the central question of policy efficiency,” Kaestner said. “The government was often subsidizing a change in who paid for coverage, rather than newly insuring someone who otherwise would have gone without.”

The study’s broader approach is important, the authors argue, because much of the existing research on the ACA has focused primarily on Medicaid expansion. By contrast, the authors estimate the total effect of the ACA’s major coverage provisions, including both Medicaid expansion and Marketplace coverage.

That broader view changes the interpretation of crowd-out.

Looking only at Medicaid expansion can overstate crowd-out among low-income adults and understate crowd-out among higher-income adults. Among higher-income households, the authors find that much of the estimated shift away from employer-sponsored insurance comes from Marketplace coverage rather than Medicaid expansion.

Some states did not expand Medicaid. The authors argue that analyses focused only on the difference between expansion and non-expansion states miss important parts of the ACA’s overall impact.

The paper shows the ACA affected both expansion and non-expansion states. Medicaid expansion states saw large increases in Medicaid coverage. But non-expansion states also experienced meaningful coverage gains through the Marketplace, along with substantial reductions in uninsured rates compared with pre-ACA levels.

The timing of coverage changes also matters.

The authors identify a weakening relationship after 2021 between increases in public coverage and decreases in uninsured rates, a period that coincided with changes to Medicaid eligibility rules during the COVID-19 pandemic and enhanced Marketplace tax credits under the American Rescue Plan Act. Their results suggest more generous subsidies and eligibility rules may have increased public coverage in ways that did not always produce proportional reductions in the uninsured rate.

If the goal is to reduce the number of uninsured people as efficiently as possible, the authors find that policies targeted at low-income populations are likely to produce larger reductions per public dollar spent. They point specifically to expanding coverage among low-income adults in non-expansion states as a more efficient approach than subsidizing coverage for higher-income groups.

Conversely, the paper suggests that subsidies aimed at households above 250% of the federal poverty level are less efficient at reducing uninsured rates, because a larger share of public coverage gains among those groups appears to come from people moving out of employer-sponsored insurance.

The authors set the efficiency question against a clear gain in enrollment.

“The ACA dramatically expanded publicly supported insurance coverage across all states,” the authors conclude.

—This article originally appeared on the Harris website.

UChicago psychology study points to new potential for treating eating disorders

Sarah Steimer — 08/12/2026 - 02:11pm

Individuals with anorexia nervosa restrict food intake, sometimes to the point of starvation. And yet, a new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience finds the cognitive machinery they use to make decisions about what to eat is remarkably similar to that of healthy eaters.

Instead, the difference lies in the brain regions that supply evidence to the decision, the University of Chicago researchers found. Participants without anorexia showed hippocampal activation as they weighed food choices, whereas those with anorexia recruited the striatum too.

The findings suggest that those with anorexia rely on different inputs that lead to restrictive food choices, rather than a maladaptive decision process per se. UChicago Asst. Prof. Akram Bakkour, who was on the research team, explained the significance of the brain regions and said the findings could help target new eating disorder interventions.

“The hippocampus is at the center of this flexible memory system,” Bakkour said. “We think about episodic memory as being very flexible, and it allows us to travel back in time, but we can also think about the future. It’s important for planning. The striatum, on the other hand, really is at the heart of a pretty inflexible memory system. It’s been implicated in habit learning, for example. It helps us learn habits, but also to sustain habits over time.”

To separate valuation from other aspects of decision-making, the research team had participants make food choices and complete a perceptual decision-making task, in which they judged the predominant color in a display of flickering dots.

This allowed the researchers to test whether any differences in the decision process were specific to food or reflected broader alterations in how decisions are made. They combined computational modeling that captures both choices and reaction times simultaneously with fMRI to examine the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms of food choice.

Consistent with prior research, patients with anorexia consistently chose low-fat foods and avoided high-fat foods, whereas healthy controls neither preferred nor avoided fatty foods. But once those preference differences were accounted for, the decision-making process itself looked the same across groups. Both groups were faster and more accurate on easier decisions, and the model fit both groups’ behavior equally well, with no differences in key parameters such as the rate of evidence accumulation or the amount of evidence required to commit to a choice.

Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, the findings indicate that anorexia does not involve a breakdown in the cognitive process of deliberation for either food or non-food decisions. Instead, these results shift the focus to the input to the decision process, or the valuation stage, that leads individuals to choose one food over another.

Where the groups did diverge was in the brain. The fMRI results showed greater hippocampal activation in the control group during food choice deliberation, specifically as decision time increased, compared with perceptual decisions.

Patients with anorexia showed a similar hippocampal effect but additionally recruited the striatum. The researchers interpret the results to suggest that individuals with anorexia recruit different neural systems to compute and generate internal evidence as inputs to the decision process.

Bakkour said this means the source of evidence for decision-making in anorexia may be drawn from a more rigid system, whereas healthy individuals draw on a more flexible one. The direction of causality is still unknown, and it remains unclear whether striatal involvement is a cause or consequence of the disorder.

The team will next explore the attributes that contribute most strongly to choice and valuation between patients with anorexia and those without. But as Bakkour and his colleagues continue to probe the behavioral decision-making angle behind the disorder, they may open new treatment opportunities.

“That might give us some hope that maybe we can move things around,” Bakkour said. “If we can just tip the balance a little bit more toward the hippocampus in the patients, maybe we would normalize decisions.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is available at 1-866-662-1235. UChicago students can reach Student Wellness at 773-702-3625.

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

Senior theses put UChicago students' economics training to work on messy reality

Kevin McKeough — 08/11/2026 - 09:53am

Immigration. The media and elections. Commodity prices and war.

These subjects are front-page news almost daily. They’re also among the widely varied topics that were investigated this past year by students in the Undergraduate Honors Workshop in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.

During the year-long capstone course, fourth-year students in the undergraduate honors economics program conduct in-depth research on a topic of their choosing and write a thesis paper about it, guided by faculty and input from their fellow students in the workshop.

“It’s their first foray into research, into creation of knowledge,” said Senior Instructional Prof. Victor Lima, AM’96, PhD’00, the co-director of undergraduate studies and master’s programs in economics. “The honors variant of the standard economics track equips students with the tools and topical knowledge necessary to arrive at the honors workshop ready to pursue research into a topic of their choice.”

The range of these inquiries is wide. The 26 theses from this year’s workshop spanned public transit in national parks, the 2016 Olympics and Rio de Janeiro’s labor market, online collectibles auctions and vacation rentals in Hawaii.

“The breadth is incredible,” Lima said. “Here, there’s a philosophy that economics is a set of tools and that set of tools is applicable to anything people do. This department has a history of taking these tools and applying them to questions of broad interest to social scientists.”

That range extends to the faculty advisor that each student seeks to coach them in the research process. The advisor can be an economist in any of the University’s colleges and schools, such as the business, law and medical schools, and the crime and poverty labs.

For some students, their thesis paper will become part of their application for Ph.D. programs. Lima said that in recent years, multiple honors economics graduates have been admitted to each of the top five doctoral programs in economics in the country, with one cohort making up a third of an entering class at Harvard University.

What’s more, “students report back that they feel well prepared and ready to engage when they arrive at their Ph.D. programs.”

Other students go on to work in consulting or tech.

“A lot of the really good private sector jobs that students take place a premium on problem-solving and the ability to analyze questions,” Lima said.

“The first step in all these journeys is taking the honors workshop, where they learn how to take this ideal world we put on blackboards and put that ideal work into the messy, complicated, roundabout real world we encounter.”

Staying on track to study emigration and birth rates

Ben Miele, AB’26, credits his advisor Yana Gallen, AB’09, with literally keeping his research on the right track—or rather, tracks. For his thesis, Miele investigated the effect emigration from Mexico to the United States had on Mexico’s birth rate, drawing on Mexican government migration and birth rate data.

In addition, his calculations incorporated municipalities’ nearness to sections of railroad track whose top allowable speeds were slow enough that migrants could jump on board trains there and ride them into the U.S.

Using the rail data eliminated potential factors on birth rate other than migration.

“You estimate the effect of proximity to those sections of rail on emigration rates, and under certain assumptions, using fancy linear algebra, you can estimate the causal effect of migration on fertility,” Miele explained.

He added that he’d wanted to focus on rail travel for a long time, but that Gallen had helped him figure out the details of his work. Gallen is an assistant professor in the Harris School of Public Policy and an alumna of the Honors Workshop herself.

“It’s an incredible privilege to have someone as smart as she is look at your work and give you feedback about it,” Miele said.

His thesis considers the period from 2000-2020, when emigration from Mexico to the U.S. increased dramatically. His analysis found that on average, 0.5 fewer births occur annually in a Mexican municipality for each local household with an emigrant in the U.S.

“The idea is, if someone leaves Chicago and goes to the United Kingdom, there would be one-half fewer births in Chicago,” Miele said. However, in some subsets of his research, he found a positive correlation between emigration and birth rates.

In the second part of his thesis, Miele assesses factors that might explain latter results, using data from the Mexican Migration Project, a collaboration between Brown University and El Colegio de Mexico. He looked at unmarried women’s rates of birth and marriage and births among couples that didn’t emigrate.

He found no effects of emigration on unmarried women, but that emigration corresponded to a decrease in birth rates among married couples. However, Miele also found increased emigration was linked with increased birth rates among financially poorer-than-average couples.

Miele is going to work for a consulting firm in the Bay Area after leaving Hyde Park. He said being in the workshop was “a tremendous amount of fun.”

Considering an airwaves auction’s civic consequences

Fittingly for a project centered around broadcasting, Vera Chaudhry, AB’26, got the idea for her thesis from a podcast. After listening to an episode of NPR’s Planet Money that discussed market demand for the broadcast spectrum of the airwaves last fall, she became fascinated with the topic.

That fascination led Chaudhry to explore whether a U.S. government auction of broadcast frequencies in 2016 led to closure of television stations that provided local news programming, and if in turn the stations going dark was followed by a decline in voter participation in their broadcast areas. As she discusses in her thesis, the federal government has regulated the use of broadcast airwaves, which are a public resource, to varying degrees and in varying ways ever since the advent of radio in the early 20th century.

The government has auctioned frequencies on the broadcast spectrum for commercial use since 1994, Chaudhry said. Responding to increased demand for use in wireless communications, the 2016 auction was noteworthy for allowing owners of some existing stations to sell their station’s bandwidth in addition to the established practice of businesses buying the use of as-yet unallocated airwave frequencies.

A subset of stations at the far end of the spectrum were even required to sell their wavelengths and either move to another channel or close.

Chaudhry drew on Federal Communications Commission records and data from the auction to determine which stations closed due to selling their frequencies, and which closed stations had provided news programming. She then looked at data from an MIT lab that studies elections and U.S. census data to compare levels of voter participation in areas with those closed stations in 2016, 2018 and 2020.

Chaudhry’s analysis of this data found the stations required to sell their wavelengths were 16.2% more likely to close due to the auction than the stations with the option of selling their share of the broadcast spectrum. She also found that voter turnout in affected areas decreased by 0.83 percentage points in 2020 compared to the 2016 election and by 1.26 percentage points from the 2016 to 2018 elections.

Chaudhry already had an interest in the intersection of markets and public resources prior to beginning her research. It first was piqued by a class on crony capitalism she took as a third-year taught by Luigi Zingales, the Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, in the Chicago Booth School of Business.

“It was the first time I started thinking about some of these questions,” she recalled. “I was pretty inspired.”

She enlisted Zingales as her thesis advisor, and he helped guide her research process, even connecting her with journalists and scholars who had covered and studied the broadcast airwaves and the spectrum auction.

