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Could AI help us be more thoughtful voters?

Manasa Reddy — 04/17/2026 - 09:05am

Democracy depends on an informed electorate.

But diving into the context swirling around ballot measures, where some of today’s consequential policy questions in the country are now decided, is no easy task. The last decade has seen social media inflame passions and amplify misinformation. Can newer forms of technology nudge us to reason more carefully?

University of Chicago Assoc. Prof. Chenhao Tan and his team hope so. They’ve developed CivicChats, an AI platform designed to help voters engage more critically and thoughtfully with the issues shaping their communities.

Tan is an associate professor and the faculty co-director of Novel Intelligence at the UChicago Data Science Institute. CivicChats grew out of his research on the relationship between language, technology and political discourse. His lab’s prior work has used computational tools to study how political speech divides and persuades—including research that developed novel metrics for measuring the divisiveness and uniqueness of presidential rhetoric. That body of work diagnosed how existing technology such as social media tends to reinforce division rather than support deliberation.

CivicChats is, in many ways, a response to that diagnosis—a tool built around the question of what AI should do to support democratic participation, not just what it can do.

The team, which includes collaborators at the Australian National University, began with the premise that good civic reasoning involves understanding what’s at stake, grappling with competing considerations and examining the values driving your own position. Many popular large language models fall short of this standard, tending toward sycophancy, simply agreeing with users rather than challenging or clarifying their thinking.

“Endorsements replace deliberation rather than facilitate it,” said Mourad Heddaya, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science and member of the CivicChats team. “Campaign messaging is designed to persuade, not clarify. And AI assistants tend to accept your frame and move too quickly toward a tidy answer. We wanted to build something that actually sits with the tensions in a political question.”

Building a chatbot that genuinely supports civic reasoning meant paying careful attention to what makes a productive political conversation. The team designed CivicChats to push back on user positions and probe reasoning rather than simply agreeing. To systematically assess how well it does this, the team also built CivicEval, an evaluation framework that reviews conversations against structured rubrics, assessing whether the chatbot is being evenhanded, appropriately challenging and avoiding sycophantic tendencies.

The CivicChats platform offers three conversation modes depending on what users are looking for.

These include a Q&A mode, which helps users understand what a measure does and what its main considerations are, presenting relevant information evenhandedly without favoring one side. There’s also an argumentative mode, which presents strong arguments opposing the user’s position, helping them consider alternative perspectives and stress-test their views. Finally, the reflective mode asks questions about what values are driving a user’s reaction, what their position depends on and what it would take to change their view.

Users can browse measures on their state’s ballot or search nationally by topic or status to learn more about an issue and the policy options under consideration. As they discuss a measure, they can record their position—yes, no or undecided—and update it as their thinking develops.

Whether good chatbot behavior translates into better outcomes for voters is a question the team plans to investigate next. A preregistered user study is underway to compare CivicChats’ three modes against non-chatbot baselines across several measures of civic reasoning: voter understanding of ballot measures and their tradeoffs, decision confidence and the quality of participants’ justifications for their positions.

The team is actively seeking partners and participants for the study. If you’re interested, you can try CivicChats at civicchats.org or reach out to Mourad Heddaya (mourad@uchicago.edu) to learn more.

—This article was originally published on the UChicago Data Science Institute blog.

Samuel Peltzman to receive 2026 Norman Maclean Faculty Award

04/15/2026 - 11:45am

Named for a renowned University of Chicago professor who shaped minds with his sense of duty and dedication to students, the Norman Maclean Faculty Award honors those who do the same.

As part of the 2026 Alumni Awards program, Prof. Emeritus Samuel Peltzman, PhD’65, will receive the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for his extraordinary contribution to teaching and student life at UChicago.

Established in 1997, the annual award recognizes those who carry on the spirit of Maclean, PhD’40, the acclaimed author of A River Runs Through It, who taught at UChicago for 40 years.

The awards are presented by the UChicago Alumni Association and the Alumni Board, which also have recognized eight alumni recipients for their professional achievements and service to the UChicago community. All of these honorees will be celebrated during Alumni Weekend from April 30 to May 3.

Learn more about this year’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award honoree:

Sam Peltzman is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the UChicago Booth School of Business. He has served on the Chicago Booth faculty since 1973, and previously taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also served as senior staff economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Peltzman’s research has focused on issues related to the interface between the public sector and the private economy. He has authored and edited several books and journal articles on government regulation and industrial organization. This includes work on banking, automobile safety, pharmaceutical innovation, the political economy of public education, and the economic analysis of voters and legislators.

Peltzman is an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics. He is the director emeritus of UChicago’s George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, which he led from 1991 to 2005.

UChicago announces 2026 Alumni Award honorees

04/15/2026 - 11:45am

The University of Chicago Alumni Association and the Alumni Board have announced the recipients of the 2026 Alumni Awards.

The awards recognize accomplished UChicago graduates for their outstanding professional achievement, service to society and contributions to the UChicago community. This year’s honorees span a wide range of fields, including global economic policy, theoretical physics, healthcare innovation, nonprofit leadership, public service and finance.

The recipients of the Professional Achievement Award, Early Career Achievement Award, Recent Alumni Service Award, Alumni Service Medal and Alumni Service Award will be honored during Alumni Weekend from April 30 to May 3.

In addition, Prof. Emeritus Samuel Peltzman, PhD’65, will be recognized with the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for extraordinary contributions to teaching and student experience.

Learn more about the 2026 Alumni Award honorees:

Professional Achievement Award

Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, PhD’05, MBA’05, is an academic and policymaker whose scholarship and public service have enabled emerging economies to navigate crises, growth and institutional renewal. A tenured professor of finance at the Indian School of Business, he has advanced evidence-based approaches to growth, financial stability and development in the Global South.

As chief economic adviser to the Indian government, Subramanian served as the principal economic voice during the COVID-19 crisis. His three landmark Economic Surveys of India shaped national discourse on post-pandemic recovery and laid the intellectual foundation for India’s approach to self-reliance, anchored in competitive markets, policy autonomy and inclusive growth. Subsequently, as India’s executive director at the International Monetary Fund, he brought analytical independence and conviction-driven leadership to foster evidence-based reflection while leading the fund’s engagement with South Asia during periods of acute economic stress. Through his engagement with multilateral institutions, best-selling books and public discourse, he has sought to advance analytical rigor and fairness in global economic policy. Subramanian also earned degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Richard “Dick” Chandler, MBA’66, also earned degrees from Princeton University and Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain, all with honors. For 12 years, he worked in corporate America for Bell & Howell and later Sara Lee Corporation. He then led three venture-funded start-ups. Sunrise Medical, which he founded in 1983, became a leading global manufacturer of rehabilitation and respiratory equipment with distribution in 100+ countries and a New York Stock Exchange listing when it was sold to private equity in 2000.

In 2003, Chandler became an adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Montana business schools. Over the next 18 years, he taught MBA courses in entrepreneurship and more, for which he was voted outstanding professor by five UC Irvine graduating classes.

In 2017 a Princeton classmate asked Chandler to support a start-up non-governmental organization called Bulamu Healthcare International that operated pop-up medical camps in Uganda. It provided free primary healthcare for the rural poor using only locally trained and licensed Ugandan clinicians. Sadly, a few weeks after Chandler agreed to join the board, his classmate unexpectedly passed away, and he found himself as Bulamu’s first CEO.

Over the next eight years, Bulamu annual revenues grew from $100,000 in 2016 to $7 million in 2025. During that period, it provided free primary care to 288,000 Ugandans, performed free surgeries for 15,000 patients and trained health workers while supplying neonatal care equipment in 104 government maternity hospitals. Chandler applied basic management disciplines novel in Uganda that produced dramatic improvements in patient care and saved many lives.

John E. Milad, AB’94, has made a significant impact on healthcare innovation through his leadership of life sciences companies, venture investments in medical technologies and commitment to improving patient outcomes.

As CEO and co-founder of Quanta Dialysis Technologies, he led the development and global launch of an award-winning portable hemodialysis system that is transforming kidney care delivery for patients with end-stage kidney disease. His leadership has fostered companies that serve millions of patients.

Milad studied political science at UChicago and, after working on Wall Street, moved to the United Kingdom, where he has lived for the past 25 years. At Quanta, he secured the largest venture funding round ever in his industry and built a transatlantic team of almost 300 people across the U.K. and United States. He currently serves as CEO of ERS Genomics, the global licensing leader for Nobel-Prize-winning CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology.

He is a recipient of the MacRobert Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the U.K.'s most prestigious prize for engineering innovation, and was named to the Sunday Times list of top "Game-Changing Innovators and Entrepreneurs." Milad served for six years on the Invention for Innovation (i4i) selection committee for the British National Institute for Health Research, evaluating translational research funding for medical innovation. He serves as a non-executive director at Northern Venture Trust plc and as a trustee of Kidney Research UK.

Marc Kamionkowski, PhD’91, is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught since 2011.

Before that, he was on the faculty of Columbia University and then the California Institute of Technology, where he was the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics. He is a theoretical physicist who has worked on a broad range of topics in theoretical astrophysics, cosmology and particle theory.

Kamionkowski is known for early work on the possibility that dark matter could be composed of elementary particles and more recent work on the hypothesis that the dark matter may be black holes. He has made important contributions to the study of dark energy in the late and early universe. His work on the cosmic microwave background polarization is widely credited for helping provide the science case for a suite of increasingly precise experiments that have over the past quarter century revolutionized our understanding of the early universe. He is also known for the many students and postdocs he has mentored over the years.

Early Career Achievement Award

William Godwin, JD’10, serves as senior advisor to the Calumet Township Trustee and principal of Garard Strategies LLC, a pro-social external affairs consulting firm. In 2023, President Joe Biden appointed him a White House fellow, leading Godwin to serve in the Executive Office of the President until 2024. In September 2025, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton appointed him a commissioner on the Gary/Chicago International Airport Board. From 2020 until 2023, he served as president of the Gary City Council and 1st district councilman. He is the founder and managing broker of Godwin Realty Company, a real estate brokerage licensed in Indiana and Illinois.

Previously, he served as a commissioner on the Gary Port Authority, board president of the South Shore Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, and external affairs manager at the non-profit Communities In Schools of Chicago. He served as associate vice-chancellor of Workforce & Economic Development at City Colleges of Chicago, managing district-wide workforce partnerships. A native of Jackson, Tenn., William earned his B.A. in sociology, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University, and completed the year-long General Course at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He also earned a master’s degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary. William is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in higher education leadership and policy studies at Howard University. He is an attorney member of the Illinois State Bar Association.

Recent Alumni Service Award

Olivia Miller, AB’21, is co-president of the Chicago Women’s Alliance (CWA), an affinity group for UChicago alumni and friends. Throughout her time on the Board, Miller has had extensive involvement in CWA’s programming and events. Her events are widely attended and engage hundreds of diverse alumni through intellectual and social activities, often offering alumni the opportunity to share their expertise and teach others. In particular, Miller is passionate about engaging recent alumni in University initiatives. As a leader in UChicago’s new Alumni Amplify program, she leverages social media to cultivate online engagement among recent alumni from all around the globe. Miller also enjoys encouraging community within the College as co-chair for her 5th Reunion.

Outside of her volunteer work with the University, Miller is an Associate on Morgan Stanley’s ultra-high-net-worth lending team in New York City. Miller is honored to come back home to UChicago in her next chapter as an MBA candidate at the Booth School of Business.

Alumni Service Medal

Jeffrey Schvimer, AB’79, MBA’86, studied English language and literature before attending Chicago Booth and specializing in finance with a concentration in statistics. Schvimer has a long history of service to the University. He has served on several reunion committees, including as a co-chair. He also served seven years on the Alumni Board, including as its president. During his time on the Executive Committee, he was part of the leadership team that reorganized and redirected the mission of the board. He has also served on the Alumni Schools Committee interviewing prospective students. Schvimer has volunteered in several other ways when the University has called, such as in speaking engagements, mentoring and career counseling.

His primary career was in both institutional and high-net-worth investment management with Morgan Stanley, Mesirow Financial and PNC Bank. He ended his investment career in 2018 as investment director for PNC in Chicago and the Midwest. Thereafter, Schvimer served as chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Oodles, a startup company founded by another former UChicago alum, in which he had been a seed investor. Now retired, he spends his time writing, volunteering and playing golf.

Alumni Service Award

Lara Druyan, AB’89, serves on the advisory council of the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. Previously, she served on the University’s Alumni Board, where she was a member of the Executive Committee and chaired the Awards Committee. Druyan has also been a long-standing member of the San Francisco Bay Area Leadership Council, which supports College students’ job searches for summer internships and full-time opportunities. Her service to the University began immediately after college graduation, when she headed alumni interviewing in the Bay Area for two years—she continues to work closely with college admissions, serving as an active ambassador in the community. She has also helped launch the Chicago Society in the Bay Area, judged the New Venture Competition and has served on every reunion committee since her 10th, co-chairing her 30th.

Lara is a founding general partner of secondary investment fund Private Liquidity Partners, and a venture partner at Silicon Valley Data Capital, a seed- and early-stage venture firm, where she served as a managing director for five years. Previously, she was the managing director and head of innovation at the Royal Bank of Canada. Druyan also serves on the boards of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Bancorp USA, Healogix, an analytics and research firm in the health care sector, and Synfini, a computational chemistry start-up. She is also a member of Astia’s Investor Council, which promotes female entrepreneurship. Druyan graduated with honors from UChicago and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Four UChicago scholars receive 2026 Guggenheim Fellowships

Tori Lee — 04/14/2026 - 10:21am

Guggenheim Fellowships have been awarded this year to four scholars from the University of Chicago. Announced April 14, the distinguished writers and scholars join the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, honored for “prior career achievement and exceptional promise.”

Profs. Neil Brenner, Claudia Brittenham, Faith Hillis and Alexandra Z. Worden are among the 223 distinguished individuals selected from a pool of nearly 5,000 applicants. As established in 1925 by founder Senator Simon Guggenheim, each fellow receives a monetary stipend to pursue work under “the freest possible conditions.”

“Our new class of Guggenheim Fellows is representative of the world’s best thinkers, innovators, and creators in art, science and scholarship,” said Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. “As the Foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead. We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”

Several UChicago alumni also join the 2026 class of Guggenheim Fellows, including poet Christopher Kempf, PhD’20; comparative urbanist Xuefei Ren, PhD’07; and historians Andrew Sartori, PhD’03, and Eric Zolov, MA'90, PhD’95.

Neil Brenner

Brenner, PhD’99, is the Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology, director of the Urban Theory Lab, and chair of the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU). He is a critical urban theorist, sociologist and geographer whose writing and teaching focus on the theoretical, conceptual and methodological dimensions of urban questions. A key concern of his current work is to explore the connections between the capitalist form of urbanization and the planetary socioenvironmental crises of our time.

Brenner will use the fellowship to continue work on a research project and forthcoming book titled Into the Shatter Zone: Planetary Urbanization, Fossil Energy, and Biospheric Crisis. The joint project, with environmental historian and geographer Swarnabh Ghosh (Harvard University), offers a geohistorical reinterpretation of capitalist urbanization in the context of intensifying climate and ecological breakdown.

The book argues that non-city territories and environments—"operational landscapes" of extraction, energy, agriculture, logistics, and waste—are the sociometabolic foundation of capitalist urbanization.

“This proposition requires us to rethink such basic questions as how cities contribute to carbon emissions or biodiversity loss, or more generally, global warming or overpollution,” Brenner said. “It also means we need to rethink, on a fundamental level, the question of urban 'sustainability' to include the question of how cities are supplied with materials, energy, and food, and how they process their waste.”

Claudia Brittenham

A professor in the Departments of Art History and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, Brittenham's research focuses on the art of ancient Mesoamerica, with particular attention to the ways that the materiality of art and the politics of style contribute to our understanding of the nature and meaning of images. Her most recent book Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica, explores the distance between ancient experiences of works of art and the modern practice of museum display.

During her fellowship year, Brittenham will continue work on her current book project, The Interconnected Mesoamerican World. The project examines how people, objects and ideas moved throughout Mesoamerica—modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras—and the history of how we understand and talk about the region.

“The stories we tell about the past are always in some ways stories about the present,” said Brittenham. “In this moment, I feel it is imperative to emphasize that this hemisphere has always been interconnected.”

Faith Hillis

A professor in the Department of History, Hillis is a historian of Russia and modern Europe, with special interests in 19th- and 20th-century politics, culture, ideas and transnational exchanges. Her research and writing have been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Hillis plans to spend the fellowship year finishing her forthcoming book, Forging The Protocols: How Swindlers, Opportunists, and a Host of Historical Accidents Created the Most Notorious Conspiracy of All Time.

A "biography" of the notorious antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the book examines the many works from which the notorious forgery drew—adventure novels, political satires and family sagas—and asks how these diverse sources came together to form a single, monstrous libel.

“Shedding new light on the enduring mystery of the forgery's origins, I show how an international group of conspirators collectively co-authored the text over the course of several decades in the service of multiple, chaotic agendas,” Hillis said. “It is quite unsettling to think that the ideas of The Protocols came not from ideological maniacs, but from people driven mostly by avarice and ego—precisely because there are so many of these kinds of people in the world.”

Alexandra Z. Worden

A senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory who is a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, Worden’s research focuses on the fate and transport of carbon in the oceans—with an emphasis on the photosynthetic microbes that live in the sunlit surface ocean and form the base of marine food chains.

Her group develops methods and technologies for sea-going studies of bacteria, protists, and viruses, and for quantifying their contributions to global primary production, cell-to-cell interactions, and trajectories in future oceans. In addition to pioneering methods for targeting uncultivated microbes in the ocean, her lab has focused on developing methods for investigating environmentally relevant algae in culture under climate change simulations, as well as methods for genetic manipulation of these species.

With the fellowship, Worden will pursue understanding of how deep ocean microbes respond to photosynthetic algae that sink to the seafloor—“a process that results in the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but with poorly understood impacts on community transitions in the vast dark ocean,” she said.

A ‘blob’ in a tank is helping scientists tease out the secrets of turbulence

Louise Lerner — 04/13/2026 - 11:33am

In a tank on the bottom floor of a University of Chicago research laboratory, scientists summon “The Blob” into existence by firing water jets to create an artfully choreographed series of rings.

First created three years ago in the laboratory of UChicago Prof. William Irvine in collaboration with graduate student Takumi Matsuzawa, The Blob is one of the only ways that researchers can study the strange properties of turbulence—the chaotic swirling of fluids such as air and water—in its purest form: stationary in a lab and isolated from boundaries.

Turbulence is a bit of a paradox. It governs everything from the movements of ocean currents and hurricane clouds to the swirling of cream in your coffee and blood in your veins. But as widespread as it is, turbulence has been fiendishly difficult for scientists to understand, compared with most other everyday physics phenomena.

In a new study, the Irvine lab reported its first findings from the strange blob. They include several insights into the behavior of turbulence as it spreads and dissipates—including that it lingers far longer than visible to the human eye.

“It’s a totally fundamental question—what does turbulence do when you let it loose?—and yet we had no way to study it in such a clean setting before,” said Irvine, a professor of physics and member of the James Franck and Enrico Fermi Institutes.

The study was co-authored by Prof. Nigel Goldenfeld, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, San Diego and Minhui Zhu, then a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and now at Argonne National Laboratory, and was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How turbulence spreads

Understanding the rules of turbulence is crucial for designing planes and turbines, and for building fusion reactors, among other uses. But simulating turbulence and testing it in experiments has been difficult.

Researchers always want to study the purest, simplest form of a phenomenon in order to understand the basics and extract the fundamental rules of its behavior. The trouble is that by creating turbulence to study it, you are always interfering with the system in some way. If you stick a paddle into a tank of water to stir it up, both paddle and tank walls unavoidably interfere with how the motion plays out.

That was, until The Blob.

Irvine and Matsuzawa created an experimental setup in which vortex rings were fired into the center of a tank from all corners. This created a perfect, stationary ball of turbulence on its own at the center of the tank.

“It’s a very unique experiment to ask the question, because in no other situation do you have turbulence separated from the walls—with properties not controlled by the box where it exists, but by how you made it,” said Irvine.

In this study, Matsuzawa set up a camera to take high-speed images to track the movements of The Blob as it played out. It first expanded, filled the chamber, and then gradually decayed back to rest.

One new observation concerned how turbulence spreads. Unlike, say, tea molecules spreading diffusely out from a teabag in a teacup, turbulent eddies organize themselves to spread in a sharp front. However, this effect had only been experimentally observed in superfluid helium in the 1990s as part of a collaboration by Goldenfeld with the late famed experimentalist Russell Donnelly.

Irvine and Matsuzawa’s experiment captured evidence of the same effect in water for the first time. Using modern flow visualization techniques, they were able to perform more nuanced measurements than previously possible to confirm this mechanism of turbulence spreading.

How turbulence decays

The team also discovered something unexpected about how turbulence died out.

They observed two distinct stages in how the energy decayed in The Blob: early on, the energy dropped in one characteristic way, but later it followed a different pattern of decrease.

To dig deeper, Irvine and Matsuzawa created turbulence with a different method—by placing a plastic mesh, or grid, into the water tank and shaking it. When they did, they saw that the energy decayed in just a single pattern.

“What this shows is that you can have two different laws of decay of turbulence in the same box,” Matsuzawa explained.

The difference comes down to the structure of the eddies at the start. In The Blob, the largest eddy starts out about as large as the blob itself and keeps growing until it reaches the size of the container. By contrast, turbulence generated by the grid already contains eddies as large as the container from the start.

These findings extend a model for the evolution of freely decaying turbulence, first developed by A.N. Kolmogorov and G.I. Barenblatt, the scientists said. However, it had to be extended to take into account surprising new findings about the technical details by which turbulence evolved once created.

“Even a single isolated blob of turbulence is a complex system. It’s amazing that a minimal theoretical picture can still capture the essential behaviors observed in the experiment,” said Zhu. “The analysis of the experimental data performed by the team was able to rule out previously proposed theories for the decay of turbulence, thus providing new puzzles for theorists.”

“This work is an example of how fundamental aspects of one of the most complex physical phenomena can be explored scientifically through innovative experiments and imaginative theory, via a deep collaboration between theorists and experiments,” Goldenfeld commented. “Crucial to the success of this collaboration—spanning seven years from initial conception to completion—was the willingness of talented scientists to improvise and persevere on a very challenging problem!”

The scientists plan to continue to work with The Blob to explore the properties of turbulence, in particular to explore further the unexpected features of turbulent spreading and decay that they uncovered for the first time.

Irvine and Goldenfeld dedicated the paper to their fond memory of Russell Donnelly, who carried out seminal work on turbulence as a professor at UChicago and later at the University of Oregon.

The study used the resources of the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and the UChicago Research Computing Center.

Citation: “Nonlinear Diffusion and Decay of a Blob of Turbulence Spreading Into a Fluid at Rest.” Matsuzawa, Zhu, Goldenfeld and Irvine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb. 12, 2026.

Funding: U.S. Army Research Office, Simons Foundation, Brown Foundation, Schmidt Science Fellowship.

UChicago Press awards top honor to Sarah Newman for ‘Unmaking Waste’

Tori Lee — 04/13/2026 - 09:07am

The University of Chicago Press awarded the 2026 Gordon J. Laing Award to Assoc. Prof. Sarah Newman for her book Unmaking Waste: New Histories of Old Things. President Paul Alivisatos presented the award at a gala reception on April 8 at the David Rubenstein Forum.

“Unmaking Waste is an insightful work, exposing at once the particulars by which human societies and civilizations have grappled with waste and what their conception of it reveals of their own position in the material world,” said Alivisatos. “It is a wonderful example of a UChicago mind in top form.”

Each year, the Laing Award is presented to the faculty author, editor, or translator whose book has brought the greatest distinction to the Press. Books published in 2023 and 2024 were eligible for the 2026 award.

In Unmaking Waste, Newman draws on archaeological finds, historical documents and ethnographic observations to examine what people have considered to be “waste” and how they interact with it from prehistory to the present day.

Newman shows how conceptions of waste have shaped reuse and renewal in ancient Mesoamerica, early modern ideas of civility and forced religious conversion in New Spain, and even the modern discipline of archaeology. Unmaking Waste reveals that waste is not—and never has been—an obvious or universal concept.

In its review, the journal Isis called Unmaking Waste a “particularly impressive example” of how “honing in on waste allows us to tell new histories.”

Prof. Aziz Huq, chair of the Board of University Publications, said that Newman’s work “embodies the best of what university press publishing can do.”

“Newman’s brilliant challenge to our conventional understanding of what it means to create ‘waste’ is not only an influential contribution to anthropology, it also offers all readers an enlightening new way of thinking about a common part of our lives and experience—what we treat as garbage—and why we think about it the way we do,” said Huq.

Newman said she relied on the advice and insights from both Anthropology department colleagues as well as the support of the Press throughout the process of publishing her first monograph.

“I am thrilled and honored to celebrate not only my book, but the intellectual environment and community at the University that helped to shape it,” said Newman.

The Press’s top award is named in honor of Gordon J. Laing, who served as general editor of the Press from 1909 until 1940, firmly establishing it as the premier academic publisher in the United States.

“Every year, we take pride in joining with the University to recognize the lasting impact and significance of the Press and its authors in shaping scholarship and expanding knowledge for all,” said Garrett Kiely, director of the Press. “We are proud to see Professor Newman honored with this award for her outstanding book and to celebrate her remarkable contributions.”

Newman joins a distinguished list of previous recipients that includes, most recently, Jenny Trinitapoli, Margareta Ingrid Christian, Elisabeth C. Clemens, Lisa Wedeen, Michael Rossi, Eve L. Ewing and Deborah Nelson.

—This story was adapted from a press release from the UChicago Press.

Smoking may spark lung-to-brain reaction tied to dementia, study finds

Paul Dailing — 04/10/2026 - 11:08am

Smoking cigarettes may raise dementia risk by triggering harmful chemical signals from the lungs to the brain, finds new research from the University of Chicago.

The study adds deeper understanding to a well-documented correlation between smoking and neurodegeneration. One study from 2011 found heavy smoking in midlife was associated with a more than doubled risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia decades later.

Many of the theories around this connection relate to smoking’s impact on the vascular and respiratory systems—essentially choking the flow of oxygen to the brain over decades of tobacco use. But the new study published in Science Advances points to the involvement of nicotine-triggered miscommunication.

“This research establishes a clear ‘lung-brain' axis that helps explain why cigarette smoking is linked to cognitive decline and neurodegenerative risks,” said UChicago postdoctoral researcher Kui Zhang, co-first author of the new work. “By understanding [this link], we open new doors for protecting neurons from smoke-induced damage.”

The researchers found a previously unmapped route from the lungs to the mind through pulmonary neuroendocrine cells (PNECs). When exposed to nicotine, these cells release exosomes—tiny particles that transport cellular products and waste—that disrupt the iron balance in neurons, triggering symptoms often found in dementia patients. 

Whether this proves to be a causal link for dementia or not, the research itself is a powerful advance in scientists’ understanding of the lungs.

“It reveals that the lung is not just a passive target of smoke exposure, but an active signaling organ influencing brain pathology,” said the paper’s corresponding author Asst. Prof. Joyce Chen, from UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and the Ben May Department for Cancer Research.

From lung to brain

PNECs are unique lung cells that blend the functions of both nerve cells and endocrine cells. Speaking the languages of both synapse and hormone, they are important sensors for the airway, but difficult to study.

“The primary challenge was the extreme rarity of PNECs, which make up less than 1% of lung cells, making them nearly impossible to isolate and study in depth,” Zhang said.

To research these elusive but important cells, the team generated induced PNECs (iPNECs) from human pluripotent stem cells in numbers large enough to research in the lab. 