In addition to developing research skills, the Honors Workshop often nurtures strong camaraderie among the students. Chaudhry is among the students who exemplify this aspect of the program—Miele even includes her among a handful of students he cites for contributing to the development of his thesis.

“The economics thesis workshop is very much student-led. Students present their ideas and their papers and their work throughout the year. That was a part of the seminar that I really enjoyed,” Chaudhry said.

Measuring mitigators of conflict, with a Nobelist’s mentoring

Anderson Hu, AB/SB’26, observed that “conflict doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There has to be some sort of shock” that prompts it, and the resulting devastation that war and political violence cause.

Hu’s research examined recent civil conflict in Africa, and how much state capacity could prevent or diminish conflict by offsetting the shocks that cause it. Specifically, Hu considered both state administrative capacity—the ability to provide public goods and services—and coercive capacity, the use of force via police and the military to impose order.

To assess capacity, Hu took data on 24 countries from the Afrobarometer, a research network that measures public opinion on economics and government in dozens of African nations, using survey results from 2014 to 2024.

To derive conflict incidence and fatalities, he relied on Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a non-profit organization that monitors conflict worldwide. He chose commodity price changes as a representative economic shock that could lead to conflict, which he obtained from an International Monetary Fund dataset.

Hu’s analysis of this data found that greater administrative capacity could lessen conflict by reducing the negative effects of commodity price shocks. However, “in general, coercive capacity doesn’t seem to be that significant, which is a bit surprising,” Hu said.

Hu’s thesis advisor was James A. Robinson, the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at Harris and the Department of Political Science. A recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics, Robinson is among numerous Nobel faculty who have served as an Honors Workshop advisor over the years.

At the suggestion of one of his TAs, Hu had begun working for Robinson as a research assistant in the fall of 2024, shortly before the Nobel award was announced.

“It was very cool to wake up to one morning,” Hu said.

Having an established relationship made it easier to ask Robinson to be his thesis advisor, even if he was a little nervous about his question being “salient and interesting enough to be worth his time.”

But Robinson eagerly suggested research papers for Hu to read and discussed with him how to interpret the results of his data synthesis.

“What perspective to take when it comes to numbers, the attenuating effect of state capacity is something he helped me develop,” Hu said. “A large part of my thesis was shaped by meeting with him.”

Hu said his experience with Robinson and the workshop overall showed that “the University is very rigorous, it’s very intense, and that results in a very important research output.

“It’s not necessarily for everyone, but I really enjoyed it. There’s a high standard of what research ought to look like, a high standard of the quality of research.”

—This article originally appeared on the College website.

Researchers discover cleaner route to purifying rare earth elements

Sarah C.P. Williams — 08/10/2026 - 10:34pm

Rare earth elements such as lanthanum, neodymium and dysprosium are used to build the electric motor in your car, the LED lights in your house and the MRI machine at your doctor’s office.

But first, they have to be mined and separated from each other. Historically, that purification has been a costly, difficult process, relying on huge amounts of toxic chemicals.

Now, researchers in the lab of Assoc. Prof. Chong Liu at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), working with colleagues at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory, have discovered a cleaner method to separate rare earth elements from each other.

The new approach relies on a layered form of manganese oxide—a mineral material with the right size layers to allow ions to slip in and out and to differentiate rare earth elements.

“This is the first time that people have used electrochemical intercalation and harnessed the structural characteristics to separate similar lanthanides, which are intrinsically very hard to separate,” said Liu, senior author of the new study, which published in Nature Chemical Engineering. “What’s also valuable is that we provided a lot of new understanding of how rare earth ions are interacting with this material and how we can manipulate it to better selectivity.”

“This kind of separation is competitive with other rare earth separation methods, but it’s done in water, without organic solvents,” said George Schatz, professor of chemistry at Northwestern and a co-author of the study. “That’s a difference that could actually matter at manufacturing scale.”

Squeezing elements through channels

The 17 rare earth elements—including the 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium—rarely occur alone. They’re almost always mined together and chemically they’re nearly identical, with only tiny differences in ion size and acidity differentiating each one. Pulling them apart typically requires custom-built molecules and large amounts of acid, which is used to strip each element off those molecules.

“Rare earths always come mixed together, whether they’re in an ore or in a waste stream, and separating them from each other is a second, very challenging step even after you’ve pulled them away from everything else,” said UChicago PME graduate student Jiadong Liu, a co-first author of the new paper.

Chong Liu and her colleagues knew that one of the differences between rare earth ions was the size of the water shell surrounding each one when they are dissolved in solution. Lighter rare earths like lanthanum have a larger first water shell, while heavier rare earths like dysprosium have a smaller first shell.

Taking advantage of that size difference, Chong Liu’s group engineered manganese oxide so that the gaps between its stacked layers were only a few water molecules wide. Then, they squeezed raw mixtures of rare earth elements inside.

The approach divided the elements into two groups. Heavier lanthanides with smaller water shells stuck in the channels more tightly. Lighter lanthanides with larger shells pushed the layers apart, loosening their grip.

To confirm what was happening at a molecular level, the UChicago PME team collaborated with Schatz’s group at Northwestern to run quantum mechanical simulations using a method called density functional theory, which predicts how atoms arrange themselves and interact based on the underlying physics. They also worked with Argonne scientists to obtain experimental X-ray data.

“It was incredibly rewarding to see how closely our density functional theory calculations matched the synchrotron X-ray measurements,” said co-first author Woo Cheol Jeon, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher in Schatz’s lab at Northwestern. “The calculations let us see, atom by atom, how each rare earth element arranges its hydration shell inside the confined channel, which experiments couldn’t resolve directly.”

Fine-tuning the purification

While the new process separated the heaviest and lightest rare earths, some of the most useful elements still behaved too similarly to separate. To fine-tune the purification so that it could differentiate similar pairs of rare earth elements, the research team used an electric current and added magnesium ions.

The magnesium acted as a scaffold, holding the manganese oxide channels to their designed spacing, even when rare earth elements tried to expand it—an effect called pinning. Now, rare earth ions showed differences in binding to the layered material even when they were extremely similar.

“Even elements that behave almost identically will still try to expand the material to make room for their water molecules,” said Siqi Zou, PhD'24, co-first author of the study and former UChicago PME graduate student. “By pinning the channel so it can’t expand at all, we forced that small difference in behavior to become a much bigger difference in how strongly each element binds.”

With the addition of magnesium, the enrichment of neodymium over lanthanum jumped from a 1.6-fold difference to a 5.4-fold difference. After two cycles of purification, researchers could get a neodymium sample that was 97% pure. Similar improvements were seen for other rare earth elements.

A cleaner future

The new purification method could ultimately point toward different ways of thinking about where rare earth processing happens, the researchers said.

“Right now, rare earth ores get mined all over the world, but almost all of them end up being sent overseas for processing,” said Schatz, co-author of the study. “A method like this, that just uses water and electricity instead of organic solvents, is the kind of technology that could actually change how and where that processing gets done.”

The method isn’t yet ready to be scaled up to replace industrial purification. Still, it points to a broader design principle: tuning a channel’s width can determine which ions a material prefers, even for ions that differ by a fraction of an angstrom.

Chong Liu’s group is now testing the approach against more of the 15 lanthanides, while Schatz is refining his computational models, aiming to explain the pinning effect more quantitatively. He is also using the same modeling approach developed for this work to study other materials.

Citation: “Pinning Angstrom-size solid ionic channel for the separation of rare earth elements,” Zou et al, Nature Chemical Engineering, July 21, 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s44286-026-00418-8

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

Space travel doesn’t affect the strength of heart muscle cells, study finds

Matt Wood — 08/07/2026 - 03:58pm

It’s common to see images of astronauts on the International Space Station exercising, running on special treadmills and pedaling cycles designed for tight quarters.

Besides breaking the monotony of long missions, these workouts are important because astronauts who spend an extended amount of time in space lose muscle mass and strength, since they don’t have to deal with gravity to move their bodies and push, pull or lift things.

The effects of zero gravity on the body’s most important muscle—the heart—are less clear, but new research from the University of Chicago and the University of Nebraska shows encouraging signs that heart muscle cells aren’t negatively affected by space travel.

The researchers analyzed heart cells from five mice that spent 38.5 days on the space station, looking specifically at their sarcomeres, the molecular motors inside the cells that make the heart contract. The contracting force of these motors in mice from the space station was just as strong as those in control mice that stayed on the ground.

Molecular testing also showed no major differences in the proteins that made up the sarcomere between the space mice and their earthbound controls, suggesting that heart cells would continue functioning well during a long trip to space. This is promising news as NASA considers longer missions back to the moon and potentially to Mars.

“There are a lot of things in common between cardiac and skeletal muscle, so we thought that we would see some decrease in heart function from space travel,” said UChicago Assoc. Prof. Jonathan Kirk, a co-senior author of the paper, which was published in the journal npj Microgravity. “But in the end, we’re pretty happy that this is the result we found. It doesn’t give us something else to dig into scientifically, but it’s obviously wonderful news for astronauts in the space program that the heart is going to be okay in space.”

An out-of-this-world offer

Kirk’s lab studies cardiovascular disease, particularly what affects the heart’s ability to function as a mechanical pump to circulate blood. His team has developed a wide variety of tests to study heart function in frozen tissues, giving them more flexibility to study samples after the fact, perhaps collected for a different purpose, without having to rely on fresh tissue collected on the spot.

In August 2023, Kirk was giving a presentation at the University of Nebraska, which included some Star Wars references to make it more relatable to the audience. After the talk, Pooneh Bagher, an associate professor of cellular and integrative physiology at Nebraska and co-senior author of the new paper, approached him with a proposition: How would he like to study mice from space?

She had access to frozen heart tissue from mice that had been on the space station, left over from a project by scientists at Baylor University.

“I said, ‘Absolutely, that sounds awesome,’” Kirk said. “It was a perfect fit, and that’s exactly why we go to seminars and have in-person conversations with our peers.”

Science from a new angle

Even though this study used a small sample size of mice that had been in space for a relatively short period of human time, Kirk said it’s still extremely useful because mice have accelerated lifespans.

Their hearts beat up to 600 times a minute—compared to the human range of 60 to 100 beats per minute—so 38.5 days in space for a mouse is more like 7.5 to 10 months for a human heart.

“If there’s going to be a problem with the heart, you’re going to see it in the sarcomeres first. So, the nice thing about this is that with the biophysical assays of how this little engine inside the heart works, we are able to gauge very early, before a person starts to feel sick or a mouse looks sick, whether or not there was something at the molecular level starting to go wrong,” Kirk said.

The researchers did see some traces of inflammation in the heart cells, and Kirk said they would like to study mice that had been in space longer to see if that increases over time. They would also like to study tissues that were collected while on the space station instead of from animals that returned to Earth, to potentially rule out the effects of stress from the trip back home.

As someone who drops Star Wars references into his academic presentations, Kirk said the appeal of studying the effects of space travel on biology is irresistible.

“Space science is fascinating because it lets you look at science from a totally new angle. Everything is different, and therefore it’s a tool to understand our biological system under entirely new conditions from anything else we can do in the lab,” he said.

“Sometimes you find something that opens a whole new area of research, and sometimes you just confirm that, yeah, astronauts will be fine. Let’s go to Mars.”