When exposed to nicotine, the iPNECs emitted great quantities of exosomes. Most cell types produce exosomes, but those made by the iPNECs in response to nicotine were rich in a protein called serotransferrin, which the body uses to regulate the flow of iron through the bloodstream.

Applying this model to the human body could mean that with every puff of a cigarette, cigar or vape, the lung’s natural PNECs blast out massive amounts of a material that impacts how the body handles iron. 

“We are finding neurodegeneration-related markers, which are going up, and which can be linked with many cognitive and dementia-related diseases,” said co-first author Abhimanyu Thakur, who was with UChicago PME and the Ben May Department during the research and is now at Harvard Medical School.

Work ahead

This blast of serotransferrin would essentially be telling the body—wrongly—to change how it regulates iron. The vagus nerve, which snakes from the brain to organs throughout the body, regulating involuntary movement like heartbeats, breathing and digestion, would carry this message back to the brain. 

“This iron [dysregulation] drives oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and increased α-synuclein [protein] expression—hallmarks of neurodegenerative disease,” Chen said.

An iron imbalance in neurons can also wrongly trigger ferroptosis, a form of programmed cell death, in cells that weren’t supposed to die. Previous research has associated ferroptosis with both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but much more study is needed before any causal link can be claimed.

The team is next looking to see if blocking the exosomes—the original source of the signal—could have therapeutic applications. While direct impact on humans is still years off, the research advances scientists’ understanding of how the brain and lungs communicate.

“Understanding these cross-organ communication pathways is critical for developing better prevention and intervention strategies for neurodegenerative diseases,” Chen said.

Citation: “Pulmonary Neuroendocrine Cell-derived Exosomes Regulate Iron Homeostasis and Oxidative Stress in Lung Neurons,” Thakur et al, Science Advances, April 8, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady2696

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

Winners of the 2026 UChicago Science as Art competition announced

04/09/2026 - 11:30am

The University of Chicago has announced the winners of its 2026 “Science as Art” contest, which highlights images resulting from research from the UChicago community.

From mathematics to meteorites, the entries display the gorgeous landscape of scientific research going on every day at the University of Chicago.

The grand-prize winner is: “Yin and Yang: Harmony in Chaos” by Takumi Matsuzawa (PhD’23).

Matsuzawa studies the chaotic motions of swirling fluids, known as turbulence. This image captures the trajectories of particles in water as turbulence winds down in a specially designed tank. The color represents the speed of the particles.

“The image also shows that turbulence can persist for surprisingly long times,” Matsuzawa wrote. “When this image was taken, the particles were barely moving, yet long-exposure measurements still reveal the characteristic vortex structure of turbulence.”

The audience favorite, chosen by a March Madness-style bracket on UChicago’s Instagram, is “Cartography of the Mouse” by staff scientist Margarette Clevenger and Prof. Nicolas Chevrier.

This image maps gene expression patterns across the different organ systems in a mouse, using a gene sequencing platform developed by the Chevrier Lab.

Two entries also received honorable mentions:

"Turquoise" by Aqiil Gopee, graduate student in anthropology

Gopee wrote:

During the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC) excavations in Sohar, Oman, this year, I unearthed this fragment of turquoise alkaline-glazed earthenware (TURQ.T)—likely Abbasid and probably produced in Iraq circa 9th century CE.

As I brushed the sand away, the relief with appliqué decoration and vivid turquoise glaze gradually appeared, revealing the contrast between the ceramic’s preserved surface and the sand in which it had remained buried for over a millennium.

In the early Islamic period, Sohar was a major port city vibrant with trade across the Indian Ocean, and intricately ornamented pottery such as this would have circulated through the terrestrial and maritime networks that connected Arabia, East Africa, South Asia, and China.

“Plasma Turbulence” by postdoctoral researcher Ludwig Boess

Boess studies turbulent plasmas—a state of superheated matter made up of charged particles. While running a simulation of such a plasma, Boess was struck by the shapes of the structures. The left side shows the number density of the electrons and protons in the plasma; the right side shows their electric current density.

Winners and entries will be displayed around campus in the coming year.

Many more stunning images were submitted this year. Check out more at the Flickr gallery.

Want to see more? Check out past contests here.

Health programs promise personalization. A new tool tests if they deliver

Irene Hsiao — 04/08/2026 - 02:16pm

Treating chronic diseases can involve intensive programs designed to change people’s diet, exercise and other health behaviors.

But a typical program, while packed with information and advice, may overlook a fundamental reality: People’s lives can contain a variety of barriers to behaviors that can improve their health.

“The assumption is that if people follow these programs, their health will improve,” said Emily Fu, a clinical psychologist at the University of Chicago. “However, when you consider people’s real lives—busy schedules, different environments, mental health, social determinants of health and life circumstances—all of that affects whether they can engage in recommended behaviors.

“For example, you might recommend that someone walk for 30 minutes a day, but if they live somewhere without sidewalks or where they don’t feel safe walking, that’s not realistic.”

Fu, in her first year in the PITCH Fellowship at UChicago, studies how such real-world conditions influence long-term health. Yet while the importance of tailoring treatments to account for these factors is broadly accepted, it is neither a standardized practice nor well-understood.

“People often say they’re tailoring interventions, especially in behavioral medicine, but they rarely define what that means,” Fu said.

In a paper published in Prevention Science, she proposed a new way to measure whether health interventions are truly tailored to individuals—and showed that personalization can make a measurable difference in how people engage with treatment.

Scoring how well programs are tailored

The new framework describes tailoring as a structured process in which providers assess a participant’s health behaviors, mental health and social circumstances using validated questionnaires and discussions. Providers then work

collaboratively with participants to create a plan that addresses the most relevant barriers.

Fu applied her new Observational Assessment Tool for Tailoring (OATT) to data from two trials of the Family Check-Up 4® Health intervention, an adaptation of the internationally recognized Family Check-Up®, designed to support families to promote positive child outcomes. Families periodically met with a trained FCU4Health coordinator to develop strategies for improving health. At the beginning of the intervention and a year later, these families completed multiple surveys about family, parent and child health behaviors, mental health and social needs.

Using video recordings of feedback sessions with the FCU4Health coordinator and the parent, Fu and collaborators developed an observation-based scoring system to evaluate how well coordinators tailored their recommendations.

Coders watched nearly 200 recorded sessions across two trials, examining whether coordinators accurately identified the family’s needs and collaborated with them to develop personalized goals.

The scale ranged from zero to five, with higher scores reflecting stronger tailoring. A mid-range score indicated that the coordinator followed expected practices, while higher scores reflected especially thorough personalization and collaboration.

“Good tailoring means the coordinator accurately understands the family’s needs and collaborates with them to develop an appropriate plan,” she explains. “For example, if a parent says mental health is the main barrier and the coordinator connects them to a therapist, that’s good tailoring. If the parent says mental health is the issue but the coordinator focuses only on exercise, that’s poor tailoring.”

Personalized plans make a difference

The results showed that personalizing treatments made a difference.

“We found that better tailoring led to higher engagement during the intervention, which in turn predicted improvements in parents’ health behaviors after 12 months,” said Fu.

Moreover, the findings suggest that starting interventions on a strong personal note can help patients invest long-term in following the treatment.

“The tailoring session we analyzed was only the first session,” she said. “Even that initial session predicted later engagement. The key takeaway is the importance of thorough assessments and collaborative prioritization. Even if a program can’t perfectly tailor every element, focusing on participants’ main needs can improve engagement and outcomes.”

The work also addresses a practical challenge in health care—intensive programs can be expensive and difficult to implement widely. By identifying which elements of personalization matter most, Fu hopes future programs can deliver more efficient interventions that still maintain strong patient engagement.

In the future, she wants to adapt OATT into simpler checklists or self-assessment tools that clinicians can use in everyday practice.

Ultimately, her research aims to shift the focus of behavioral health interventions away from standardized prescriptions and toward a more collaborative model—one that recognizes that improving health behaviors often starts with understanding the complexities of people’s lives.

“Many health problems seen in primary care have behavioral components,” said Fu. “Clinicians and researchers work very hard to help patients change behaviors, often by adding more interventions. I’m interested in creating shorter, efficient, tailored behavioral interventions that fit into that setting.”

Citation: "Validation of the Observational Assessment Tool for Tailoring (OATT)." Fu et al, Prevention Science, Jan. 30, 2026.

Funding: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Department of Agriculture, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, University of Chicago Primary Care Investigators Training in Chronic Disease & Health Disparities (PITCH) Fellowship.

—This article was originally published on the Biological Sciences Division website.

Celebrate Earth Day with events at UChicago

04/08/2026 - 10:53am

As new buds and blossoms mark the coming of spring, they also plant the seeds for Earth Day on April 22.

To celebrate, the University of Chicago has organized events throughout the month, led by the Office of Sustainability. Catch a special screening of a documentary featuring UChicago scholars, take a guided technical tour of campus facilities and explore an outdoor lab of “living sculpture.”

Read on for more Earth Day events, including volunteer opportunities, or check out the full sustainability calendar.

April 9
Earth Month Tour: ‘Untidy Objects’
Thursday, April 9, 3-4 p.m., in the garden south of David and Reva Logan Center for the Arts, 5620 S. Drexel Ave. | RSVP
Join a tour of the outdoor research lab “Untidy Objects” led by visual artist and DOVA lecturer Amber Ginsburg, who will invite visitors into how this “living sculpture” that includes water and vegetation is also a social intervention. The lab prompts viewers to consider that humans are the only living organism with legal and political rights. Participants can use their phones to explore sites of “augmented reality” that alter viewers’ responses to the sculpture’s propositions. The tour will begin in the circular drive behind the Logan Center for the Arts when entering from 5620 S. Drexel Ave.

April 10
Earth Month Tour: Campus data center
Friday, April 10, 3-4 p.m., Location TBD | RSVP
Join a tour of a campus data center led by Raymond Parpart, director of UChicago’s Data Center Strategy & Operations office, for an inside look at how his team earned a top efficiency certification for implementing sustainability strategies related to airflow management, mechanical systems, electrical systems and processes. The campus’s five data centers collectively run 368 cabinets to support teaching, learning and research.

April 11
Chicago Energy Conference co-presented by the energy and sustainability clubs of UChicago and Northwestern University
Saturday, April 11, 9 a.m.-4:50 p.m., Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center, 303 E. Superior St., Chicago | Tickets free for UChicago students, faculty and staff
Attend the inaugural UChicago College student-run Chicago Energy Conference with the theme: “Resilience in a Changing World: Stability, Strength, and Innovation for a World in Flux.”

The event will feature keynote speakers from leading energy research and sustainability organizations, as well as panel discussions and networking opportunities.

ENERGY STAR® 2026 Battle of the Buildings
April 14-28
UChicago residence hall communities will compete to conserve as much energy and water as possible in this annual contest. Seven halls, from Campus North to Woodlawn, will vie for the title. Learn more.

April 13
Earth Month Tour: Rockefeller Memorial Chapel
Monday, April 13, 5-6 p.m., 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. | RSVP
Join a tour of the historic 1928 Rockefeller Memorial Chapel led by Patrick Lummen, the capital project manager of the recently completed large-scale renovation project to restore the chapel’s stained-glass windows and masonry. The project also enhanced the sustainability of the building exterior. Tour will meet at the south entrance doors.

April 16
Earth Month Tour: West Campus Combined Utility Plant
Thursday, April 16, 12-1:30 p.m., 5801 S. Maryland Ave. | RSVP
Join a walking tour of the West Campus Combined Utility Plant—designed by architect Helmut Jahn, who also designed the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library—led by maintenance mechanic Abdull Gregory for an in-depth look at the processes responsible for bringing critical utilities such as steam and chilled water across campus and to UChicago Medicine. This unique behind-the-scenes tour requires comfort with a noisy environment and the use of stairs. Gather promptly at the entrance doors on 5801 S. Maryland Ave., doors will be locked at 12:05 p.m.

April 18
UCSC Earth Day of Service
Saturday, April 18, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., gather in McCormick-Tribune Lounge of the Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University Ave. | RSVP
Join the University Community Service Center and community partners for sustainability-focused service projects on the South Side. The service day, in partnership with community organizations across Englewood, Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Greater Grand Crossing and beyond, will focus on beautification, outreach and capacity-building projects at local community sites.

Participants will gather for breakfast and check-in at the McCormick-Tribune Lounge at 10 a.m. before heading out and getting to work. Most projects will be at sites within walking distance of the University, within one mile, though there will be transportation available for a select few project sites. Projects will last approximately 2.5 hours, with time built in to learn about the organization and hear about upcoming opportunities to engage. All participants should expect to return to campus by approximately 2 p.m.

April 21
“Plan C for Civilization” film screening and Q&A
Tuesday, April 21, 5:30-8:20 p.m., International House, Assembly Hall, 1414 E. 59th St (enter via the side entrance on Dorchester Avenue) | RSVP
Enjoy a free screening of Plan C for Civilization, a new documentary that prominently features Prof. David Keith, founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative (CSEi). The film, which “reveals the hidden world” of the solar geoengineering tech race, runs approximately 108 minutes and will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Keith, director Ben Kalina and geophysical sciences Prof. Elisabeth Moyer. Food will be provided.

April 24
Earth Month Tour: The Keller Center
Friday, April 24, 9:30-10:30 a.m., 1307 E. 60th St. | RSVP
Join a tour of the Keller Center led by Gabriel Wilcox, director of sustainable design at the architecture firm Krueck Sexton Partners, who will explore the restoration and reimagining of a 1960s Edward Durrell Stone historic limestone residence hall into the most sustainable building on campus. Home to the Harris School, the center is LEED Platinum certified and has earned recognition through the rigorous Living Building Challenge.

April 25
Jackson Park Clean-Up
Saturday, April 25, 10 a.m.-1 p.m., the Hayes Parking Lot at 63rd Street and Lake Shore Drive | RSVP

Clean up swathes of Jackson Park, the 552-acre park in the Woodlawn community east of campus that is home to the Wooded Island, Japanese Garden and 63rd Street Beach. The Chicago Parks District and the Office of Sustainability will provide tools, pickers, bags and gloves. Meet at the Hayes Parking Lot at 63rd Street and Lake Shore Drive. Waiver required.