The study, “Space travel does not significantly impact cardiac sarcomere function but does induce immune-related proteomic changes,” was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association and NASA. Additional authors include Henry M. Gong, Hana K. Pak and Ahmed Zied from UChicago; Christine E. Delligatti from Johns Hopkins University; Ray Mitchell from Nebraska; Binu Tharakan from Morehouse School of Medicine; and Travis W. Hein and David C. Zawieja from Texas A&M University.

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

With real artifacts, students piece together the ancient past

Colin Terrill — 08/07/2026 - 10:15am

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series called UChicago Class Visits, spotlighting transformative classroom experiences and unique learning opportunities offered at UChicago.

Chances are that you’ve used something made of ceramic today. Maybe it was sipping your morning coffee from the mug you pulled from the cabinet or hitting the brakes on your car during your evening commute.

But how can something so simple give us a glimpse into past civilizations? In the basement of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) around real ancient artifacts—some as old as 5,000 years—students in the “Ceramic Analysis in Archaeology” course at the University of Chicago are looking back in time with their work.

Each week in the Spring Quarter, students learned from veteran archaeologist Prof. Derek Kennet about a different era or technique of pottery-making before going hands-on with everything from fragments to nearly intact pieces.

One class had students inspect samples before drawing them like an archeologist would do in the field, considering details such as the materials used, the colors and design details and even the surface texture before and after glazing.

Naomi Elkin, a second-year College student, is one of two undergraduates in the ceramics course, learning alongside graduate students and Ph.D. candidates.

“Taking a class inside ISAC and engaging with artifacts from around the world is a dream,” said Elkin, who is among the first archaeology majors at UChicago. “Encounters with even the smallest of fragments are capable of providing a wealth of information about their story.”

The goal of the course, said Kennet, is to teach someone with no experience with pottery to think like an archaeologist. With expertise in the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding regions, Kennet argues that our understanding of history is based on the things left behind by humans–and he’s quick to point out that ceramic artifacts are a near-perfect tool for investigating the past.

“Just like today, everybody had some sort of ceramic in their homes,” he said. "They are one of the best sources of evidence left to archaeologists because they can tell us about many of the things people did in ancient societies—eating, cooking, storage and trade.”

A collaborative atmosphere

Elkin is one of just two undergraduate students taking the course with the rest of the ranks being filled out by graduate students and Ph.D. candidates. Kennet believes that this type of collaboration is something that is special about UChicago.

“The equality of students here—from undergraduates to those working towards advanced degrees—is amazing,” he said. “They are all very ambitious, engaged and willing to not only learn for themselves but help others along the way.”

Elkin agrees, believing that this only enhances the experience for them in the class.

“Being in a classroom setting with students further along in their academic careers has provided us with a unique opportunity,” she said. "We've been able to gain plenty of helpful pointers during the hands-on exercises, and hearing about their experience in the field has been a real privilege.”

The big picture from small objects

ISAC has more than 350,000 artifacts to study, offering a glimpse into the daily lives of the past. While being able to literally pick up and draw pieces of history is a fun exercise, the aim of the class is to reach a much bigger goal than that.

“You’ll never find a human society in the past, present or future that you could ask where they came from and be met with a shrug and a ‘we don’t know,’” said Kennet. “There is always a story. Even the tiniest of fragments can help us tell whether that story is true or whether it’s just one of the thousands of myths storytellers have come up with to creatively explain the past.”

The quest of being able to explain the past is one of the things that excites Elkin so much.

She said holding the artifacts doesn't guarantee a full understanding of the worlds they came from, adding that this will also be true when future archaeologists study us. That imperfection is part of the appeal. Elkin said she'll make mistakes as she learns, but she finds a kind of beauty in it—similar to that she sees in the failed pieces she studies.

“I love when we get to handle wasters because we get to learn from the same imperfections that the vessel's creator did,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing that I find links us very strongly to the past. We come from long traditions of making mistakes and learning lessons from them.”

—A version of this story is published on the University of Chicago College website.

Engineered gut bacteria show promise against pancreatic cancer

Chandrika Abburi — 08/05/2026 - 10:30am

Cancer immunotherapies have transformed treatment for many cancers, but pancreatic cancer remains especially difficult to treat. One major reason is that pancreatic tumors are particularly good at preventing the body’s natural immune cells from mounting a strong attack.

Researchers at the University of Chicago report a promising new strategy to overcome this barrier using an engineered version of Bifidobacterium longum, a probiotic bacterium naturally found in the gut, to deliver an immune-stimulating therapy directly inside tumors.

In tests with mice, the treatment successfully suppressed pancreatic tumor growth by selectively activating cancer-fighting T cells. The effects were further enhanced when combined with chemotherapy, radiotherapy or immunotherapy.

The study, published July 23 in Science Advances, offers a potentially powerful approach for improving treatment response in pancreatic cancer. It feeds into a growing “bugs as drugs” strategy, in which engineered probiotic bacteria could provide a new way to deliver immune therapies directly into hard-to-treat tumors, while limiting side effects elsewhere in the body.

A novel bacterial delivery strategy

“A big unmet medical need has been pancreatic cancer, and so that was going to be our mountain to climb,” said Ralph Weichselbaum, the Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of Radiation and Cellular Oncology at UChicago.

The new therapy, called BifidoSumIL-2, is designed to release a modified form of interleukin-2 (IL-2) inside tumors.

IL-2 is a powerful immune molecule that activates T cells, which help the body fight cancer. However, traditional IL-2 therapy can cause harmful side effects, and may also activate immune cells that suppress the antitumor response.

To address this, the team created SumIL-2, an engineered version of IL-2 designed to more selectively stimulate cancer-fighting T cells while limiting activation of regulatory T cells.

Next, by placing SumIL-2 inside Bifidobacterium longum, the researchers aimed to concentrate the treatment directly within tumors.

Bifidobacterium was an attractive delivery vehicle for two reasons. First, it is generally recognized as a safe, off-the-shelf probiotic—commonly found in yogurt.

Second, it thrives in low-oxygen environments, a common feature of many solid tumors, including pancreatic tumors. Healthy tissues generally have higher oxygen levels, making them less favorable for bacterial growth.

“Bifidobacterium is an obligate anaerobe, so it doesn’t grow in the presence of oxygen,” said study co-author Mark Mimee, assistant professor of microbiology at UChicago. This means that after they are injected, the bacteria are cleared away from oxygen-rich healthy tissues but can become active in the low-oxygen regions of tumors.

This tumor-seeking behavior allows the bacteria to act like microscopic drug factories. Essentially, these little factories produce the SumIL-2 only on the tumor site where the drug is needed.

Enhanced effects with combination therapy

In animal models, the researchers found that BifidoSumIL-2 selectively accumulated in tumors, activated immune responses, and slowed pancreatic tumor growth. The treatment also helped reshape the tumor microenvironment by increasing the activity of cancer-fighting CD8+ T cells.

The therapy became even more effective when combined with standard cancer treatments. Pairing BifidoSumIL-2 with chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy further improved tumor control and survival compared with single treatments alone.

“This combination potential is one of the study’s most important findings; BifidoSumIL-2 not only works by itself—it works with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy," Weichselbaum said.

Although the results are promising, BifidoSumIL-2 has not yet been tested in people. Future studies will need to evaluate long-term safety, possible off-target effects, durability of the immune response, and whether the bacteria can be delivered orally rather than by injection.

Researchers are also interested in combining this approach with newer pancreatic cancer therapies, including KRAS inhibitors.

The work required expertise across multiple fields, from microbiology and synthetic biology to oncology and immunology.

“This was a highly interdisciplinary effort,” said Mimee. “We had to bring together people who understand bacteria, people who understand tumors, and people who understand the immune system to make something like this possible.”

Additional authors include Jaehyun Lee, Kaiting Yang, Christina Nowicki, Wei Liu, Emile Naccasha and Hua Liang from UChicago; Zhichen Sun from the University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas; and Yang-Xin Fu from the Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

UChicago Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division continue to be at the forefront of cancer care and research. In April 2027, UChicago Medicine will open the AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion, Chicago’s first freestanding cancer pavilion, to bring advanced diagnostics, innovative treatments, translational discoveries, and comprehensive support to patients and the community.

Citation: “Engineered probiotic Bifidobacterium for tumor-targeted pancreatic cancer therapy.” Lee et al, Science Advances, July 23, 2026.

Funding: Ludwig Foundation, National Institutes of Health.

Joel Snyder, pioneer of the study and practice of photography, 1941-2026

Rivky Mondal — 08/05/2026 - 09:13am

Joel Snyder, among the first scholars in the United States hired to teach the history of photography, died on June 5. He was 84.

Snyder, a professor emeritus in the Department of Art History, joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1969 and, for over five decades, helped establish a field of study at a moment when photography was still peripheral to art history.

Snyder’s research ranged across the history and theory of photography, keeping focus on the 19th-century rise of commercial photography in the United States and Europe. His scholarship illuminated the ways photography developed in dialogue with painting and sculpture.

A professional photographer whose work is held in the Art Institute of Chicago, Snyder urged all scholars of the medium to understand how a work was made in order to interpret it.

Colleagues and students remember Snyder not simply for what he studied but for his attention to the ill-defined relationship between idea and practice, the camera and the eye behind it.

“He was our department’s uncompromising intellectual compass,” recalled Christine Mehring, Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and former department chair. “His combination of connoisseurial and technical expertise in photographic media with an understanding of their hermeneutic potentials were pathbreaking for our discipline.”

Photography as an intellectual problem

Synder helped transform the study of photography by refusing to accept it as distinct from the pantheon of the arts.

“Perhaps his most radical provocation was that photography, despite its technological underpinnings, does not produce pictures that we ought to regard as categorically distinct from other kinds of pictures,” said mentee Carl Fuldner, PhD’18, assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities.

Snyder contested assumptions that photographs were neutral records of the world. In the landmark essay “Territorial Photographs,” Snyder examines 19th-century landscape photography to show how images presented the American West as tamable land open to settler conquest. His analysis of the photographer Timothy O’Sullivan reveals how photographs participated in projects of territorial mapping, scientific knowledge and nationalist expansion.

As Prof. W.J.T. Mitchell writes in a remembrance in Critical Inquiry, where Snyder was an editor and contributor for about forty years, this habit of looking again and looking harder was fundamental to Snyder’s intellectual character.

“It is as if Joel’s basic instinct in front of an interesting visual image—whether painting, photography, sculpture, shadow, reflection, or view from the window—was to say: ‘wake up!’”

Theory together with practice

Snyder’s scholarship combined deep knowledge of art history with firsthand experience as a photographer and maker.

As a professional photographer, Synder operated a Chicago studio, produced original documentary work, and collaborated with institutions including the Smithsonian. He also participated in projects ranging from historical photographic reconstructions to film photography—most famously on the sets of Star Wars and the film adaptation of A River Runs Through It (1992), where Snyder took pictures of Robert Redford and Brad Pitt used in the film to mark the passing of time.

In 1965, Snyder co-founded Chicago Albumen Works with Doug and Dorothy Munson. The organization became one of the nation’s foremost studios for the restoration and reproduction of historical photographs.

Snyder’s technical expertise earned international recognition. Working from original negatives by Eugène Atget, he produced albumen prints for a Museum of Modern Art portfolio that curator John Szarkowski praised for representing Atget’s work “with great sensitivity and fidelity.”

Snyder was connected to the Smart Museum of Art from its earliest days, serving as the unofficial photographer of its opening and becoming a collaborator, curator, advisor, lender and donor over subsequent decades. His exhibitions—including the groundbreaking 1976 exhibition The Documentary Photograph as a Work of Art: American Photographs, 1860-1876 and the 2006 exhibition One/Many: Western American Survey Photographs by Bell and O’Sullivan—helped make photography a central area of inquiry in the museum.