April 25
Spring Community Shred Fest
Saturday, April 25, 11 a.m.- 2 p.m.,1427 E. 60th St. (behind The UChicago Press building) | More Info
In recognition of Earth Month, IT Services hosts this event that is free and open to all faculty, staff, students and local community members. Join us to safely and securely destroy unwanted documents and e-waste. IT Services team members will be on site to offer tips on how you can protect yourself against identity theft.

April 28
Earth Month Tour: Recycling center
Tues., April 28, 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m., 4121 S. Packers Ave. (Back of the Yards) | RSVP
Join us for a tour of the state-of-the-art $50M Chicago facility that processes all the single-stream recycling collected on campus, led by Jess Valete, a sustainability specialist. All visitors need to sign a safety waiver before visiting. Participants should be prepared to enter a loud environment, with three flights of stairs to climb, and will be provided with safety attire.

April 30
Earth Month Tour: Botany Pond
Thursday, April 30, 11 a.m.-12 p.m., south of Cobb Gate in the Main Quadrangles | RSVP
Join a tour of Botany Pond led by Kathleen Golomb, manager of campus environment, to learn how its recent historic renovation utilizes an innovative ecological engineering design, nature-based water management, and native wildlife and plantings to provide a balanced ecosystem. Gather at the west end of the pond, just past Cobb Gate on East 57th Street, in the Main Quadrangles.

Ongoing
Earth Month Tour: Gardens & Sustainability on Campus
Take the self-led Garden Tour and Sustainability Tour. Explore the campus-wide botanic garden and learn about sustainability features throughout campus, while reading about highlights on your phone.

—Read a full version of this article on the Office of Sustainability website.

First-ever cellular ‘blueprint’ for tiny C. elegans worm could hold big clues for humans

Matt Wood — 04/07/2026 - 11:34am

Every multicellular organism, from tiny worms to humans, elephants and whales, needs a way for their cells to work together.

Cells have a variety of protein receptors on their surfaces that connect with receptors on other cells to form so-called adhesive structures. These help them communicate and respond to cues from their environment. The sum of these interactions is called the cell surface “interactome,” which serves as a reference manual for understanding how these tiny units coordinate—and ultimately form tissues and organs, and organize their overall body plan.

In a recent study published in Cell Genomics, scientists from the University of Chicago published the first extracellular interactome for the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, a classic model organism for studying genetic and cellular development. The data describes extracellular interactions for 374 proteins, including 159 interactions that were previously unknown, revealing unexpected connections involved in neuron development and insulin signaling.

For Engin Özkan, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UChicago and senior author of the paper, building this interactome has been a decade-long quest.

“Multicellular life is one complex manual—so many parts have to come together. The cells need to get to the right place to perform and have the correct molecules to connect with other molecules from surrounding tissues and other cells,” he said. “We've been missing so much of this blueprint because we lacked the basic data about which molecules interact with which. And that's the gap my lab has been trying to fill for the last 10 years, so that we can understand how the synaptic connections between all neurons form.”

Why C. elegans matters for human biology

While the tiny—less than 1 mm long—C. elegans worm couldn’t look more different from complex multicellular animals such as humans, it’s a powerful and beloved scientific model.

Simplicity helps—an adult worm has about 1,000 cells, with exactly 302 neurons, all carefully mapped and genetically sequenced. They are easily manipulated with modern genetic tools, plus they grow quickly and are easy to maintain, making them ideal experimental animals.

Despite these differences, many molecular pathways—including processes for cell death, aging, metabolism and development—work the same way in both organisms, making discoveries in worms relevant to human biology.

“You would think by 2026, we would know the majority of interactions that hold this animal’s cells together, but we still don't, which is an opportunity for a lab like mine,” Özkan said.

As a structural biologist by trade, his lab specializes in building a variety of biochemical tools, imaging techniques, protein engineering strategies and genetic modifications to document and decipher the surface receptors that help cells connect to each other.

Most surface receptors are embedded in cell membranes made from lipids, which pose a lot of technical challenges for researchers trying to study them. Özkan’s team has developed several biochemical tools that allow them to study these receptors at high volume, uncovering as much as 80% of their interactions that hadn’t been discovered yet.

Asst. Prof. István Kovács’s group at Northwestern University also contributed novel mathematical analysis methods for the study, which was a collaboration made possible by the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology, a joint partnership between the two universities.

New cell interactions point toward disease research

The research uncovered several protein families that interact in unexpected ways, including one group thought to be involved in neuron growth that also participates in insulin signaling.

Experiments that increased the expression of these proteins also extended the lifespan of the worms. Other new interactions had unexpected roles in signaling for growth factors.

Since so many of these receptors are similar in humans, understanding how they work is important for understanding what they do—and, more importantly, what happens when something goes wrong and leads to disease.

Combining this new set of interaction data (the interactome) with decades of work cataloging C. elegans genes (the genome) and gene expression (the transcriptome) builds a more complete reference manual for understanding basic biology.

“The modern biologist is often after this thing we call mechanism, or how it works,” Özkan said. “Now at least for cell surface molecules, we know what those molecules are supposed to interact with. Now we have good ideas about how to connect that to function, through decades of genetics work by others, and begin to complete the circle into a full understanding of multicellular function.”

The study, “Nematode extracellular protein interactome expands connections between signaling pathways,” was supported by the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology; the National Science Foundation; and the Simons Foundation. Additional authors include Wioletta I. Nawrocka, Shouqiang Cheng, Matthew C. Rosen, Elena Cortés, Elana E. Baltrusaitis and Zainab Aziz from UChicago; Leo T.H. Tang from the University of Vermont; and Bingjie Hao and István A. Kovács from Northwestern.

—This article was originally published on the Biological Sciences Division website.

Press start to change your mind

Benjamin Ransom — 04/06/2026 - 01:37pm

Imagine a video game where you’re a squirrel in a beautiful forest, gathering acorns to prepare for the winter.

At first, collecting them is satisfying. But then a narrator warns you: acorns with sap attract predators. Now you need to clean every one.

The pressure mounts. You realize you need to clean more and more acorns if you want to survive the winter. It becomes less obvious which acorns are contaminated or not. Now you’re worried that you are contaminated, and you have to clean all your acorns again because you’ve touched them. And once they’re wet from being washed in the river, you realize they’ll rot if you don’t arrange them in your nest in just the right way.

“It becomes essentially incompletable, to the point where it causes a sense of anxiety,” said fourth-year Haley Breslin, who is designing the game as her capstone for the Media Arts and Design (MADD) major.

Breslin’s game—which lulls players with comfort before slowly accumulating unsettling elements—is designed to give players a visceral feeling of what it’s like to live with contamination OCD. The condition is characterized by an intense fear that objects, people or oneself have been tainted or made unsafe.

Breslin is one of several UChicago students using their MADD capstone to test what interactive media can uniquely do—not just represent an experience, but invite you to participate in one. That instinct is at the core of MADD. Since the program launched in 2021, students and researchers have converged around clusters ranging from games to algorithmic music, creative computing and expanded cinema.

The University recently received a milestone gift to create the Mouly Carlson Chair, marking the first endowed professorship in the fields of media arts, design and game studies at UChicago.

For Breslin, the MADD capstone project is personal. She designed it from her own experience with OCD, hoping the game could do what conversation often couldn't.

In her game, subtle triggers—a jittery camera, and ghost frequencies too low to consciously hear—build into a creeping sense of dread. The game's insistent, worrying narrator represents the mental voice of OCD, giving players a firsthand perspective about what Breslin has long struggled to communicate.

“I can explain these feelings to someone, but they’re inherently irrational,” she said. “So I made something for people who haven’t experienced these things at all.”

Playing the prosecutor

Like Breslin, Aimee Stachowiak believes games can make players feel things no other medium can. A MADD and human rights double-major, her capstone video essay explores how two very different games implicate players in questions of justice and punishment.

“Games offer a safe space to engage with very complex moral quandaries,” she said. "When you are forced to do those actions, it's much more personal.”

Her project grew out of a research question that kept nagging at her: Has the United States confused punishment with justice? And should justice always entail retribution?

She was drawn to two games in particular. The first is Ace Attorney, a game she discovered through her older sister—who was also in MADD—that casts the player as a defense lawyer carefully thinking through arguments to exonerate the wrongly accused. When evidence cuts against your own case, the game doesn't let you ignore it: Both sides pause, return to the scene and keep looking.

The second, L.A. Noire, is a detective game where players patrol, interrogate and arrest their way through 1940s Los Angeles—and where tracking down a parolee gives you a choice: arrest them, or throw them off a building. The game rewards both equally.

"In L.A. Noire you are trying to figure out who did it and punish them. In Ace Attorney, you are trying to figure out the truth. It's a very simple difference," she said.

For Stachowiak, games can show us that justice isn’t an abstraction. It’s carried out by ordinary people with assumptions they often never examine. While L.A. Noire makes those assumptions feel natural—even rewarded—she loves Ace Attorney because it forces you to question them at every turn.

“It makes you go through the processes of determining everything for yourself—what it means to engage more critically with evidence, to engage with justice systems, to notice corruption and ways to address it."

A passport to anywhere

Stachowiak, like Breslin, shows how games can do things other media can't—forcing your hand in an ethical dilemma.

But for fellow MADD student Mack Minter, games and the fantasy genre can also do something more boundless: take you somewhere that never existed. They can immerse you in worlds built from imagination, ruled by different logic and alive with creative potential.

"Fantasy for me is a philosophy—a way of interacting with the world that draws on utopia and imagination," said Minter.

Minter's video essay project aims to answer a deceptively simple question: why does that feeling matter? And why, as we grow up, do we learn to take it less seriously—to treat fantasy as something to be set aside rather than explored?

For Minter, what they see as the academy's indifference to the fantasy genre is both a symptom of that problem and a provocation.

"Everything I know about fantasy studies has been because I sought it out," they said. "It’s a pretty niche field."

To drive at that theme, Minter's video essay on fantasy and tabletop role-playing games blends scholarly analysis with autobiography—scenes from Minter's own childhood rendered as a fairy-tale. We see a 9-year-old Minter cracking open a novel from the Percy Jackson series for the first time, surrounded by costumes, props and theatrical sets.

“It’s difficult figuring out how to make other people understand how engaging fantasy feels,” Minter said. "It’s also a fun exercise in creative writing to dramatize things that happened to me as a kid."

As Minter reflects in the essay, J.R.R. Tolkien argued that fantasy lets you reclaim something lost in growing up. Minter's project partially tests that idea and challenges everyone who decided losing it was inevitable: from skeptical family members to those literature scholars who scoff at the genre.

"So much of this project is really me trying to prove to people that this matters,” said Minter. "It feels like I'm treading new ground in a way that’s intimidating, but exciting."

Say it or play it?

Breslin, Stachowiak and Minter arrived at their capstones from very different places—a personal struggle, a conversation on human rights, a childhood full of dice and dragons. But they landed on the same conviction: that games don't just entertain. They put you somewhere you've never been, make you feel something you couldn't have predicted and ask you to reckon with it.

Through the MADD program, all three have appreciated the chance to bring their perspectives to life through games and videos—especially in a world where they’re such dominant forms of popular culture.

“People my age watch YouTube videos and play games,” said Stachowiak. “If I'm trying to get that message across, I should use a medium they're more likely to engage with.”

Patrick Jagoda, a professor and chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, sees that thought as central to what the program is for.

"The MADD program helps students make sense of the rapid developments in media and design that have fundamentally transformed contemporary life," he said. "It supports students’ passion for cultural objects: like video games, anime and interactive film. It invites them to both criticize and experiment with generative AI and design methods. The program gives students the tools to be able to contribute to emergent media cultures in a meaningful way.”

Scientists discover ‘most chemically pristine’ star yet found in the universe

Louise Lerner — 04/03/2026 - 10:58am

A group of scientists, including a class of undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, has discovered the most chemically pristine star yet known in the universe.

This star dates back to the early ages of the universe, formed long before our sun or Earth in the first several billion years after the Big Bang. The finding gives scientists a rare look into the evolution of the earliest stars in the universe—particularly how they transitioned from the first generation of massive stars into the smaller ones common today.

“These pristine stars are windows into the dawn of stars and galaxies in the universe,” said Alexander Ji, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UChicago and the first author on the study, published April 3 in Nature Astronomy. “I expected great things from the students, but this is above and beyond.”

‘You could feel the energy in the room’

In the beginning, just after the Big Bang, stars began to form.

These stars were big—made up of just helium and hydrogen, they burned hot and died early. But inside their cores, atoms had fused into heavier elements. When those huge stars exploded, new stars formed out of the debris. As this happened over and over, we got more heavy elements, until there was enough to make up the iron in our blood and the oxygen we breathe.

Scientists know this much, but are still investigating how the following generation of stars became smaller and longer-lived.

The most direct way to learn more would be to locate some of these ancient stars. This is what Ji’s research focuses on—so when it was his turn to teach an undergraduate astronomy field course focused on making actual scientific observations, he set the students to the problem.

The class combed star catalogs made by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, looking for stars with hints of anomalous readings. Because it takes time to build up an accumulation of heavy elements, the less of them a star has, the older it must be.

The students identified a handful of candidate stars. Then, over spring break of 2025, the class journeyed down to the Magellan Telescopes at Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory, located in the remote mountains of Chile. These powerful telescopes can make more detailed measurements of the elements present in stars.

On the first night there, the students began scanning the candidate stars they’d identified. In the early hours of the morning, they got an inkling that something was up.

“I think we still had one or two stars left on the observing run, but meanwhile [teaching assistant Hillary Diane Andales] was doing some preliminary analysis on what we’d collected so far,” said Natalie Orrantia, a fourth-year College student. “She started making these little noises, and then, ‘This is nuts, could it be a mistake?’ But the more we looked at it the more it looked like it was real.”

“You could feel the energy in the room,” added Ha Do, a fourth-year student. “I think Professor Ji was doing mental backflips.”

The team allotted multiple hours the next night to observing the star, gathering all the data they could to get a clear reading. Then, on the flight home, Ji said, “I sat there just scrapping and rewriting the entire curriculum I had planned for the next quarter. Instead, we were going to throw everything into analyzing this star.”

Early star formation

Over the course of the next quarter, the class divided into small groups and set to work analyzing the data and writing the scientific paper, which would eventually be accepted to Nature Astronomy. They also presented their findings to the entire Sloan Digital Sky Survey collaboration.

The star, named SDSS J0715−7334, resides about 80,000 light-years away from us. According to the team’s analysis, it had just half the amount of heavy elements measured in the previous record-holder, making it the oldest-known star by a wide margin. They also found it is a galactic immigrant, originally formed elsewhere but currently being pulled into the Milky Way.

The finding also sheds light on why later generations of stars grew smaller than the first. Previously, scientists had two leading theories—one being the presence of heavy elements, the other being cosmic dust (solid particles, such as soot or silicates).

“That dust is everywhere in the universe now, but we weren’t sure whether dust would have existed back then,” explained Pierre Thibodeaux, a graduate student at UChicago and co-author on the study. “If there was dust present, that could cause the gas to fragment into clumps, and then you get several smaller stars instead of one big one.”

Heavy elements in the gas phase could have also caused the same fragmentation. But when the scientists added up all the elements in this newly discovered star, they found there weren’t sufficient amounts to make this explanation work.

“It seems the transition was much more likely caused by that cosmic dust,” said Thibodeaux.

An ‘incredible’ experience

Orrantia explained that now that scientists have identified this star, they can use the data to narrow their search for similar stars.

“So it’s really cool that we found this star, but also, the more you find, the stronger the claims you make about these early stars and how our universe evolved,” she said.

Asked what they took away from the experience, both students named the trip to the observatory as “incredible.”

“It’s a great experience for the science, but also for having an appreciation for the human aspect of things. We met the engineers who work on the telescopes, and the operators were up at night with us,” said Do. “We really got to understand how many human hands these photons go through before they come to us.”

The other undergraduate students on the study were Selenna Mejias-Torres, Zhongyuan Zhang and Rithika Tudmilla, as well as graduate student Hillary Diane Andales and postdoctoral researcher Guilherme Limberg.

The study used the resources of UChicago’s Research Computing Center.

Citation: “A nearly pristine star from the Large Magellanic Cloud.” Ji et al, Nature Astronomy, April 3, 2026.

Funding: The University of Chicago, the National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Max Planck Society, European Research Council, NASA, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Gruber Science Fellowship, ANID, Joint Committee ESO-Government of Chile, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, UChicago Data Science Institute.

$50 million gift to advance UChicago research and support faculty in AI

04/02/2026 - 11:43am

A $50 million gift to the University of Chicago from Trustee Rika Mansueto, AB’91, and Joe Mansueto, AB’78, MBA’80, will advance the University’s ambitious vision for AI by supporting the formation of a cohort of faculty who are pioneers in the use of AI in research in disciplines across the University.

It will launch the Mansueto Faculty of Mind and Machine Challenge, which seeks to generate nearly $200 million to recruit, retain, and support 20 leading scholars from a wide range of fields who are exemplary in the use of the computational lens of thought in their disciplines. The match challenge will catalyze additional philanthropy from donors who are inspired by the University’s distinctive approach to AI. In addition to the 20 faculty positions, the complete program will also foster investments in the broader academic ecosystem of research and education as it relates to the topics of mind and machine.

The gift reflects the University’s ambitions to develop an interdisciplinary model to advance discovery, knowledge, and human flourishing in the AI era. It builds upon UChicago’s AI Initiative, which supports 10 faculty-led AI-driven research projects in fields ranging from oncology to visual arts. It also supports a dozen projects that promote a wide range of pedagogical innovation, seeking to expand and leverage machine learning and AI in the classroom—or to deliberately limit the use of AI.

“This extraordinary commitment reflects Rika and Joe Mansueto’s deep belief in the University of Chicago’s distinctive approach to inquiry—one that prizes groundbreaking scholarship, intellectual freedom and dialogue across disciplines,” said President Paul Alivisatos. “This is a signal period in intellectual history, and this gift will greatly advance the University as it seeks to shape advances in human thought during this era of AI and machine learning.”

Rather than confining AI to a single department, school or division, the gift will support computational-focused research and education at UChicago—teaching students how to think, with, without, and about machines—and enabling faculty to open new lines of questioning and fields of study around AI.

The faculty supported through the challenge may work in fields ranging from the arts and humanities to the social sciences, science, medicine, economics, business, law, and beyond—advancing a holistic approach in which questions about human intelligence, creativity and responsibility are considered alongside technical knowledge and innovation. In some cases, these scholars will hold joint appointments in computer science, mathematics and statistics.

“For me, the University of Chicago has always stood for a particular way of thinking—rigorous, curious and unafraid to ask fundamental questions,” said Rika Mansueto. “As artificial intelligence reshapes nearly every field, it’s essential that this work be grounded not just in technical excellence, but in a deep understanding of human judgment, responsibility and purpose.”

Rika received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the College in 1991. In addition to serving on the UChicago Board of Trustees, Rika is an active leader in philanthropy, education and civic life. Joe Mansueto received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the College in 1978 and his MBA from the Graduate School of Business in 1980. Joe is the founder and executive chairman of Morningstar, a global financial information and investment research company he launched in 1984.

The Mansuetos have long supported initiatives across the University, including a gift establishing the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. With this gift, the Mansuetos’ lifetime commitment to the University now exceeds $117 million, reflecting decades of investment in faculty excellence, student opportunity, and bold institutional vision. The Mansueto Faculty of Mind and Machine Challenge will extend their philanthropic mark on the University.

“With AI advancing at an unprecedented pace, the most important breakthroughs won’t come from technology alone,” said Joe Mansueto. “They will come from institutions that insist on asking bigger questions—about how intelligence works, how humans and machines interact, and how innovation can serve society responsibly. The University of Chicago has always embraced that kind of expansive, interdisciplinary inquiry, and this initiative is meant to help ensure that those values shape the future of AI.”

Stevie Wonder is beloved. But can anyone explain his legacy?

MacKenzie Tucker — 04/02/2026 - 10:00am

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

In a University of Chicago classroom, an activist in her 80s who grew up hearing Stevie Wonder in his prime sat a few seats from a 19-year-old discovering his music for the first time.

That was the scene every Wednesday evening in "Wonder Lab: Learning from the Musical Art and Craft of Stevie Wonder,” a Winter Quarter course developed and led by Adam Green, an associate professor in the Departments of Race, Diaspora, & Indigeneity and History.

“Part of it is, surprise, I love Stevie Wonder, and thought that it would be fun and exciting and revelatory to teach his music," Green said, explaining the rationale behind the course. But he also set out to explore a “paradox” at the heart of Wonder's legacy—that “he's beloved, but people have a hard time explaining why he's influential.”

Born in Michigan in 1950, Wonder started his long career as a child prodigy, signing with the Motown label at the age of 11. From 1972-76, a time that became known as his “classic period,” Wonder released five major albums—three of which won consecutive Grammys for Album of the Year, making him the only artist ever to achieve this feat. In total, Wonder has won 25 Grammys, the most of any solo artist.

But for all this acclaim, Green said, Wonder's work remains curiously underexamined. Green pointed to the often-unsung influence of the musician's long history of activism; his fight for creative control at Motown; pioneering approach to synthesizers and studio production; and the depth of his collaborations with other artists. The Wonder Lab pushes into this scholarly gap, examining questions of craft, politics and history that reverence tends to obscure.

“Everything he did that changed the ways people think about popular music, how it’s recorded and its relationship to Black musical forms—all of that is implicit for some people,” Green said.

Students in the course listen closely to albums and live performances while reading biography, criticism and scholarship on Black cultural leadership.

A class discussion may begin with a song—for example, “Happy Birthday,” which Wonder wrote as part of a years-long campaign to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday—and move outward into questions of race, legacy and the uses of art.

What makes the Wonder Lab especially distinctive, though, is the people who fill the room.

Half the seats are filled by UChicago undergraduates while the other half are for community members from across the city, ranging in age from their mid-20s to their 80s. Green hopes this mixed enrollment model can become an even more regular fixture of courses offered by the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity and, perhaps, the wider University.

“There are many roots and sources of wisdom,” Green said.

Wonder, heard across generations

Community members included musicians, educators, critics, activists and lifelong Chicagoans.

Some brought professional experience in the arts, others came because they loved Wonder and wanted to think more deeply about his work. The result, Green said, was a course in which students were not simply responding to a professor, but learning from one another.

For participants, that mixed-enrollment model gave the course much of its meaning.

Jasmine Barnes, a Hyde Park resident and community participant in the course, said what stayed with her most was the range of people in the room.

“I think about Miss Billie [Jean Miller Gray] and Miss Dorothy [Burge], and the one or two other folks who are elders, who really grew up in time with Stevie Wonder’s music,” she said. “That’s been really special.”

At the same time, she said, learning alongside younger students brought something equally valuable.

“To be with students who are 19 and who are maybe discovering music for the first time, or who have a very different viewpoint on the world than I do … that’s been really special too,” she said. “A lot of people in this class would never have imagined going to UChicago, but who got to kind of get a taste of what that type of academic rigor was like because of this class.”

Another community participant, Steven Jackson, a musician and producer at the Old Town School of Folk Music, said the course’s richness came from the range of experiences gathered in one place.

“You have Dorothy [Burge], who’s an older Black woman, who’s been an activist since before I was alive, and she grew up hearing Stevie when he was dropping music fresh,” he said. “Then you also have students that maybe aren’t as familiar with Stevie, and they’re kind of really getting into him for the first time through this class.”

Music as a living document

Part of what made those conversations so resonant was the way the course treated music not as an isolated object of study, but as something that moves through people’s lives.

Green recalled one discussion of Wonder’s song “Big Brother,” inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, in which a community member connected the song’s themes of surveillance and political consciousness to her own activism against police violence in Chicago.

“That’s a great sort of testimony to bring in,” Green said, “in terms of thinking about what a song like that brings you to, and what it reminds you of.”

Jackson described one early session as something like a listening party, with participants responding not only to Wonder’s lyrics and themes, but to the music’s finer details.

“We had ladies talking about the whole-tone scale. We had men talking about how the hi-hat grooves. We had, ‘Oh, he’s repeating this lyric over and over again—why?’” he said. “So that was really cool.”

The course’s final projects were original music inspired by Wonder’s work, visual art, traditional academic responses and a concluding gathering built around presentations and a shared meal.

Participants left with a stronger understanding of Stevie Wonder’s artistry and a greater willingness to share their own ideas.

“It made me want to share more,” Jackson said. “It reminded me it’s very rich to offer up what you have, what you think anyway.”

Barnes said those shared conversations will stay with her.

“I’ll never forget this experience. Whenever I hear his music, I’ll think about the conversations that I had in this class.”

For UChicago Law, the Supreme Court tariffs case was a tale of two alumni

Mark Cohen — 04/01/2026 - 09:36am

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that sweeping tariffs imposed by the administration of President Donald Trump were unlawful, two Law School alumni found themselves at the center of the landmark decision—one as the business owner whose company challenged the tariffs, the other as a constitutional scholar helping argue the case.

Rick Woldenberg, JD’86, is the CEO of the educational products company Learning Resources. Meanwhile, Michael McConnell, JD’79, is a professor of law at Stanford University, a former judge on the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals and, before that, was on the faculty of UChicago Law.

In Learning Resources v. Trump and V.O.S. Selections v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the administration exceeded its authority by imposing sweeping tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The 1977 statute allows the executive branch to respond to national emergencies but does not explicitly authorize tariffs.

Together, their efforts helped produce a decision holding that absent exceptional circumstances or a clear congressional delegation, the power to impose taxes and tariffs belongs to Congress—not the president.

And while the decision dealt a major blow to a signature policy of the Trump administration, neither alum was motivated by politics.

McConnell, a conservative legal scholar who was appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush, was drawn by the important constitutional issues the case presented.

For Woldenberg, “it was business, not politics.”

A business owner takes on the tariffs

The case for Woldenberg began not in a courtroom but in the day-to-day realities of running a family business.

Northern-Illinois-based Learning Resources, which manufactures educational toys and classroom materials, employs 500 people. Woldenberg joined the company in 1990, when, after graduating UChicago Law and four years of private practice, he opted to join the multigenerational business that his family had founded in 1916.

Like many consumer-goods companies, Learning Resources relies heavily on imported products and components. When the tariffs were announced, the financial consequences were immediate.

“Based on our 2025 budget, and the rates that prevailed at peak that week, I determined that on a run rate basis they were asking us to pay $100 million a year in taxes,” Woldenberg said.

Even after tariff rates shifted, the burden remained extraordinary.

“Our marginal tax rate, with IEEPA tariffs thrown into regular tariffs and duties, federal taxes and state taxes, was in excess of 100 cents on the dollar,” he said. “Make a dollar, pay more than a dollar in taxes—you’re not going to stay in business for long.”

Initially, Woldenberg searched for existing litigation he could support. But when other plaintiffs withdrew from a planned lawsuit, the case suddenly lacked anyone willing to challenge the tariffs.

Rather than step aside, he moved forward himself.

“So, I’m not part of a group,” he said. “I am the group.”

The decision was driven partly by economics—but also by responsibility.

“Hundreds of families living in the Chicago area depend on our family enterprise for their livelihood,” he said.

Facing that reality, Woldenberg felt compelled to act.

“You don’t know in your lifetime when you’re going to be called upon,” he said. “I felt as if my values were being tested … I felt that I would be better off taking the risk than not.”

A separation-of-powers question

While Woldenberg entered the litigation as a business leader confronting an existential financial threat, McConnell came to the case from the world of constitutional law—as a scholar, former federal judge and veteran Supreme Court advocate.

McConnell, who is faculty director of Stanford Law’s Constitutional Law Center, initially became involved by helping to draft an amicus brief analyzing the constitutional issues raised by the tariffs. At the center of the dispute was a fundamental question: whether the presidential administration could rely on emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs without explicit authorization from Congress.