Within the Department of Art History, Snyder served multiple terms as chair and played a pivotal role in shaping the department’s direction. His influence lives on through the Joel Snyder Research Fund, which supports faculty and graduate student research, and through the Joel Snyder Materials Collection, established in his honor by the Department of Art History in its Visual Resources Center.

The collection reflects a Snyderian principle: that art should be handled, examined and understood materially as well as intellectually.

Teaching people how to see

Again and again, former students describe Snyder’s greatest gift as teaching them to examine photographic art more carefully.

For Sarah Miller, PhD‘09, independent scholar and current ACLS Fellow, Snyder’s advising style overturned assumptions of prevalent topics and methodologies that had gone unquestioned.

“What unites Snyder’s advisees,” Miller reflected, “is a penchant for starting new projects by asking the question nobody had previously thought to ask or by revisiting what others considered utterly settled knowledge.”

Rather than presume photographs are static objects, Snyder counseled students to work from the ground up to re-open avenues of inquiry.

“I feel Joel lodged permanently in my brain,” as Miller put it, and other mentees echoed.

According to Mitchell, Snyder pushed students and colleagues “into zones of alertness, second looks, double takes, puzzlement, curiosity, irritation, and discovery.”

Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English & Art History and Snyder’s close friend for more than fifty years, reflected on a question Snyder posed that became emblematic of his pedagogy: “Why would you want to say that?”

Britt Salvesen, PhD‘98, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints & Drawings Department, recalled Snyder as a mentor who took endless pleasure in following his students down research paths.

“Never heavy-handed or dogmatic, Joel had strong beliefs that he carried lightly,” she said.

The 2018 “Joelfest” (part-symposium, part-celebration of Snyder’s retirement) drew art critics from across the country to take stock of his momentous career. His students, colleagues and friends continue to carry forward the habits of mind he cultivated: looking closely, questioning assumptions and refusing easy answers.

Snyder was preceded in death by his first wife, Jean Maclean Snyder, the mother of his two sons. He is survived by his wife and long-time partner, Katherine Fischer Taylor, Associate Professor of Art History emerita, and his sons, Jacob Samuel Snyder and his wife Kaoutar and son Dashiell, and Noah Scot Snyder, his wife Julie and son Joshua. A memorial is being planned.

—Adapted from a story originally published by the Division of the Arts & Humanities.

AI-powered robotic labs at UChicago, Argonne receive $20 million NSF grant

Paul Dailing — 08/03/2026 - 09:16am

Tomorrow’s clean energy, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and national defense rely on developing novel, next-generation soft materials.

But creating these new materials—including a range of liquids, polymers, gels, colloids, foams and granular materials—is slow, expensive and largely manual.

A $20 million grant will remove many of these barriers, developing a remotely accessible, robot-operated laboratory where researchers across the United States can design and run experiments without traveling.

Leveraging the expertise of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), UChicago Department of Computer Science and Argonne National Laboratory, the Polymer Laboratory for AI, Robotics, Informatics, and Standards (PoLARIS) will strengthen domestic supply chains, reduce dependence on foreign materials, and help American companies compete globally in industries worth over $200 billion annually.

“PoLARIS is designed to make advanced polymer research faster, more accessible, and more reproducible. It will connect AI, robotics, specialized instruments, and data infrastructure into a cloud laboratory that researchers can access remotely,” said PoLARIS co-principal investigator Asst. Prof. Jie Xu, co-lead of Polybot Lab, a research group that spans UChicago PME and Argonne’s Nanoscience and Technology Division.

“The goal is to allow strong scientific ideas to move forward even when the researchers do not have expensive equipment on their own campus.”

Through cloud interfaces, researchers from universities, industry, government laboratories and under-resourced institutions will design and execute autonomous experiments that PoLARIS will execute at more than 20 stations. These will be spread across five labs at UChicago and Argonne, supported by top-tier researchers from both institutions.

“We are combining robots and AI with deep expertise in soft material and polymer science,” said Xu, who has a joint appointment with Argonne.

Once fully operational, PoLARIS will be capable of running anywhere from 100 to 300 experiments a day.

“PoLARIS is essentially a distributed operating system for scientific discovery. We're connecting instruments across buildings and institutions so they function as a single intelligent laboratory, with AI agents coordinating when and how experiments run,” said co-principal investigator Prof. Ian Foster, co-head of Globus Labs, a research group that spans the UChicago Computer Science Department and Argonne's Data Science and Learning Division.

“The same infrastructure principles that let millions of scientists move data seamlessly through Globus now let them orchestrate physical experiments from anywhere.”

Foster said the team expects to complete end-to-end autonomous experiments for initial science drivers within 18 months. Full user-service launch, where external researchers can submit their own projects, is expected by the end of year two of the grant.

The five facilities running PoLARIS stations will be UChicago’s Hyde Park High-throughput Polymer lab, Soft Matter Characterization Facility, and Materials Preparation and Measurement Laboratory and Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source and Polybot.

“This democratizes access to frontier science and lets good ideas succeed regardless of where they originate,” said Foster, who is also the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science.

Xu and Foster will serve as co-principal investigators along with UChicago PME interim Dean Stuart Rowan and Computer Science Department Asst. Prof. Yuxin Chen.

Chen said the AI behind PoLARIS was designed to look beyond just single experiments, helping users plan longer-term strategies the way a seasoned researcher would.

“A skilled experimentalist plans a whole campaign, not just the next experiment—sometimes running one not for its immediate answer but because it sets up the decisive one later,” he said. “Teaching AI to reason that far ahead, for many users sharing the same instruments and adapting as every result arrives, is what separates a truly intelligent laboratory from a collection of robots.”

Rowan, who is also the Barry L. MacLean Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise, a professor of chemistry and has a staff appointment at Argonne, said the impacts will go far beyond any one institution.

“This is a critical investment at a revolutionary time across all science and engineering,” Rowan said.

“Within the rich research ecosystem UChicago PME and Argonne have built, a major focus is to reinvent how we access the next generation of materials that play such a role in our daily lives. This collaboration with UChicago researchers in computer science has gotten me very excited about the revolutionary advances that PoLARIS will enable not only here but across the U.S.”

—This article originally appeared on the UChicago PME website.

In a quiet UChicago garden, volunteers cultivate food and community

Kayla Davis — 07/30/2026 - 09:25am

In a small on-campus plot lined with benches, trees and a short fence to keep rabbits out, volunteers are busy planting a summer garden. Dill sprouts from one section, carrot tufts peek out from another. Someone kneels at the edge of a bed, patting the soil flat with both hands.

This is the work of Phoenix Farms, a student-run gardening and beekeeping organization, cultivated by volunteers from the wider University of Chicago community.

The registered student organization (RSO) has been quietly growing tomatoes, radishes, cucamelons and flowers between the Smart Museum of Art and the Young Memorial Building for over a decade. Many people who walk past the garden every day probably have no idea it’s there, or that they’re welcome to step in and help.

Faculty, staff and community members have all pitched in before, and the students who run the organization are always looking for more volunteers. The group takes its gardening seriously, but its leaders say the mission is more than just produce.

“It's to provide a space for people in the Chicago community to connect with the way that we grow our food and have some hands-on engagement with the land,” said Phoenix Farms co-president and co-head gardener Mira Tensuan-Eli, also known as the organization’s “Queen Bee.”

Roots in the community

Beyond the plot at the Smart Museum, Phoenix Farms also has a greenhouse on top of the Biological Sciences Learning Center, where seeds are started each spring, and beehives at First Presbyterian Church in Woodlawn, about a mile from campus.

A branch of the organization grows oyster mushrooms year-round using spent coffee grounds from campus cafés. What gets harvested goes to the students and other volunteers who grew it. There's no formal membership and no fee to participate.

Phoenix Farms began as two separate RSOs—Harper Hives, focused on beekeeping, and Avant Garden, focused on gardening—that merged around 2018. The mushroom-growing branch came later, born out of student curiosity about mycology.

Volunteers participate for a variety of reasons, from a desire to learn something new, to an interest in reigniting a childhood hobby.

“We get a lot of people who are like, ‘I gardened a lot when I was at home and I want to be able to reconnect with that,’” said Tensuan-Eli.

In addition to connecting with the land, Phoenix Farms gives volunteers the opportunity to connect with each other. They’ve hosted make-your-own pickle events, using produce they grew themselves, led foraging trips for volunteers, and enjoyed fresh sourdough at what they call “Brom” (Bread Prom).

Phoenix Farms regularly brings together other clubs for joint events. Their communal “Big Soup” —a tradition involving participants bringing in ingredients to cook a large soup together—in collaboration with the Phoenix Sustainability Initiative and the Environmental Justice Task Force is among the most popular. These partnerships tend to grow organically, shaped by the connections of whoever is leading the organizations at the time.

The bees—and the honey

Though Phoenix Farms’ hives recently relocated from the Charles M. Harper Center roof—giving the bees a break to settle into their new home before producing again—the honey has a fantastic reputation.

The campus linden trees, which bloom in late May and early June, are a big part of why.

“It's well-known that some of the best honey comes from the pollination of the linden trees,” said manager of campus environment Kathleen Golomb. The hives at First Presbyterian are close enough to campus that the bees forage freely across Hyde Park and Woodlawn to find them.

What helps too is the campus environment. UChicago’s campus—a recognized member of the American Public Garden Association since 1997—is dense with flowering trees and shrubs, and the University does not use broadcast herbicides or pesticides anywhere on grounds, only targeted spot treatment in specific cases. For bees, it's ideal foraging territory.

“It's incredibly helpful to our pollinators that they’re not being affected, and the honey is not being affected either,” Golomb said.

When honey production does start up again, Phoenix Farms sells it at student organization fairs on campus and at the Hyde Park Farmers Market.

Lending a hand

In the spring, summer and fall, when things are in bloom, Phoenix Farms’ garden is a quiet green space that anyone can sit in or stop by.

“Whenever people remember that we exist, they’re super happy about it,” said Tensuan-Eli. “‘There’s a garden and bees here?’ And it’s like, yeah. We’re here.”

Volunteer gardening sessions, or work days, happen on weekend mornings once the season kicks off in Spring Quarter—and anyone on campus is welcome, no sign-up or experience needed. To be notified about upcoming work days, added to the mailing list, or kept in the loop on when the bees will be producing, email incoming co-presidents Sadie Foer (sfoer@uchicago.edu) or Aubrey Barb (abarb@uchicago.edu).

—A version of this story is published on the University of Chicago Intranet.

IBM, UChicago demonstrate ‘quantum advantage,’ outperforming traditional computers with a quantum computer

07/29/2026 - 04:19pm

IBM and researchers from the University of Chicago announced July 30 a demonstration in quantum computing that meets the fundamental criteria for “quantum advantage”—the point where quantum computers can be confirmed to have outperformed classical computers on trusted computations.

The collaboration said their system had performed computations beyond the reach of leading classical simulation methods, while providing trust that the computation returned accurate results.

In their new paper, the researchers showed that these two goals could be achieved by a novel construction of encoded quantum circuits—one of the largest demonstrations of logical quantum computing to date.

Building trust into quantum results

For years, researchers have used a benchmark known as random circuit sampling, or RCS, to test whether quantum computers could outperform classical systems.

In simple terms, RCS asks a quantum computer to generate patterns so complex that a classical computer cannot efficiently reproduce them.