“The core issue was the scope of presidential authority,” McConnell said. “The administration relied on a statute that arguably gave the president extremely broad authority to impose economic sanctions in response to international crises.”

But the Constitution assigns tariff authority to Congress.

“So, the question was whether Congress had actually delegated authority in the way the administration claimed,” he said. “That raises a classic separation-of-powers question.”

McConnell later joined the legal team representing businesses in the V.O.S. Selections litigation challenging the tariffs, serving as counsel of record. When the case reached the Supreme Court, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal argued on behalf of the private plaintiffs.

The two cases—Learning Resources and V.O.S. Selections—were consolidated for argument before the Supreme Court. The primary difference between them was procedural: the Learning Resources case originated in federal district court, while the V.O.S. Selections case began in the U.S. Court of International Trade.

That procedural choice had its own UChicago connection. The V.O.S. Selections case was originally filed by the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit then headed by UChicago Law alum, Jacob Huebert, JD’04—and another alum at the organization, Bridget Conlan, JD’24, made the procedural recommendation to file in the Court of International Trade.

In a footnote, the Supreme Court agreed that the Court of International Trade was the proper venue.

“It was a collaborative effort,” McConnell said, adding that it was striking to watch the argument unfold after months of preparation. He said it’s a feeling that never gets old—even after first arguing before the Supreme Court as an assistant solicitor general when he was 28.

“You’ve spent months thinking about the issues, writing briefs and discussing the case with the team,” he said, “then suddenly everything is condensed into a short argument in front of the Court.”

Who has the power to impose tariffs?

Although the case had major economic implications, both alumni emphasized the constitutional stakes.

Woldenberg framed the dispute in historical terms.

“The Boston Tea Party was a tariff dispute,” he said. “The Constitution reflected that history by placing taxing authority in Congress. In representative government, a single individual cannot impose a tax on Americans.”

McConnell agreed.

“If Congress wants to give the president broad authority in a particular area, it needs to say so clearly,” he said. “The Constitution places the power over tariffs and trade policy in Congress.”

McConnell also viewed the decision as reinforcing principles articulated in the landmark separation-of-powers case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court’s 1952 steel-seizure ruling limiting presidential authority during the Truman administration. The case has long been a staple of constitutional law courses.

A case for the classroom

Like Youngstown, the Suprme Court’s decision in Learning Resources is likely to become a fixture in constitutional law classrooms for generations to come.

For Woldenberg, whose journey into judicial history was far less predictable than McConnell’s, the experience of seeing his family business’s name attached to a landmark Supreme Court decision is deeply personal.

“Ask any University of Chicago Law School grad how they would feel with their name on seminal litigation that's going to be in ‘Elements of the Law’ for the rest of their life,” he said, referring to the 1L stalwart course. “I can't really think of anything that would be more thrilling.”

Then he added with a laugh:

“I prefer this over winning the Powerball.”

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

In Senegal, students navigate homestays and urban Wolof with UChicago rigor

Mallory Brabrand — 03/31/2026 - 09:16am

Editor’s note: This story is part of Dispatches from Abroad, a series highlighting UChicago community members who are researching, studying and working around the world.

Her first weekend in Dakar, thousands of miles from Chicago and her hometown of New York City, third-year student Talia Crichlow smelled something familiar while walking down the street.

After a moment, she realized the aroma was coming from women roasting peanuts in sugar—a streetside snack sold both on the streets of Senegal’s bustling capital and in New York. This experience was the first of many that Crichlow said made the city feel like a home away from home during her time in the “Dakar: African Civilizations” Study Abroad program in Senegal.

“I thought it was going to be more of a disparate experience to my life back home,” she explained. “But there are so many things that are so familiar.”

The Dakar Civilizations sequence was started in 2018 by Prof. Emily Osborn, a historian of Africa, and Prof. Francois Richard, an archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology. The program in Senegal, for which Osborn currently serves as the faculty director, is joined by two others on the continent, in Morocco and Egypt, but remains the first and only University of Chicago Study Abroad program in Francophone West Africa.

Over the course of nine weeks in Dakar, students live with Senegalese families in homestays and take classes with UChicago professors at the West African Research Center (WARC), a nonprofit education organization. Along with classes, students go on excursions and have opportunities to explore the city on their own, visiting museums, cultural sites and markets. Their classroom study of urban Dakar is further deepened by their daily routines: walking through city streets, meeting people in their neighborhoods and joining the activities of their homestay family.

Longer outings to other regions and cities further extend student perspectives. The student cohort and professors take weekend trips to places such as the former colonial capital Saint-Louis, the picturesque river delta Sine-Saloum and Gorée Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a historic hub of the transatlantic slave trade. Recent cohorts have also spent time in the interior border town of Karang, where students break into groups based on interest and visit local institutions, such as schools and healthcare centers.

Coursework built for immersion

The curriculum is divided into separate courses that focus on different elements of Senegalese and West African civilization, history and culture, while staying grounded in the sights and experiences of present-day Dakar.

“The whole sequence is premised on this idea of lowering the walls between the classroom and the city,” Osborn said. “We invite students to think critically about what they're learning about in their daily lives and bring it into the classroom, and visa versa.”

This year, the students took four courses. These spanned three weeks with Osborn, two weeks with linguist Prof. Salikoko Mufwene, three weeks on Francophone literature with Prof. Nikhita Obeegadoo and a one-week course on the history of slavery with Prof. Mamamrame Seck of University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar.

Osborn noted that students read and discuss scholarly and primary source texts, and also complete written assignments and mini-research projects. But the wider setting offers opportunities for further enrichment.

“For example, we carry out readings on religion, focusing especially on the history of Islam in Senegal, which is the faith of the vast majority of the country," Osborn said. "Students learn from those texts, but then they also can consider how those insights relate to the faith practices and culture of their homestay family, to sites of worship in their neighborhood, as well as to the religious iconography that abounds in the city at large.”

As the program has grown and developed, Osborn has increasingly interwoven the curriculum and classroom learning with real-world experiences. She said the immersive aspect of the program is critical for learning—even for her, eight years into leading it.

“I've become much more explicit and much more open about really encouraging students to learn by doing," she said. "The stuff of daily life—conversations, observations, experiences—offer all sorts of opportunities for rigorous thinking and serious reflection, just as we expect in our standard classroom,” said Osborn, who herself studied abroad in Dakar as an undergraduate student.

She added that the program is still teaching her new ways to approach her work—lessons she's brought back to her teaching in Chicago.

‘Survival Wolof’ and other lessons

For fourth-year data science and economics student Dayo Oladitan, traveling to Dakar as a part of study abroad was a means to connect to his own cultural heritage. Having parents who immigrated to the United States from Nigeria, Oladitan was excited to visit West Africa.

“It gave me an opportunity to see a life different from mine and connect to Africa in a way that I've never been able to before,” he said. “And it gave me the insight to know that there are more opportunities to come to Africa in the future.”

While in Dakar, students face challenges and adjust to new cultural expectations, all while managing their studies. Crichlow, who is studying history and education in the College, had no prior experience with French or Wolof, Senegal’s lingua franca. So, although she took the program's "Survival Wolof" course, there was still a constant need to figure out how to move through the world, both at home and out in the city.

“There are points of difficulty and fatigue,” she explained. “It is tiring to exist in a language that you don't know all the time, but it’s balanced out well by being in a cohort of fellow UChicago students everyday so that you can learn and grow more when you’re at your homestay.”

Oladitan, who spent this winter in Dakar, emphasized the initial barrier that language posed with his host family and in markets, where urban Wolof—which blends standard Wolof with French and Arabic—is spoken most frequently and where many people do not know English.

However, language was also a unifying force in Oladitan’s study abroad experience. This past quarter, a few members of the cohort connected with a WARC program assistant and English professor at the Institut UniPro Senegal, a private university in Dakar. The professor invited students to join his class for a day to engage with students there who were learning English.

“It was nice just to break the barrier for them around the English language, and to show them that it's not this whole foreign, mysterious language that only certain people have access to,” he explained. “I feel like that's one of the most positive experiences I've had where my American identity has been used for something very good.”

As her program neared completion, Crichlow reflected on the ways in which the program impacted her trajectory at UChicago and beyond. As a third-year student, much of her near future is planned, whether it be the courses she has left to take or the internship she will work this summer. But her time in Dakar has been a well-placed variation from her routine.

“I've learned a lot about being more flexible and more open, just approaching the world with a greater curiosity,” she said. “You can still accomplish your goals, but you could do them in a radically different way than you'd expect.”

The program’s impacts after College

Samantha Taylor, AB’25, decided to study abroad in Dakar during her third year in the College because it was off the “well-worn path” and offered her the unique opportunity to travel somewhere she may not have ever gone on her own.

“I thought, if I want to study abroad, and I want to grow and learn from it, I want to be the most out of my comfort zone that I possibly can be, and that's why I chose Dakar,” she said.

Taylor continues to carry these lessons with her as a part of a global scholarship program at Stanford Law School, where she is attending as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. She even wrote about her experience in Dakar in her graduate school applications, citing it as a transformative and eye-opening experience that shaped both her time at UChicago and her understanding of the world.

Given the small size of the Dakar Civilizations cohorts, students often form deep friendships with students whom they may not have met on campus due to being in different years or having different majors. Two years after her program, Taylor still regularly talks to Osborn and the friends that she made abroad.

“It's one of those experiences that has given me long-term friendships because of how challenging it was and how much we all had to grow together because of it,” Taylor said. “There were obstacles, but that's exactly what makes it worthwhile if you're looking for community growth.”

To teach social-emotional skills, does a robot need to pretend to be human?

Miranda Redenbaugh — 03/30/2026 - 02:03pm

In a crowded fourth-grade classroom in Chicago, a new kind of tutor is shaping how children learn about empathy, conflict, and problem-solving.

These robots aren’t programmed to act like friendly classmates with invented emotions and backstories. Instead, they speak plainly, without pretense or fiction.

The research behind it, led by graduate student Lauren Wright and overseen by Asst. Prof. Sarah Sebo at the University of Chicago’s Department of Computer Science, found that honest, factual robots can effectively supplement classroom instruction—challenging conventions and illuminating a new, ethical path for educational technology.

The study was honored with the Best Paper Award at the prestigious 2026 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.

“We started not with a specific robot prototype, but by observing social and emotional learning instruction in Chicago Public Schools classrooms and talking with teachers about their experiences with social and emotional learning, and then starting to think about how robots might be able to supplement the amazing work teachers are already doing in schools,” said Sebo.

One-on-one learning

Social and emotional learning is a set of skills to help students recognize and manage emotions, establish solid relationships, and respond to challenges. Research has found that teaching these skills boosts long-term academic performance and mental wellness, and reduces rates of dropouts and violence, among other outcomes.

For teachers in Chicago Public Schools, social and emotional learning lessons usually mean whole-class activities delivered once a week.

In practice, however, many students tune out, and overstretched teachers would love more one-on-one opportunities.

Teachers interviewed in the study expressed concern that group social and emotional learning lessons rarely reach every child. This perspective, along with careful classroom observation and interviews, drove the research team to look for solutions.

“We wanted to create a team that would be able to uniquely design and study technology, informed by best practices in social and emotional learning education, with the input of principals, administrators, teachers and students in Chicago Public Schools,” said Sebo.

The plan came together as a partnership; Chicago Public Schools provided access to classrooms and teachers, and policy expert Kiljoong Kim at Chapin Hall built crucial connections that made this cross-institution project possible.

Wright’s team asked whether robots could supplement teachers and provide individualized instruction where group lessons fall short. And did it actually matter if those robots ‘acted’ human?

Straightforward robots

52 students participated in the experiment. One group learned social and emotional learning from robots with fictional, emotion-laden dialogue. Another worked with robots that spoke only in factual terms, openly acknowledging they had no feelings or friends. The third group received their regular curriculum with no robot involvement.

Both robot groups showed students improved in their mastery of social and emotional learning concepts compared to peers who only had classroom instruction. Yet the researchers found the factual robots, in their straightforward honesty, often encouraged deeper engagement with lesson vocabulary and problem-solving language.

These findings challenge conventional wisdom.

“Giving robots fictional personalities with the intent to make them more engaging is a common approach to educational robots, one which feels especially relevant for teaching social and emotional learning,” said Wright. “However, in our research study, we found that the robot’s fictional emotions and experiences may have distracted or made students feel less comfortable using lesson language.

“These findings challenge us to reconsider our assumptions when designing robot behaviors—just because an approach is common doesn’t mean it will always lead to the best outcomes.”

Authentic impact

As society becomes more concerned about children forming unhealthy attachments to AI, the Chicago team’s results provide timely guidance. Demonstrating that factual robots can perform as well or better without mimicking emotions points the way to a safer classroom technology.

The central message of the study is clear, the scientists said: Robots are powerful supplements, extending teachers’ capabilities and freeing up attention for students who need more support. But they do not replace the human element in teaching.

“We firmly believe that human teachers are the most important element in elementary education,” said Sebo. “As we all experienced during the pandemic, replacing in-person educational experiences with technology-mediated ones can be disastrous. Our work does not seek to replace human teachers, but instead, aims to create robot tools that extend a teacher’s reach, giving the ability to provide children with one-on-one attention without pulling them away from the rest of the class.”

As this school year winds down, Chicago’s classroom experiment stands as proof of what partnership-driven innovation can achieve in education. The findings invite other districts to rethink how technology can responsibly supplement teachers and ensure every child receives meaningful, individualized support.

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

No clear endgame to U.S. operation in Iran, UChicago experts say

Cristi Kempf — 03/27/2026 - 04:28pm

After four weeks of fighting in Iran, one question looms above the rest: What is the United States trying to accomplish?

That was the central tension at a March 23 panel at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where scholars and a policy leader examined a conflict that is reshaping global markets, alliances and the nature of modern warfare.

The goal of the fighting “is not clear,” said panelist Paul Poast, an associate professor of political science. He pointed to stated reasons that span regime change to nuclear deterrence and reopening shipping lanes—adding that, without an identifiable objective, it’s difficult to define success or find an exit.