The challenge has been verification: as the problem becomes harder, it becomes increasingly difficult and then infeasible to prove the quantum computer’s answer is correct, without making strong assumptions about the inner workings of the quantum computer.

In their experiment, researchers addressed this obstacle with a structured alternative to RCS. The team was able to prove that this alternative retains the same hardness criteria as RCS, but crucially, the new structure can be used to detect errors during the computation.

“Verification remains one of the biggest challenges in firmly establishing experimental quantum advantage,” said Bill Fefferman, associate professor of computer science at UChicago and co-author on the paper. “This experiment develops techniques to better characterize the fidelity of hard quantum states under noise, increasing confidence that the quantum computer is solving a computationally hard problem.”

Co-author Soumik Ghosh, a graduate student in Fefferman’s group at UChicago, added: “Beyond strengthening experimental validation, advances in verification have the potential to unlock practical applications for the next generation of quantum computers.”

In one of the world’s largest error correction demonstrations to date, the team successfully executed 70 logical qubits while shielding them from errors. They ran 2,415 logical two-qubit operations and 468 logical “T gates,” both metrics that quantify the complexity of a quantum circuit.

“We are now firmly in the quantum advantage era,” said Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “We have demonstrated a quantum computation beyond the practical reach of classical computers that establishes, with statistical confidence, a lower bound on how faithfully it was executed. This milestone gives scientists, developers and businesses a new foundation for trusting quantum computers as they scale to problems far beyond what we can achieve classically.”

The IBM quantum computer took approximately 15 minutes to accomplish the task; the team showed many leading classical simulation approaches faced prohibitive runtimes.

More information is available at IBM’s site.

—Adapted from a press release first posted by IBM.

How UChicago students staged a wordless play with an Emmy-winning company

Colin Terrill — 07/29/2026 - 01:05pm

As the theater filled with music and sound effects, a dozen performers buzzed on stage operating puppets and displaying imagery on overhead projector screens while others either used silhouettes or themselves on screen to complete the scene.

The sold-out crowd in the University of Chicago’s Theater East was watching the first official performance of Dream Delivery Service, a play guided by Manual Cinema, an Emmy Award-winning production company. Three of the five founders are UChicago alumni, and the company’s distinctive style combines handmade shadow puppetry, cinematic techniques, and innovative sound and music.

The performance was a joint effort between Manual Cinema and UChicago’s Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS) program, as part of its twice-a-year “pro show” course, which gives students hands-on experience with those from the industry. Even still, it was safe to say the surreal, wordless show was a first-time experience for the College performers. This included fourth-year student Nina Maxin, a business economics major who added a TAPS major late into her UChicago tenure. Having already performed in two other TAPS pro shows in the past, Maxin knew how much work would go into the production—but she was “surprised” to learn how deep its roots went at the University.

“Knowing that there are creatively driven alumni like them who have paved their own way devising performances at the intersection of film, puppetry and theater is really inspiring. The nature of their work as inherently collaborative, human to human, is encouraging to me as I head towards graduation,” she said.

The show only took a few months to go from storyboard to stage, but the seeds for the idea were planted at UChicago nearly two decades ago.

From the ‘life of the mind’ to live on stage

Manual Cinema was founded in 2010 by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller and Kyle Vegter. The group came from backgrounds in theater, visual arts and live music, but their paths could have been much different if it weren’t for the College.

Kauffman, Dir and Fornace are each alumni of UChicago and got their start in theater just as the TAPS program was being formed. Fornace originally intended to become a biology major but then shifted to English literature because she liked “immersing herself in the life of the literary mind” and she started performing shortly thereafter.

“There was a really robust theater club which was great because people were there to perform while still majoring in biology, economics and neuroscience,” Fornace said referring to her work with University Theater (UT). “But at the end of the day, we would all come together and spend hours and hours each week creating amazing productions.”

The idea that eventually became Manual Cinema came from Miller while working at the now-defunct Redmoon Theater in Chicago. She wanted to use an overhead projector as a major tool in a new piece. Dir, now a playwright but working at the time as a dramaturg, joined the production and they enlisted a local band headed by Kauffman and Vegter to score it for them. A 20-minute short piece came out of the effort, giving birth to the company.

At the start they acted like a newly formed band, performing wherever they could—bars, windows and park district facilities—just to make a name for themselves. Eventually a feature-length work took off which allowed them to tour the country and enter the international touring market, making it a full-time venture for the five.

Their pieces can be seen on television, in movie theaters and even in the newly opened Obama Presidential Center. But there was always a desire to return home.

A Unique Collaboration

Each section of the TAPS pro shows features a different scripted work, with students taught and mentored by local artists. Last fall, that featured a performance of Happy Birthday Mars Rover with Chicago director Helen Young.

When they enroll in a pro show course, each student picks a track to focus on during the production and performance process. Some decide that they want to act, others assist the costume designer or help direct.

Brianna Parry, TAPS production manager, said this year became the perfect time to pair with a group that had such strong ties to the College.

“Honestly, it’s something that we’ve always wanted to do but there was never a company that made sense before,” she said. “The relationship that Manual Cinema has with the University allowed this unique moment in the TAPS landscape to form.”

Within that relationship, Parry noted that Manual Cinema had one advantage that almost no other outside production could have if they were offered a residency at the University.

“The members in Manual ‘speak’ UChicago to a degree that many of our visiting artists don’t because they already know about the student experience,” she said. “They know these students are already overscheduled and overcommitted, but they have the type of mindset that they will always make room for one more thing if they find true interest in it.”

Fornace agreed and jumped at the chance to return to the place that she believes is responsible for her ending up with a career in theater.

“It was wild to be back after almost 20 years and to be talking with students about their thoughts, ideas and concerns as they go through the same educational experience that we did.”

The piece TAPS worked on with Manual Cinema was brand-new and in a style that had never been done before in the history of the program.

This allowed the committee to give students an experience that was completely unique while giving Manual Cinema a type of freedom they hardly are afforded anymore. Fornace said this allowed them to be more experimental while working in the academic setting.

Delivering a dream

Storyboards were offered to students at the first class of the quarter which presented the challenge that was being put in front of them—a work with no words that would require them to use paper puppets and hundreds of slides on projectors to convey a story to each audience member.

Throughout the piece, students would be asked to be in constant motion. Whether they were opening or closing a projector to display the image on the screen, bringing a puppet to life or tossing a prop to one of their castmates across the stage, the process forced individuals to work as one.

“This type of work really required a lot of trust and sense of confidence in College students, especially in working with puppets which most had never experienced before, within just eight short weeks,” Maxin said, adding that the learning curve was steep.

“We just had to keep going, to keep learning from each mistake or altering the choreography to make things a little bit easier to manage together. However, in the end the process became fun and rewarding. Each smooth execution of a sequence felt invigorating.”

True to its title, the piece is a dreamy, hour-long, three-part story that transports the audience to an alien planet, through the ups and downs of a dating app and back in time to a Middle Ages monastery where comical, mischievous characters lurked.

With a critical look at AI and technology, the play’s themes draw inspiration from the works of film director Alfred Hitchcock and television shows like The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror.Each of the five shows, including a preview on Thursday, sold out. Fornace said the process took her back to when she was discovering storytelling for the first time.

“Each crew was working as separate units throughout most of the process, but when the costumes came in and the lights turned on during the last few weeks, everything just blossomed,” she said. “All of this acting and storytelling that I had not seen before all happened at once and it reminded me of when we all started working together for the first time 15 years ago.”

Manual Cinema plans on taking Dream Delivery Service and adapting it into one of the stories that they will perform while on tour. Fornace isn’t sure what will stay and what will be cut,but assured that the version seen in Theater East will be one of a kind.

For TAPS and UChicago, the partnership proved to be a success for all involved–which might lead to other distinctive opportunities in the future.

“We spent such a long time putting the whole production together and I believe that we experienced something truly special,” said Maxin. “I can only hope that future classes get to do something as transformative as this was for me for years to come.

—This story was originally published on the University of Chicago College website.

What to know about cyclospora, the parasite behind this summer’s outbreak

David Zhang — 07/29/2026 - 09:42am

This summer's outbreak of the cyclospora parasite is on track to be the worst on record, with more recorded cases in the past few months than in all last year combined.

Though linked to fresh produce such as iceberg lettuce—prompting recalls of some salad greens, herbs and berries—investigators have struggled to pin down a source. The outbreak has sickened thousands of Americans, often with intense gastrointestinal symptoms.

To better understand cyclospora and its health risks, we asked UChicago Medicine physician Asst. Prof. David Zhang, a specialist in pediatric infectious disease; and the UChicago Medicine Medical Group urgent care medical director, Joseph Newberg*.

What is cyclospora, and how is it different from what most people associate with food poisoning?

Cyclospora is a parasite, not a bacteria or virus.

Unlike norovirus, a stomach virus that spreads easily, cyclosporiasis (the illness resulting from cyclospora infection) isn’t contagious. It comes from eating affected food.

Cyclospora is harder to eradicate than viruses and bacteria, which are more likely to be naturally flushed out by diarrhea.

What are the common symptoms of cyclosporiasis?

After entering the body, cyclospora lodges in the small intestine and causes watery diarrhea and these other symptoms:

Loss of appetite
Abdominal cramping and bloating
Fatigue
Low-grade fever
Increased flatulence

How does public health track an outbreak like this, and what makes cyclospora so hard to trace?

Typically, the lab will report positive results and provide this information to the health department, which will initially conduct detailed interviews with the patients involved. They will ask about travel, food intake, restaurant visits, potlucks etc.

But it’s more difficult to identify the source of infections the longer the incubation period, and with cyclospora, it can be up to two weeks—it can be hard to remember what you ate weeks ago. Beyond that, the food system is very complex and includes many potential areas of contamination, including the farms and distribution networks, the various suppliers and retailers that make tracing this difficult, very laborious. Lastly, multiple outbreaks can happen at the same time from different sources and can stretch public health agencies even further.

However, since we know cyclospora thrives in certain climates and conditions, it is typically a summer illness. Certain vegetation is more likely to be the carrier, so they can usually narrow it down. The later in the outbreak the health department is notified, the greater the chance that the affected foods have made it into our groceries or restaurants, and the higher the numbers climb.

With no confirmed source, what should people do about fresh produce?

With no single food to avoid, it comes down to a few habits. Cooking is the most reliable step, as heating to at least 158 degrees Fahrenheit will kill cyclospora.

Washing alone won’t fully remove the parasite, but it is still important. Wash your produce thoroughly, rubbing items under cold water, using a colander for delicate produce and a scrub brush for root vegetables. Prevent cross-contamination by keeping produce separate from raw meat and cleaning cutting boards, knives and surfaces before and after food prep.

Be aware of recalls issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health officials: outbreaks have been linked to fresh produce including bagged salads, leafy greens, berries and herbs. And as always with food, keep your hands clean. Scrub with soap and water for at least 20 seconds before preparing food and before eating.

How long does cyclosporiasis last and how is it treated?

Symptoms usually start about two to 14 days after exposure and can persist for several weeks.

Most healthy patients will recover without antibiotics, but cyclosporiasis can sometimes cause complications such as dehydration, reactive arthritis, malnutrition or gallbladder inflammation.

UChicago Medicine can test for cyclospora. Positive results are reported to the public health department to help manage outbreaks.

What should you do if you have symptoms of cyclosporiasis? And when should you see a doctor?

It depends on how severe the diarrhea is. If you’re otherwise healthy and able to keep down fluids and electrolytes, it is best to let your body naturally flush out the cause. Make sure to drink plenty of water or an electrolyte drink to stay hydrated.