Poast was joined by Ryan Kellogg, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor at the Harris School, and Jake Braun, executive director of the Harris Cyber Policy Initiative. Harris Senior Lecturer Rebecca Wolfe moderated, opening the discussion with a list of the conflict’s rising human toll. In parallel, the Pentagon has sent thousands of Marines to the Middle East and disruptions to global shipping routes have sent shockwaves through the international economy.

The conflict, named Operation Epic Fury, has triggered one of the most severe oil supply disruptions in decades, said Kellogg, an energy and environmental economist and deputy dean at Harris. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, denying safe passage to tankers carrying oil and liquefied natural gas and cutting off roughly 10% of the world’s daily oil supply, he explained.

The result has been a sharp spike in energy prices, with cascading effects including inflation and food insecurity. Countries in South and Southeast Asia, heavily reliant on Middle Eastern oil, have been among the hardest hit. Even in energy-producing nations such as the United States, consumers have seen rising costs. In late March, gas prices were up more than $1 per gallon from one month earlier.

This is not something that can be fixed quickly, Kellogg added. Panelists warned that Americans may be unprepared for the human and economic costs of a prolonged engagement.

Dimming hope for a quick resolution, they said, are the competing interests being pushed by the U.S., Israel and Iran as well as what Wolfe described as Iran’s “less than traditional strategies.” Iran’s drones, mines and cyberattacks are “very hard to suppress,” Kellogg noted, a lesson Russia has learned in its war with Ukraine.

Braun warned that Iran is likely to expand its use of nontraditional tactics, including cyberattacks and disinformation and misinformation campaigns.

“Iran is the poster child for hybrid threats,” Braun said, pointing to its past attacks on U.S. banking systems, election integrity and water utilities.

He cautioned that future cyberattacks could be even more disruptive with the growing use of AI to rapidly scale cyber capabilities.

“That's really scary because then it's not human against human anymore, and it's much harder to defeat,” Braun said.

‘The modern version of a world war’

Russia and China are also being drawn into the conflict, panelists noted, though in indirect ways. Poast said the fighting illustrates a potential evolution in how global wars are waged.

“What you're witnessing right now is the modern version of a world war,” he said, explaining that it’s not a single, unified conflict, but a series of interconnected regional wars involving major powers.

Though Russia has deep ties with Iran and may continue to provide support, Braun noted it has its hands full with Ukraine. At the same time, rising energy prices are benefiting Moscow economically.

China, meanwhile, has taken a more restrained approach. Despite its reliance on Middle Eastern oil and longstanding relationship with Iran, Beijing appears focused on positioning itself as a stabilizing force on the global stage.

“I think China is trying to sit back a bit and not be viewed as one of the belligerents in all this so that the rest of the world, particularly folks in their sphere of influence in Asia, can view them as a stable partner,” Braun said.

China, sees an opportunity to contrast its steady approach with the more unpredictable approach of the U.S., panelists noted.

Why attack Iran now?

Panelists were united in their view that that U.S. approach has intensely complicated the situation. European nations and Gulf states, many of whom were not consulted ahead of the strikes, have been reluctant to fully support U.S. efforts.

What many say could have been a moment for coalition-building has instead created hesitation and, in some cases, distrust. Allies, especially those that host U.S. military bases and have been attacked by Iran, are now questioning Washington’s reliability and decision-making, Poast noted, and its ability to protect them.

But that question was overshadowed by an even bigger one: Why attack Iran now?

The U.S. and Iran have had tensions for decades, and it’s been less than 10 months since Operation Midnight Hammer, in which the U.S. claimed to have knocked out Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“One of the key things that explains the timing of what's happening now is what I've been calling ‘Maduro momentum,’” Poast said, referring to the January operation to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

“The Maduro raid went very well from the perspective of President Donald Trump,” Poast said, “And I think Trump took a lot of pride in that and that then gave him momentum to say, ‘Well, where can we turn next?’”

But that “next” may prove to be more problematic for the Trump administration.

“I think he's kicked the hornet's nest,” Poast said, “and it's not going to be something he can just easily extract the United States from.”

—This article was originally published on the Harris website.

The secret ingredient in a new biomedical device? Lithium-ion battery tech

Louise Lerner — 03/27/2026 - 09:13am

If your body needs a boost, the fix might already be in your phone.

A new study from the University of Chicago taps an ingredient most often used in the lithium-ion batteries that power our devices to open new avenues in biomedical technology.

Lithium plays vital roles in the body, but taking it orally can have unwanted side effects—so a pair of UChicago chemistry labs teamed up to find a way to deliver lithium only to the exact places where it’s needed.

Their study, published March 27th in Nature Materials, could be the foundation for future biomedical technologies to treat pain and disease.

“On the surface, it sounds like a crazy idea to place a lithium-ion battery electrode onto a living tissue, but the results we had are very promising,” said Zhe Cheng, first author of the study and a graduate student at UChicago. “Lithium calms nerve activity, which makes it potentially very useful—we have many biomedical approaches to precisely stimulate nerves, but less to dampen them, which is what is needed for pain relief and other disorders.”

The promise of lithium

Doctors have known for decades that lithium has applications in human health. It’s most widely used as a mood stabilizer, but is also being explored for pain relief, Alzheimer’s disease and even neural regeneration, among other areas.

The trouble is that taking lithium as a pill means it gets delivered to every part of the body, not just the part that needs it—which puts strain on the kidneys and liver as they work to clear it.

To tackle this, two sets of researchers teamed up: Prof. Bozhi Tian, whose lab specializes in creating innovative biomedical devices, and Assoc. Prof. Chong Liu, with the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, whose lab develops advanced materials.

They turned to lithium batteries, which are already designed to store lots of lithium ions and release them only on command. After a few tests, the team zeroed in on lithium iron phosphate, which is used as the cathode in many batteries and is stable and nontoxic.

“Plus, it’s a very mature technology, so we understand a lot about the material already,” explained Liu.

Cheng created a tiny, flexible patch with lithium iron phosphate, and tested it as a means of pain relief. Since lithium dampens nerve activity, their idea was to implant the patch near a nerve and deliver a brief electrical signal that would cause the patch to release lithium ions on command—reducing the nerve signaling and with it, the sensation of pain.

In experiments with mice and rats, the team found the patch successfully dampened nerve signals.

“We found the activity is very, very localized,” Cheng said. “The lithium doesn’t migrate far from the patch, while still delivering long-lasting neural inhibition.”

More ions, more possibilities

The initial study is a proof of concept, the scientists said, but they hope it could open the door for future technologies. For example, perhaps the technology could be incorporated into electrical acupuncture to avoid the need for an implant.

Another avenue, Tian said, could be to switch up the main ingredient.

“We focused on lithium, but we think you could potentially use other ions that are important in the body, like magnesium, zinc or calcium,” he said. “For example, magnesium is important for supporting protein folding and stabilizing protein structure, so could you use it to selectively treat diseases caused by misfolded proteins?”

The team is working with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation to further the invention.

Other UChicago coauthors were postdoctoral researchers Tiantian Guo, Chuanwang Yang and Ananth Kamath; graduate student Suin Choi; Jing Zhang, then a postdoctoral researcher, now at Zhejiang University; Jiping Yue, now at AbbVie; and Gangbin Yan, PhD’24, now at Stanford University; and Saehyun Kim, PhD’25, now at CZ Chicago Biohub.

The study made use of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility, the UChicago Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, and the Soft Matter Characterization Facility at UChicago.

Citation: “Mineral-originated bioelectronics for inhibition via lithium electrochemistry.” Cheng et al, Nature Materials.

Funding: U.S. Army Research Office, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation.

Seth Green reappointed as dean of the Graham School

03/26/2026 - 09:54am

Seth Green has been reappointed as dean of the University of Chicago’s Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies for a second five-year term, President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker announced.

Since joining as dean in 2021, Green has strengthened the role the Graham School plays as the University’s center for lifelong learning, expanding the number of academic offerings and creating innovative programs and courses to engage with society’s most pressing challenges.

“Seth has a deep understanding of what it means to be part of a university community committed to rigorous intellectual engagement across the span of a lifetime,” Alivisatos said. “He has brought to his leadership a genuine appreciation for the Graham School’s mission and for the ways it opens the life of the mind to learners across generations.”

Green helped launch a new flagship fellowship for the Graham School, the Leadership & Society Initiative. The program helps accomplished individuals explore possibilities for the next chapter of their lives and careers through courses with UChicago faculty, as well as retreats, executive coaching and distinguished mentorship programming. Since its inception in 2023, the Leadership & Society Initiative has welcomed more than 100 fellows and has quickly become one of the top-tier programs in advanced leadership education.

“By every measure, Seth’s time as dean of the Graham School has been a tremendous success,” Baicker said. “There is a rich tradition at UChicago of creating educational opportunities for learners at all stages who value deep inquiry. Seth’s leadership, dedication, and generous spirit have been invaluable for the Graham School and for the entire University, and I am thrilled that he will continue in this role.”

In partnership with faculty and staff leaders, Green helped expand the Graham School’s Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program with a new Tech & Society concentration while also growing MLA admissions by more than 45%. The Graham School’s world-renowned Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults program also grew dramatically, with incoming students more than doubling during Green’s tenure. The Graham School also curated new courses on timely issues ranging from climate change to democracy and disinformation.

Increasing access continues to be a priority, according to Green. Financial assistance for Graham School students has grown more than six-fold in the last five years, and Green said he remains committed to continuing to “expand access for a broad community of learners to our transformative lifelong education.”

“It has been an extraordinary privilege to work alongside outstanding faculty and staff in extending the University’s intellectual life to lifelong learners around the world,” Green said. “I am energized to continue this work and to further connect the University’s deepest thinking with individuals who are seeking wisdom across their lives.”

Four UChicago scientists named Association for the Advancement of Science fellows in 2026

03/26/2026 - 08:27am

Four University of Chicago scholars were named 2025 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for their distinguished contributions to the sciences.

Erin J. Adams, Seth Darling, Vincenzo Vitelli and Carlos E.M. Wagner were among the fellows elected as AAAS members for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.

Erin J. Adams is the Joseph Regenstein Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and currently serves as Vice Provost for Research at UChicago.

Adams’ research uses structural biology, biochemistry, and biophysics to understand how certain components of the immune system distinguish healthy tissue from that of diseased. Through understanding the biological mechanisms and outcomes of this recognition, her laboratory seeks to translate this information to clinical applications in the treatment of infectious disease, cancer, and autoimmunity.

As vice provost for research, she oversees both administration and development of the research enterprise at the University of Chicago, including managing the broad research infrastructure that constitutes the foundation to UChicago’s research enterprise, as well as facilitating large-scale, cross-disciplinary initiatives through her oversight of the Office of Research Development Support and the University of Chicago Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering. She is a member of the Committees on Immunology, Cancer Biology, Genetics, Genomics & Systems Biology; the Comprehensive Cancer Center; and was a founding faculty member of the myCHOICE Career Development program.

Adams was cited for “outstanding contributions to molecular immunology research, research administration and strategic leadership, community outreach and engagement, and graduate education and career development programming.”

Seth Darling is the chief science and technology officer for the Advanced Energy Technologies Directorate and senior scientist in the Chemical Sciences & Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory, and is a CASE senior scientist at UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

Darling is the director of the Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems (AMEWS) Energy Frontier Research Center. His group’s research centers around molecular engineering, with a current emphasis on advanced materials for cleaning water, having made previous contributions in fields ranging from self-assembly to advanced lithography to solar energy.

He has published over 140 scientific articles, holds over a dozen patents, is a co-author of popular books on water and on debunking climate skeptic myths, and lectures widely on topics related to energy, water, and climate.

He was cited for “pioneering advancements in materials for energy and environmental applications and for exceptional public engagement efforts, fostering widespread appreciation and understanding of scientific innovation.”

Vincenzo Vitelli is a professor of physics and a member of the James Franck Institute, the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Data Science Institute and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. He is the director of the UChicago-CNRS International Research Center for Fundamental Discovery.

His research interests span several areas at the interface between physical and biological sciences, engineering and applied mathematics. His recent work encompasses AI for science, quantitative biology, active matter, machine learning, robotics, metamaterials, topological insulators, hydrodynamics, dynamical systems and soft materials.

Vitelli’s research explores how the rich phenomenology of complex systems arises from the interplay between strong non-linearities, disorder and dynamics far from equilibrium that he explores using analytical and numerical tools and often in close collaboration with experimentalists.

He is cited for “foundational theoretical work in the fields of topological mechanics, odd elasticity and non-reciprocal interactions.”

Carlos E.M. Wagner is a professor of physics and member of the Enrico Fermi Institute, Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at UChicago. He also holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory, where he served as head of the high-energy physics theory group for 20 years. He is currently the Distinguished Visitor Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute.

Wagner’s area of research is phenomenology of particle physics, namely the study of the interactions of elementary particles, with a special emphasis on collider physics, Higgs physics, the theory of dark matter and the origin of the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter.

He is cited for “groundbreaking contributions to the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and its phenomenological consequences, and for outstanding mentorship of junior colleagues.”

Q&A with Madhav Rajan: UChicago’s ambitions for deeper global engagement

Peter Kujawinski — 03/25/2026 - 09:20am

Last summer, Madhav Rajan, dean of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, was also appointed to a new role as UChicago’s chief global strategist—representing the University as a whole.

We recently sat down with Rajan to discuss his vision for global engagement at UChicago. At the top of his agenda is to better connect UChicago’s overseas campuses into a true network that can extend UChicago’s distinctive education and research to the world. Inspired by his experience leading Booth as well as his own experience as an international student, Rajan emphasizes the need for UChicago to be flexible when operating globally, and to adjust and pivot as needed.

Although strategies may change depending on global circumstances, the University’s engagement with the world is at the core of its identity, Rajan said. He added that the University wants to meet the highest standard of excellence in everything it does around the world. “You want to do things that are going to have a global impact for a long time to come.”

Can you explain your role as chief global strategist and what drew you to it?