If your diarrhea lasts longer than two or three days, or you have more than six bowel movements per day, contact your healthcare provider for further guidance.

Seek medical care if you have severe diarrhea lasting more than two or three days, or if you can’t hold down food or liquids. UChicago Medicine offers walk-in and virtual urgent care across Chicagoland.

If you have recently traveled outside the United States, you should see a doctor. Anyone experiencing lightheadedness, shortness of breath, or weakness when standing should seek medical attention immediately.

Immunocompromised individuals and those with kidney problems face a higher risk of complications and should consult a doctor if diarrhea lasts more than a day or two.

What should you eat and drink if you have symptoms?

Hydration is key. Make sure you’re drinking water and electrolyte solutions to prevent dehydration.

When you do eat, stick to bland foods like white rice and clear soup broth, which are gentle on the body. Avoid heavy, greasy or sugary foods, as they may worsen symptoms.

Eat slowly, as consuming too much too fast will only keep things moving through your system.

You may consider taking Imodium (loperamide) to help slow diarrhea, but do not use it if your stool is bloody or black, or if you have a fever.

*Joseph Newberg, MD, is the Medical Director of Urgent Care for UChicago Medicine Medical Group and a UChicago Medicine Medical Group provider. UChicago Medicine Medical Group comprises UCM Medical Group, Inc., f/k/a UCM Care Network Medical Group, Inc., and UCM Medical Group Sub, LLC f/k/a Primary Healthcare Associates, S.C. UChicago Medicine Medical Group providers are not employees or agents of the University of Chicago Medical Center, the University of Chicago, UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial, UChicago Medicine Medical Group - Homewood, UChicago Medicine Dearborn Station or UChicago Medicine River East.

—This article originally appeared on the UChicago Medicine website.

GLP-1 drugs may hold few benefits beyond physical health, study finds

07/28/2026 - 10:45am

GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic have transformed the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, helping millions of patients better control their blood sugar while reducing cardiovascular risk and, for many, promoting substantial weight loss.

But do those health improvements also translate into better mental health, stronger relationships or greater success at work?

A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper from University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy economist Robert Kaestner and coauthor Cuiping Schiman suggests the answer is more nuanced than popular narratives might imply. Studying adults with diabetes, the researchers found little evidence that taking GLP-1 medications led to measurable changes in mental health, self-rated health, employment or marital status.

“We know these drugs improve health outcomes, and there’s been a great deal of research documenting those benefits,” said Kaestner, a research professor. “What hadn’t really been examined was whether those improvements extended into other parts of people’s lives.”

The question has growing policy significance as insurers and government programs weigh the costs and benefits of expanding access to GLP-1 medications. While the drugs’ medical value is well established, less is known about whether they generate broader social and economic benefits that could strengthen the case for coverage.

To explore that question, Kaestner and Schiman analyzed more than a decade of data from the nationally representative Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, focusing on adults with diabetes between 2012 and 2023. Rather than simply comparing people who happened to take GLP-1 medications with those who did not, the researchers followed the same individuals over time, examining whether their circumstances changed after they began taking the drugs.

They looked for changes in several measures of wellbeing, including symptoms of depression and psychological distress, self-rated health, employment and marital status. Initial comparisons suggested GLP-1 users differed from non-users on some measures, including employment and marriage.

But those differences largely disappeared once the researchers tracked the same people over time, suggesting the apparent gaps reflected differences between the people taking the medications rather than changes caused by the drugs themselves.

The researchers reached similar conclusions whether they examined people after about one year of GLP-1 use or over a longer, two-year period. Across both analyses, they found little evidence that the medications produced meaningful changes in the broader outcomes they studied.

That does not mean the drugs have no effects beyond physical health, Kaestner cautioned. Rather, it suggests those effects may be more subtle—or harder to measure—than many people assume.

“We measured outcomes like whether someone became employed or unemployed, whether they got married or divorced, and standard indicators of mental health,” he said. “Those are important measures, but they don’t necessarily capture changes in self-esteem, relationship quality, or other day-to-day experiences.”

The findings also should not be interpreted as diminishing the medications’ medical value. Instead, Kaestner said, they suggest that the most clearly measurable benefits for adults with diabetes remain the ones already established through clinical research: better glycemic control, weight loss and improvements in physical health.

As GLP-1 medications continue to expand beyond diabetes treatment and become increasingly common for weight management, Kaestner believes more research will be needed to understand whether their broader social effects become more apparent in other populations or over longer periods of time.

“This is still a very new area of research,” he said. “As use continues to grow, understanding these broader consequences will become increasingly important for patients, clinicians and policymakers alike.”

—This article originally appeared on the Harris School website.

How AI is starting to explain stock-price moves

Matt Robinson — 07/27/2026 - 12:48pm

To explain the stock market’s reaction to earnings results, investors and other market participants have a standard tool that has been around for decades: the earnings surprise.

This measure, which compares reported earnings per share against analysts’ consensus earnings-per-share forecasts, indicates how much a company beat or missed analyst predictions.

Its intuitive nature has made it the primary go-to for describing post-announcement stock movements, even though the metric alone explains only about 5% of same-day stock moves. Adding in the rest of what researchers have learned over the years pushes that figure only a little higher.

However, new research by Ralph S.J. Koijen and Bradford Levy of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business suggests that AI can both significantly lift this percentage and help us understand why stock prices move the way that they do. The researchers find that the best AI models explained about 17% of same-day stock moves.

This performance boost was in part attributable to the models “learning” how to predict the moves. AI then recorded its insights into digital notebooks that humans could read and learn from.

Koijen, a distinguished service professor, and Levy, an assistant professor, conducted a live test rather than a simulation using past data. This eliminated the possibility of lookahead bias, which can creep in when a model has access to information that wasn’t known or available for the time period being studied. Their testing involved three frontier models and covered nearly 2,000 earnings announcements made in late 2025 by companies across a range of industries.

The AI models’ approach produced written explanations that could be read and analyzed, suggesting the models seemed to pick up on details in the earnings calls that were not captured solely by the numbers shared.

Some of those details were included in forward guidance given by executives and management commentary, while others were revealed through the way in which speakers discussed results in the call, such as the language used.

Many of the models’ insights were ones that seasoned financial professionals may find intuitive, such as that good news was often already reflected in a stock price. Instead of overreacting to strong results, the models treated those as an expected baseline. Record profits or 20% growth were not enough to move a stock.

Koijen and Levy expect these human-readable explanations can give researchers looking to understand what drives price moves more specific hypotheses to test. And as models advance and become more powerful, the explanations they generate could potentially be applied to smaller, cheaper models with similar results, suggesting a path to scaling these systems at lower cost.

These results are early, the researchers said, adding that most of the variation in stock moves following earnings releases remains unexplained.

So they have launched a competition, sponsored by the trading firm Optiver, and are inviting anyone to submit their own model that predicts how prices respond to earnings-call information. Models can be submitted through explainingmarkets.ai, which contains the contest’s rules.

Koijen said that forecasting these market movements is a “surprisingly challenging task” for people, even those armed with AI.

“Decades of research can explain just 8% of the variation,” he said. “We show that we can lift this to 20%, but there’s still a lot of room to go.”

—This article originally appeared on the Chicago Booth Review website.

New method boosts crop yield and drought resistance using plants’ own genes

Louise Lerner — 07/24/2026 - 10:29am

The way to make a plant grow more may be to take something away.

Trimming a section off a plant gene raised rice harvests up to 25% in new tests by University of Chicago scientists, with better tolerance for drought and heat.

The research builds on a striking finding five years ago, when the group showed that they could insert a gene into plants like rice or potatoes that resulted in a substantial increase in crop yield—but it required using an animal gene in a plant. He and his lab wanted to find a way to create a similar effect, using only genes that come from plants themselves.

The new study, published July 23 in Nature Genetics, lays out the path to do just that. It also reveals a new wrinkle in our understanding of the way that plants regulate their genes.

“My hope is that we are laying a scientific foundation for a new strategy to develop plants that not only offer higher yields, but are resilient to a variety of stresses, from drought to heat to salt,” said He, who is the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The root of the question

He’s lab specializes in understanding the fundamental ways that living things grow. Genetics is extraordinarily complex; three-quarters of a century after the discovery of DNA itself, humans are still untangling the ways that organisms get from DNA to what we see before us.

In 2011, He’s lab made a surprising discovery. They found that RNA—long thought to simply be a middleman between DNA instructions and protein makers—actually had a much more substantial role in which genes get expressed, by placing and removing markers.

That led to the lab’s huge finding in 2021, when the team inserted a common gene from animals known as FTO into plants. This turned out to loosen the RNA-associated reins that restrict plant growth, so plants with this gene grew larger crops and sent out longer roots—making them more resistant to drought.

But He wanted to find a way to do the same thing without inserting a foreign gene, which would be less concerning to consumers worried about genetically modified organisms. Nature often evolves multiple ways to do the same task, so the scientists hoped to find a mechanism in plants themselves that does the same thing.

They did—but it took years of research, and a new wrinkle in our understanding of genetics.

Intrinsic disorder

Virtually all life forms make proteins that carry out the basic functions of cells, such as processing nutrients, carrying signals and removing waste.

But a substantial chunk of the proteins most animals make are called intrinsically disordered regions. Instead of a “typical” protein, which assembles itself into a 3-D structure, these proteins instead exist as flexible segments. At first, scientists thought these segments simply served as links for larger proteins or unimportant tails to proteins, but they have come to understand these intrinsically disordered regions have a much larger and more active role in what happens in a cell.

He and his team encountered these regions during their search for a way to boost growth in plant cells.

Plants don’t have a direct equivalent of the FTO gene found in mammals, but they do have variants of another gene with a similar function, known as ALKBH5; the plant versions are ALKBH9 and ALKBH10.

While trying to understand how these variants worked, the scientists discovered that the intrinsically disordered regions restrict these plant proteins from acting on the packaged DNA in the cell, known as the chromatin.

But if the scientists removed the intrinsically disordered region from the end (known as the C-terminus) of ALKBH9 or 10, they found it instead would spread out around the cell and perform a similar function as the mammal gene FTO—affecting the chromatin and removing the brakes on growth.

The group tested the strategy in rice plants and saw boosts in yield of about 20 to 25%, as well as increased stress resistance.

Removing the C-terminus is a relatively small change. “We show that the growth benefit can be gained by simply expressing the plant’s own ALKBH9 or 10 with deletion of the C-terminus segments,” He said.

“This strategy promoted plant growth and improved rice yield, pointing to a new way of reprogramming chromatin dynamics to boost agricultural productivity using engineered plant proteins” said Liudan Jiang, the first author of the study.

“In principle, we could just perform base-editing of the plant genome to remove the C-terminus of the plant’s intrinsic ALKBH9 or 10,” said He. “That is, we’re not introducing foreign genes, just changing one or a few base pairs in a plant’s existing genome.”

The group is still working to untangle precisely how this change promotes growth and makes the plants so much more resilient to stresses. They are also testing the strategy in other crops, because the ALKBH9 or 10 genes appear in many plants.

Additional authors on the study were Long Zhao, Jiangbo Wei, Bochen Jiang, Yu Xiao, Fan Yang, and Xiaolin Zeng.

Citation: “Intrinsically disordered regions restrain genomic targeting of RNA and histone demethylases in mammals and plants.” Nature Genetics, July 23, 2026.

Funding: The Margot and Tom Pritzker Foundation, Gates Foundation Ag One, Harborview Foundation, Unorthodox Philanthropy.

UChicago Prof. Yu Deng receives Fields Medal, highest honor in mathematics

Maureen Searcy — 07/23/2026 - 11:00am

University of Chicago mathematics Prof. Yu Deng has received the Fields Medal for his contributions toward placing the laws of physics on a rigorous mathematical foundation.

The Fields Medal, announced today at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia, is awarded every four years to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement. In the absence of a Nobel Prize for mathematics, the Fields Medal is regarded as the highest professional honor a mathematician can attain.

“On behalf of the whole University of Chicago community, I offer warm congratulations to Professor Deng. Today he is receiving the highest recognition for the rigor and significance of his contributions to mathematics,” said UChicago President Paul Alivisatos. “In his work, we see a scholar who has pursued fundamental questions to great depths and illuminated new understanding in the process. He has solved a problem that puzzled generations of scholars and in so doing, he is a true exemplar of what dedication to knowledge creation can achieve. We are proud of his accomplishments and that he is a member of our community of scholars.”

Deng was honored for addressing one of a famous set of problems laid out more than 125 years ago, at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians, by German mathematician and philosopher David Hilbert. These problems have since become benchmarks of progress in the field.

Specifically, Deng and his collaborators cracked a longstanding problem within the overarching effort to mathematically connect the equations governing the motion of gases from the smallest to the largest scales.

The award also recognizes Deng’s research on the equations that govern wave dynamics that laid the foundation for this historic result.

“Yu’s beautiful and original work resolves a fundamental problem in mathematical physics that goes back to Hilbert more than a century ago,” said Frank Calegari, professor and chair of UChicago’s Mathematics Department. “It also introduces powerful new methods that will shape future research. This is a landmark achievement.”

Deng is the 11th current or former UChicago mathematician to become a Fields Medalist.

"This is a great honor for me—an important recognition for my works with collaborators and for the field that I am representing," said Deng.

A pattern of problem-solving

Deng’s mathematical roots run deep. He grew up in Shenzhen, China, where his computer programmer father would take him hiking, giving him little questions in combinatorics—the branch of mathematics focused on counting—to solve along the way.

In his youth, Deng displayed a gift for problem-solving, excelling in both math competitions and tournaments of Go, an ancient Chinese strategy game played with black and white stones on a grid. Deng said he entertained the idea of becoming a professional Go player before devoting himself to academia.

In 2006, at 16 years old, he represented China at the International Mathematical Olympiad and won a gold medal. “At that time, I realized, okay, so maybe I do have some talent in math,” said Deng.

The following year, he was admitted to Peking University, later transferring to MIT, where he became a Putnam Fellow in the 2010 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Deng earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 2011, followed by a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2015. He joined UChicago in 2024.

The breakthrough that earned Deng the Fields Medal, however, had unexpected beginnings. While he was spending a semester at Brown University’s Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics in 2021, a thought came to him while in a Korean fried chicken stall in Providence, Rhode Island.

Deng wasn’t thinking about a new project, but in a moment of chicken-fueled insight, he hit on an idea: a way to solve complex problems by breaking them into smaller, more manageable pieces. This laid the foundation for his eventual resolution to Hilbert’s sixth problem—a challenge to ground physics in rigorous mathematics.

A way to understand nature

Deng works on analysis of partial differential equations, or PDEs, as a way of understanding nature.

A differential equation describes how something evolves: an ordinary differential equation might describe how a falling object speeds up due to gravity, but a partial differential equation handles questions with more than one dimension, such as how temperature spreads across both space and time.

Deng’s work involves PDEs connected to probability.

“There is a lot of randomness in this world,” he said, “and we need a mathematical way to capture it.”

Prior to turning his attention to Hilbert’s sixth, Deng’s focus was using PDEs to study wave turbulence, looking at how energy spreads through systems of waves, like those found on the surface of the ocean or waves in quantum systems. This work proved to be vital to his award-winning breakthrough.

His goal was to mathematically prove that energy spreads predictably, despite the tendency of waves to influence each other, shaping and changing future activity.

Statistical predictions work by averaging across large numbers to determine what is typical. This can only work if the elements work independently. When waves build relationships with other waves, they are no longer acting alone, and it is not possible to determine how a typical wave behaves; you can’t make predictions if you don’t know what typically happens.

Deng and his collaborator Zaher Hani, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, accounted for those behavior-changing interactions by constructing a mathematical ledger that could capture every possible pattern.

These patterns range from interactions where waves meet and then continue on their separate ways, to encounters that form such a strong, behavior-affecting relationship that a feedback loop forms.

For extremely short time periods, the most strongly correlated, disruptive interactions were negligible, and the predictability of wave turbulence mathematically held.

However, with more time comes more frequent and complex interactions, and more opportunity to forge shared histories. The team needed a way to prove that the math held over longer periods.

It was in that chicken stall that a thought occurred to Deng: “What if we try to divide long time intervals into short time intervals?”

That is, what if they could cut up those interaction histories into shorter, more manageable segments?

Deng and Hani developed an algorithm that cuts up the complex patterns. The segments, representing smaller periods of time along the interaction record, still add up, but the entries are now small enough to manage statistically.

What their results showed was that even over long time periods, the impact of those coupled interactions is negligible; averaging is possible; and statistical predictability holds.

Bolstered by this success, Deng set his sights on a new—yet very old—problem to solve.

Hilbert’s challenge

One mission often associated with Hilbert’s sixth problem is bridging the equations describing the behavior of gases at the smallest, middle, and largest scales.

The motion of individual gas particles is described by Newtonian mechanics. The likelihood of finding particles in certain places at certain speeds is described by the Boltzmann equation. The behavior of gas as a continuous medium is described by the Navier-Stokes equations.

The ultimate goal is to show that each set of equations logically leads to the next. The link between the middle and largest scales had already been established. But the link between the smallest to the middle scales, Newtonian to Boltzmann equations, was still elusive.

Ludwig Boltzmann believed his equation, developed in 1872, followed from Newton’s laws, but only if the particles don’t collide repeatedly—they must move independently.

Proving that assumption mathematically was the challenge. In 1975, mathematician Oscar Lanford showed this proof, but only for very short time periods. Over longer periods of time, particles have more opportunities to collide more than once. There needed to be a way to analyze an impossibly large number of collision patterns.

Deng and Hani realized that their research on wave turbulence could translate to particle collisions where repeated interactions build shared histories that threaten a particle’s independence. This makes it harder to statistically predict the behavior of the group at the middle scale from the motion of its individual members at the smallest scale.

At a conference in 2023, Deng and Hani met Xiao Ma, a recent graduate from Princeton who studied under Deng’s former advisor, Alexandru Ionescu.

“We realized that he's very good in these fields,” said Deng, “so we invited him into the project.”

Particles behave very differently than waves, so the trio had to incorporate those differences, but they were able to use the same approach: a ledger to record every possible collision history—whether a particle pair had collided once or 100 times, for instance—and a cutting algorithm to break down the most complex histories into manageable pieces.

They started with an easier scenario: gas in an infinite amount of space, where particles have room to disperse and eventually stop colliding all together. They then moved on to gases in a box, where the particles are increasingly more likely to re-collide, creating more complicated patterns.

They found that, while particle re-collisions happen, especially inside a bounded box where particles have plenty of opportunity to meet repeatedly, the impact of re-collisions on the overall independence of the system was negligible.

Deng and his team mathematically proved Boltzmann’s assumption and completed the chain. Hilbert’s sixth problem, at least in this specific case, was resolved, and a new methodology for analyzing complex interactions was introduced. Deng, Hani, and Ma revealed their proof in 2025.

As for what’s next: “There are many things I am interested in,” said, Deng, “including long-time propagation of randomness in PDEs, and general critical problems in statistical physics.”

In addition to the 2026 Fields Medal, Deng has received the Gold Medal of the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, a Clay Mathematics Institute Research Award, and the Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics from the American Mathematical Society. He has also received a Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, an ICBS Frontiers of Science Award, an MCA (Mathematical Council of the Americas) Prize, an Oberwolfach Prize, and an Antonio Ambrosetti Medal.

“Yu’s extraordinary achievement adds to the University’s and the Division’s long tradition of innovative, foundational mathematics,” said Ka Yee C. Lee, dean of the Physical Sciences Division. “This richly deserved distinction recognizes Yu’s accomplishments in bridging across mathematics and physics, and his promise of shaping the course of mathematical inquiry.”

Argonne marks 80 years of scientific discovery

07/22/2026 - 12:25pm

In 1946, the United States was on the cusp of a new energy age.

Chartered to study peaceful uses for atomic power, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory helped usher in that pivotal era. Just over five years after its founding on July 1, 1946, the lab designed and operated the world’s first usable electricity from nuclear energy, illuminating four light bulbs at its Experimental Breeder Reactor-I.

Those four glowing bulbs gave way to an industry that today powers countries around the world, including the U.S., where nuclear energy accounts for about one-fifth of the national electricity supply. But nuclear science is just one part of Argonne’s history of groundbreaking research. The lab has expanded far beyond its initial charter to become a leading research institution in supercomputing, quantum information science, X-ray science, advanced manufacturing, energy storage and fundamental research in materials science, physics and other fields.

The University of Chicago has managed Argonne since the lab's founding as an outgrowth of the Manhattan Project. Since 2005, the lab has been operated through UChicago Argonne, LLC, whose contract the DOE renewed in 2026 for another five years.

On the edge of its 80th anniversary, the lab has had some of its biggest developments yet. In 2025, it launched the Aurora exascale supercomputer, capable of performing more than a quintillion calculations per second. That’s an almost unimaginable leap from the lab’s first digital computer in 1953, AVIDAC, a pioneering machine for its time.

Also in 2025, the upgraded Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility, set a new world record for electron beam emittance, confirming its status as the brightest synchrotron X-ray light source in the world. And Q-NEXT, a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Argonne, in partnership with DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, was renewed for another five years.

The APS is one of five flagship DOE Office of Science user facilities at Argonne that enable nearly 8,000 users annually to conduct critically important research. These also include Aurora’s home, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility; the Center for Nanoscale Materials, where scientists engineer matter at the atomic scale for advances in quantum science, microelectronics and ultrasensitive sensors; and the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), where researchers study the structure of atomic nuclei and the forces that govern matter in the universe. In 2025, ATLAS marked its 40th year of operation.

But facilities are only part of the equation. Breakthroughs emerge from the combination of exceptional people, powerful tools and increasingly intelligent scientific systems. In addition to employing world-class scientific and technical staff, Argonne has forged relationships with top universities, companies and the community of researchers who depend on the lab’s powerful tools.

These ties not only bring ideas into the lab but also transform them into real-world innovations that benefit society: better batteries, more efficient engines, new medicines and more.

Looking to the 21st century—and beyond

Science and technology have dramatically changed daily life over the past 80 years, but AI promises to pack even more advances into ever shorter time frames. Argonne is helping lead the way, playing a key role in DOE’s Genesis Mission to transform American science and innovation through AI. The lab will continue to innovate in autonomous discovery, integrating AI with automation and robotics, creating systems that can rapidly design, conduct and refine experiments, dramatically accelerating the pace of scientific discovery.

Argonne and the Argonne Quantum Institute are also a driving force within a growing quantum science hub in the Midwest, uncovering the foundational knowledge needed to build an entirely different way of sensing, processing and storing information.

At the same time, ongoing work at the lab seeks to boost energy storage research, development and deployment; strengthen and secure critical-mineral and critical-materials supply chains; develop next-generation nuclear reactors and safeguard the electric grid. Through these and other endeavors, the U.S. benefits from its long history of investment in world-leading science.