The fact that the role was set up really speaks to the University's commitment to being a global institution. We have very broad and very deep engagement with the world. This role is intended to find a way to look at synergies across these types of engagements, to provide opportunities for global engagement and to leverage our overseas resources more. From my standpoint as dean of Booth, which has always had a global presence, it seemed to be a natural way to take what I already knew and use that for this second role.

In our current moment, there are many challenges for American universities and their international work. Will the nature of UChicago’s global engagement change—and if so, how?

One of the great things about being in a place like UChicago, which has been around for 135-plus years, is that you can have a very long-term view. From that standpoint, the ethos underpinning our global engagement is completely unchanged. We want to be an institution that helps come up with ideas, plans and policies that will solve the world's toughest problems. We want to educate the people who will run organizations and corporations across the world. We want faculty who will have global impact. The only way to do that is by being international.

Booth has long been one of UChicago’s most globally active units. What lessons from there are you applying to this University-wide role?

Booth went abroad before anyone else did. Our first executive MBA was set up in Barcelona back in 1994. Then we set up a campus in Singapore in 2000. That changed over time. We moved from Barcelona to London, and from Singapore to Hong Kong. To me, one of the big lessons is the notion that you need to be flexible, particularly in the global realm. Being willing to adjust and pivot as needed is key. In London, we had a faculty committee evaluate our presence there. Their message to me was we should go big or go home. We decided to go big and we went to this new facility in London, which has been transformative not just for Booth, but for UChicago. We get more UChicago students in the College from England now than any other country.

The message from UChicago President Paul Alivisatos announcing your appointment emphasized aligning our global engagement “with priority areas across our research and education mission.” Can you discuss how engagement might differ depending on whether the activity is research or education?

Our research-promoting activities provide access to partnerships and new sources of funding, and the place where we see that most clearly is in Europe. We've partnered with the Berlin University Alliance to provide seed funding for new research collaborations. In France, it's a combination of both student and faculty interest.

We have joint programs where Ph.D. students can spend time in French institutions, then come to UChicago to get their Ph.D. Something I didn't know until I took this job is that CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) in France is UChicago's most frequent research collaborator in terms of number of co-publications. On the student side, Hong Kong is a great example, where international high school students first learn about UChicago through our summer academy. We obviously have UChicago students doing study abroad all over the world, including in China. We work in India with the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. They have a summer fellows program in Ahmedabad with the university there, and the goal is to bring cohorts of like-minded students for a shared global experience.

Your role includes oversight of UChicago’s presence in Beijing, Delhi and Hong Kong, as well as Paris in collaboration with the College and London with Booth. What role do you expect them to play in advancing UChicago’s engagement globally?

The fact that we have these centers helps us maintain local ties, maintain research collaborations, and engage better with institutions and alumni there. If I look at Hong Kong as an example, for instance, the construction of the Hong Kong campus was largely funded by our alumni living locally. The fact that we were able to make that physical investment made them a lot more committed to being a part of that and giving back. I think it's also great for our faculty. One thing we've done at Booth, which I would love to see done more in other places, is we set up global faculty-in-residence programs where faculty will go spend three months or longer living in a particular location.

We have chosen to invest in regions that are going to be important for years to come. Having a presence is a first step. Over time, how do we modify that presence? How do we change it depending on the needs of our faculty or students? I think it's been a marvelous thing that we made these investments. There’s a lot of time and effort spent in managing these centers and campuses, but it's absolutely worth it for the University.

Looking ahead, what do you see as UChicago’s greatest opportunities internationally?

First, it’s figuring out a way to transform these overseas centers and campuses into a true network. Second, we're not insensitive to the University's financial situation. How we manage these facilities in a more financially sustainable manner is something that we take really seriously. And third, given the geopolitical situation, can we make these sites places where we can educate more students? We're using them as a way to support activities on behalf of all areas of the University, including figuring out, for example, how do we provide funding to people who want to do research in Africa? How do we want to provide resources to somebody who wants to do work in Vietnam or Indonesia, using the Hong Kong campus as a base?

Your undergraduate degree came from the University of Madras in India, followed by graduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. Does your experience as an international graduate student shape your role as UChicago’s Chief Global Strategist?

People of my generation know firsthand what this country does for foreign students. If you speak to them, you’ll find a deep appreciation for the institutions in this country. And for the openness that this country has always had to encourage the best talent to come. I bring the experience of coming in as a foreign student and navigating the U.S. educational system and then working as a faculty member. I appreciate the importance of having a global background and recognize that countries are different and unique in their own way.

$50 million gift to revitalize historic Ida Noyes Hall as a space for students, visitors

03/23/2026 - 03:00pm

A $50 million gift from Chair of the Board of Trustees David M. Rubenstein, JD’73, to the University of Chicago will support the modernization of Ida Noyes Hall, transforming the iconic 1916 building into a dynamic gathering place for students and the campus community—and a welcoming hub for alumni and visitors.

In recognition of Rubenstein’s gift, this new hub for activities will be named the David M. Rubenstein Commons. Plans for the building will ensure Rubenstein Commons honors the historic character and name of Ida Noyes Hall.

Rubenstein’s gift is the first step in the University’s ambitious plan to revitalize its historic campus buildings for the next century—preserving their architectural legacy while meeting the changing needs of the UChicago community.

“This gift does far more than reimagine a single building,” said President Paul Alivisatos. “It is the first project in our greater historic quads revitalization endeavor—the results of which will show that it is possible to preserve the beauty and meaning of our historic buildings, while updating them to serve generations of faculty and students yet to come. David’s leadership sets the pace for what is possible.”

“This project will create inviting spaces where students can gather, connect with one another or find a comfortable place to study,” said Melina Hale, dean of the College. “Rubenstein Commons will bring the campus community together like never before.”

Honoring a rich history while preparing for the future

The origins of the historic Ida Noyes Hall date to 1915, when businessman LaVerne Noyes made a donation to UChicago to honor his late wife, Ida. First designed as a women’s gymnasium, social center, the building has evolved over the past century while remaining a hub of social activity. It hosts academic-focused events for the campus community as well as film screenings at the Max Palevsky Cinema, home to the renowned student-run Doc Films.

Plans for Rubenstein Commons will create inviting spaces where students can gather, study and connect with one another. The project will preserve the building’s neo-Gothic architecture and historic character while enhancing its infrastructure, accessibility and sustainability.

By preserving symbolic campus spaces, the University aims to create a campus that fosters learning, intellectual exchange, and innovation for the next 100 years and beyond.

“UChicago’s historic buildings and its quads are architectural treasures,” Rubenstein said. “I am excited by the opportunity to bring new life to this beloved building, with deep respect for its legacy of beautiful architecture and community. This work will create a center of gravity for the University community and welcome the world to this remarkable campus.”

The University will share designs and a project timeline as planning progresses.

A philanthropic leader and partner

The new gift builds upon Rubenstein’s longstanding commitment to the University.

Since 2022, he has served as chair of the Board of Trustees, working closely with Alivisatos to help steward the University’s vision and long-term priorities, strengthen its governance, and ensure that UChicago can sustain transformative education and field-defining research.

In 2010, Rubenstein established the Rubenstein Scholars Program, one of the nation’s most selective law school scholarship programs, which has provided full-tuition support to more than 200 students since it was created.

His support also enabled the creation of the Rubenstein Forum, which opened in 2021 as an intellectual destination that strengthens the University’s connection to the city and world, hosting conferences, lectures, academic symposia, arts events, and discussions with experts and leaders from campus and around the globe.

Rubenstein is co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. He has demonstrated a deep commitment to preserving documents and buildings central to the nation’s history, advancing public understanding of the institutions that have defined the American experiment. He is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an original signer of The Giving Pledge, author of five books, and a television and podcast host.

On the pitch and beyond, UChicago goalkeeper gives his all

Colin Terrill — 03/23/2026 - 12:00pm

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

Of the 22 players on the pitch during a soccer match, the goalkeepers have one of the most important jobs—make sure nothing gets past.

That’s the task presented to University of Chicago second-year student Ali Alamery, the starting goalie on the Maroons men’s soccer team. His role can be the loneliest on the pitch, requiring a laser focus to stay locked on the game, especially when the action is happening far downfield.

“A lot can happen if I’m not fully concentrating for 90 minutes,” Alamery said. “Even if I stop focusing mentally just to relax for five seconds, one slip up or delayed reaction can be the difference between winning a game 1-0 or having that result flipped on you.”

It’s that drive for excellence that powers Alamery. But this energy isn't just confined to the pitch—he applies it to everything he does, from his academics as a pre-medicine student and aspiring neurosurgeon to the volunteer work he does with hospice patients and kids, including those at UChicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital.

“UChicago students, whether it’s myself, my teammates or just someone I share a class with, are very focused on trying to be at the top of whatever they want to do," he said. "We really want to make a difference.”

On the field, Alamery anchors the goal for a team built to compete.

The Maroons won a men’s national soccer championship just a few years ago and play in the toughest conference in the NCAA’s Division III. They take on equally competitive schools during non-conference play. That group includes St. Olaf University—a formidable opponent that also won a title this decade and squared up against UChicago in the second match of the season.

The Oles’ strikers sent shot after shot at Alamery’s goal, hoping to sneak one past him to break the stalemate. In all, they had 21 attempts, with Alamery stopping all 10 that ended up on goal to secure the first shutout of his career in a 0-0 tie.

He would start in all 20 games for the Maroons during the past season and record nine shutouts in total—good for eighth in the UChicago career record books after just one season.

Alamery maintains his goalie’s mindset through each challenge he takes on, no matter the venue.

“Being a keeper is all about trust,” he said. “The team trusts you to stop the ball, they trust you to do the work and be a team player. It’s the same thing with academics, right? If you don’t give it your all—your focus, your hard work, your dedication—you’re going to let yourself and your team down.”

Motivated by family and driven by teamwork

Growing up and attending school in East Lansing, Mich., Alamery performed at a high enough level to play Division I soccer and trained with Detroit City FC, a member of the USL Championship professional league.

But after starting at Michigan State University, he decided to transfer to UChicago for several reasons. He knew the Maroons always fielded a competitive team and that he could get a top-caliber education—but more than anything, he said he wanted to repay his parents, who immigrated to the United States from Iraq in 2001, for the sacrifices they made to give him the opportunities he’s had.

“In the end I wanted to make them proud and show them that all their hard work to give us the best life was worth it,” he said.

Off the field, Alamery is a neuroscience and psychology double major. He finds both interesting, but once again, his reasons for the choice are mostly tied back to family.

“My father was a prisoner of war for 15 years and with that has come post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “I think my drive to pursue neuroscience is because I truly want to understand what my dad went through. Most Iraqi men were raised to hide their emotions, but I feel like if I take these classes and really understand the science behind it, I don’t need him to tell me anything—instead I can do what I can to help him feel more comfortable.”

Alamery wants to use the knowledge he gains from psychology to carry over into a career practicing neuro-oncology. He's a lab assistant for Prof. Bakhtiar Yamini in the UChicago Medicine Department of Neurological Surgery, studying the aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma. The lab team is currently investigating various inhibitors to slow tumor progression or improve survival chances.

It didn’t come as a surprise to Yamini that Alamery is the truest form of a team player.

“Ali is intimately involved in the team,” Yamini said. “He’s not only learning things on his own but also passing those lessons on and teaching less experienced members of the group. Labs only work when each of the links are strong and his efforts strengthen those around him.”

Even with the demands of athletics and academics, Alamery still finds time to volunteer with hospice patients around the Chicago metro as well as children who are currently receiving treatment at Comer Children's—something he signed up for immediately during his first year on campus.

“These children are coming in with tough cases but all they want to do is escape and feel like a kid again,” said Alamery.“There are parallels to people who are in hospice care as well. I just want to be able to give them a little bit of comfort and show that people care about them, even if it’s only for a few minutes.”

Winning in the classroom and community

Back in the locker room, Alamery knows the success he achieves on the field is all for nothing if he doesn’t reach those same levels in the classroom. Being a student athlete and balancing academics can be a difficult task, especially at UChicago, but it helps when studying is also a team effort.

“As soon as we get to our hotel, whether that’s in New York City or Atlanta, you’ll put your bags in the room and by the time you get back to the lobby half of the team is already doing coursework,” Alamery said. “It pushes me more when I see them grinding it out through the night to reach our goals.”

Men’s soccer head coach Phil Kroft wants a good squad on the field—but he’s also trying to produce men that will do great things for society off it. It’s one of the reasons why Alamery ended up coming to play at UChicago.

“We are held to high standards, but we also know that he cares for us,” he said. “Whether it’s dedicated study time during travel or connecting us with alumni to help us form professional connections, he wants to see all of us go off and do great things in the world.”

Alamery’s effort to become the best version of himself hasn’t gone unnoticed by Kroft.

“Ali is not one to take shortcuts and his nose down, hardworking mentality carries over into the classroom as well,” he said. “During warmups with teammates, he is often talking about his latest lab, lecture or research that he’s working on. He truly loves being a premed student at UChicago.”

Kroft also said Alamery “single-handedly” convinced him that the squad should get more involved with the community. That volunteering spirit led to Maroons men’s soccer partnering with Team Impact, an organization that works with children dealing with serious illness or disability, matching them with teams across the country to give them a sense of belonging. It’s one way that Alamery can share his passion for service with his teammates.

“With Team Impact, we get to see their smiles, see them be able to leave the difficulty and hardships behind,” he said. “Being able to see this really pushes me and my teammates and puts a smile on all our faces too.”

Alamery has already made an impact both on and off the field but there is still time to do so much more as he’ll soon become a rising third-year. Leaving home and family behind was one of the tougher choices that he has made, but in the end, UChicago is where he belongs.

“I’ve come to realize that UChicago isn’t just a four-year thing,” he said. “Whether it’s soccer or my volunteer work, I know I am forming lifelong bonds and making a difference in others’ lives. I couldn’t be happier to be at UChicago and I hope the warmth and welcoming feelings that people showed me are the things that I can help pass on to the next generation of Maroons.”

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