The lab’s 80th anniversary celebration includes OutLoud lectures throughout the year and an AI Roadshow with live conversations and panels in Chicagoland communities.

—This article was originally published on the Argonne website.

CQE-led Bloch Quantum Tech Hub raises $55 million to build U.S. quantum supply chain

07/21/2026 - 03:48pm

The Bloch Quantum Tech Hub has won nearly $55 million to build the nation a quantum supply chain following a U.S. Economic Development Administration award that positions the Illinois-Wisconsin-Indiana region as the center of quantum manufacturing.

The multisector project, led by the University of Chicago-based Chicago Quantum Exchange, leverages the Midwest’s existing manufacturing capacity, talent and industry base to overcome a major hurdle to U.S. quantum growth—a reliance on foreign imports that slows innovation, creates security risks and raises production costs. A $30 million EDA award, announced July 20, unlocks additional commitments from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the University of Chicago, Infleqtion, One Region in Northwest Indiana, IonQ, IBM and others. It also paves the way for thousands of new quantum-focused jobs.

“Advancing the frontier of quantum technologies and realizing the benefits of these new powerful new methods and systems will require deep collaboration across academia, government, and industry to develop the necessary talent, infrastructure, and manufacturing ecosystem,“ said UChicago President Paul Alivisatos. “The University of Chicago is grateful for this new federal support and is proud to play an important role in bringing the promise and potential of the Bloch Quantum Tech Hub to fruition in the years ahead.“

The Bloch was one of six U.S. Tech Hubs to earn awards in this round of funding by the EDA, an agency of the Department of Commerce. The Bloch (pronounced “block”) is among the 31 original U.S. Tech Hubs designated by the EDA in 2023.

“The Bloch will drive U.S. quantum leadership, strengthen national security, and create jobs by eliminating barriers to domestic quantum manufacturing, a challenge that the Midwest is uniquely equipped to address,” said David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor of Quantum Engineering and Physics at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, director of the CQE, principal investigator of The Bloch, and a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. “Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana are all top 10 manufacturing states, and the Midwest is home to a diverse industry base, world-leading research institutions, and a large talent pool.“

The investment is the latest boost to the Midwest, which is fast becoming one of the most influential quantum hubs in the world.

“The quantum boom is happening right here in Illinois, helping us create jobs, cure diseases, and strengthen our national security,” said U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. “After years of advocating alongside Governor Pritzker and local leaders, this investment will go a long way to help support the Bloch and our Midwest neighbors. The sky is the limit for what quantum can help us achieve, and Illinois is leading the way.”

The U.S. has signaled its strong interest in scaling a quantum manufacturing supply chain. In May, the Commerce Department announced a landmark $2 billion federal investment in nine quantum companies, including $1 billion in funding to IBM to establish of America’s first purpose-built, pure-play quantum foundry for advanced superconducting quantum wafers. In June, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling on federal agencies to prioritize quantum technology by bolstering the domestic ecosystem for quantum supply chains, expanding the workforce, addressing security risks, and more.

Quantum, made in America

U.S. Tech Hubs were designed to drive economic growth by investing in the maturation, testing, and production of emerging critical technologies, such as quantum. The award to The Bloch builds upon deep investments in quantum over the past decade.

“This award is a powerful validation of Illinois’ vision to become the global capital of quantum—helping us accelerate innovation, strengthen supply chains and create good-paying jobs,“ said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. “Together with our historic investments in the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, our state is building an innovation ecosystem to drive economic growth and shape the future of quantum for decades to come—with Illinois and the United States in a leadership role.“

The Bloch Quantum’s EDA grant funded four interconnected projects, which will:

Transition Midwest quantum companies to scaled manufacturing by providing tools and resources, including a shared quantum sensing testbed at Purdue Northwest, automation software through Infleqtion, and technical assistance funds;
Provide existing manufacturers with the tools, expertise, and customer relationships to become part of a scaled domestic quantum supply chain, a project that the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) will lead;
Strengthen security for U.S. quantum technologies and mobilize a projected $300 million in additional investments;
Build a facility at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park that will bring key players together, giving suppliers access to customers.

Together, The Bloch’s projects integrate key components and processes, enabling quantum stakeholders to create efficient quantum production cycles. Right now, many of the materials, components, and subsystems used in quantum technologies are imported from other countries.

Quantum technologies are poised to deliver advances in medicine, finance and national defense—and their transformative potential has sparked a global race with countries like the U.S., China and Japan investing billions of dollars.

Fueling the ‘Quantum Prairie’

The Bloch’s work is projected to drive billions of dollars in economic impact. IMEC identified more than 60 regional manufacturers that are ready now to become part of the quantum supply chain — and the Bloch’s work is projected to map hundreds more.

“Our region’s deep bench of expertise combined and the CQE’s years of intentional, proactive work to build an integrated quantum ecosystem have created a powerful foundation for The Bloch’s work,” said CQE CEO Kate Timmerman. “We are grateful that the EDA’s support will enable The Bloch to make this vital contribution to the nation while driving job creation and economic value in the Quantum Prairie.”

The CQE region is home to leading universities and national labs; more than two dozen quantum startups; and a growing roster of facilities including the Roberts Impact Lab, a commercialization center and regional hub for business growth under development by Purdue University Northwest; Hyde Park Labs, which provides access to shared quantum equipment; a National Quantum Algorithm Center; and the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park, which will include the DARPA-Illinois Quantum Proving Ground, shared cryogenic facilities, and more.

Launched in 2017, the UChicago-based CQE is anchored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Northwestern University, and Purdue University and includes nearly 70 industry, nonprofit, and international partners.

—Adapted for a story that first appeared on the Chicago Quantum Exchange website.

In UChicago’s Development Innovation Lab, undergraduates assist research that can reach ‘millions’ worldwide

Patrick Maguire — 07/20/2026 - 10:15am

At the University of Chicago’s Development Innovation Lab (DIL), undergraduate researchers contribute to studies of public health, education and economic development in low- and middle-income countries.

Working with faculty and policy experts, students analyze data, assess outcomes and support fieldwork that informs government and community interventions around the world.

Led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Kremer, the lab uses economic research and randomized controlled trials to evaluate large-scale development programs in partnership with governments, nonprofits and community organizations.

“Undergraduates at the Lab contribute to research that helps inform policymakers and community organizations in multiple countries," said Kremer. “That understanding has already had an impact on the work of international NGOs, and continues to inform global institutions like the World Bank.”

Undergraduate students work on those problems alongside faculty, field experts and international partners, forming what DIL director of policy Terrina Govender described as a “student research body” that supports the day-to-day work of the lab. Students run calculations, assist with coding, conduct literature reviews, prepare policy summaries and help design field studies.

“We’re doing research to inform policy,” said Govender. “We work on problems that have the potential to scale to millions, or hundreds of millions, of people.”

Students also engage with Kremer and collaborate with a large team of researchers across policy areas, giving them insight into how partnerships are developed and how projects move from design to implementation.

“They get to see the full value chain,” said Govender. “We’re not doing research in a vacuum.”

From research to real-world impact

The lab’s commitment to real-world impact is what inspired rising third-year economics major Himyar Kamaka to join the lab last fall.

Growing up in Jakarta, Indonesia, Kamaka observed the kinds of public health, education and infrastructure challenges that many rapidly developing countries face. He developed an early interest in development economics—which he wrote about in his UChicago application essay—and a belief that research-informed policy could make a difference in lives and communities.

“The fact that there’s something that could be done makes me excited,” Kamaka said. “I could make a little contribution to developing countries, like where I grew up.”

Since joining the DIL, Kamaka has worked on projects related to water infrastructure and public health in multiple countries. One of his first assignments involved reviewing survey and GPS data from a water chlorination intervention in Uganda and Malawi, where a partner organization was evaluating the effectiveness of chlorine dispensers installed in rural villages.

More recently, Kamaka contributed to a project analyzing the distribution of water infrastructure systems across India. Working with publicly available government data, he analyzed records covering roughly 600,000 villages and 1.1 million water infrastructure schemes. The project aimed to create what Kamaka described as “a clear picture” of village-level water infrastructure across India, including where service gaps remain and how different types of systems are distributed.

Preparing the data for analysis required learning new technical tools. After realizing that spreadsheets would not be practical for a project of that size, Kamaka taught himself SQLite, a database management tool, to organize and structure the datasets. The process took weeks, but Kamaka described the experience enthusiastically: “It was really cool.”

Like Kamaka, rising fourth-year economics major Marcus Kuo was drawn to DIL by the opportunity to connect technical research with real-world policy questions.

Kuo, who grew up in the Bay Area, developed a passion for economics in high school. He came to UChicago knowing that he wanted to do research and joined DIL during his second year.

“DIL stood out to me,” Kuo said, because the lab’s work can improve people’s lives in “a scalable, cost-effective way.”

Like Kamaka, Kuo first worked on the chlorination project in Uganda and Malawi, supporting fieldwork for a safe water program in roughly 200 villages. He helped design survey instruments, coordinate with a survey firm and review incoming data from the field each day.

Those daily field checks made the impact of his work tangible. When he and his colleagues identified issues in data submitted by field enumerators, the survey partners in Uganda and Malawi made quick corrections to the data collection process. Collaborating with colleagues thousands of miles away—and seeing the results of that collaboration reflected in the data each day—was formative for Kuo.

“I was like, wow, I’m impacting the quality of the data being checked in real time,” he said.

Last fall, Kuo transitioned from water projects to an air quality study in Colombian schools, focusing on increasing the use of classroom air filters. He’s hoping the work broadens his experience.

“I wanted to try something outside of water and learn more about a different context,” Kuo said. “Air quality in schools—that was something new that I could do.”

His current project focuses on increasing the use of classroom air filters in Colombian schools. Kuo said the work involves not only statistical analysis, but also collaborative brainstorming about intervention design, proposal development and identifying what additional data researchers may need to collect.

The experience has also shaped how he thinks about research as a method of learning. Rather than learning development economics primarily through coursework, Kuo said the best training has come from learning along active researchers and global partners.

“I feel like the best way to learn about it is just to go onto the project, read the background literature and try things out,” he said. “You learn as you go.”

A rotational model for undergraduate research

Behind these projects is a lab structure designed to give undergraduates sustained, varied experience across multiple research portfolios.

DIL operates as a large, multi-project lab. Students can rank their interest in available assignments, and lab leadership will match them with teams based on project needs, technical requirements and students’ skills and interests.

Students are also contributors to a broader research ecosystem and vibrant community within the lab. Kuo said he was initially surprised by how collaborative the lab felt, especially given its size. Most DIL project teams, he said, are relatively small. Undergraduate researchers are encouraged to contribute ideas during discussions about research design and implementation.

The collaborative structure of the lab shapes both the research process and students’ experiences within it.

“A lot happens at lunchtime,” Govender joked, describing regular group lunches where students and researchers talk about their projects, their coursework and their lives.

Those lunchtime conversations often evolve into discussions about graduate school, policy careers and the different ways students might apply research skills after leaving the University.

“I think of it as mentorship,” Govender said, “but I also think of it as illuminating careers they might not know, or paths they might not be super familiar with.”

Part of that mentorship involves helping students think about how research findings are communicated outside academic settings. Govender said she often works with students on presenting technical analyses in ways that are accessible to policymakers and nontechnical audiences.

“I work with them when they produce analysis to make it relevant and comprehensible for a policy audience,” she said.

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

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.”