UChicago News

Two undergraduates recognized for academic excellence in STEM fields

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:01 -0500

Adel Rahman and Naomi Sweeting, third-years in the College, have been awarded Barry Goldwater Scholarships, awarded annually based on academic merit in natural sciences, mathematics, computer science and engineering.

The two students were nominated by the College and are among 211 scholars selected from a field of 1,280 applicants nationwide. The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

“As future scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians, UChicago’s students have the drive and dedication to make a meaningful impact on their fields,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College. “We are proud that the Goldwater Foundation has recognized the work of Adel and Naomi, and we hope the award will give them the resources and encouragement to continue their academic pursuits.”

A physics and mathematics major, Rahman plans to pursue a doctorate in theoretical physics and conduct research focused on geometric and topological aspects of gravitational, high-energy and condensed matter physics. After pursuing his doctoral studies, he would like to teach at the university level.

“As a theorist, my work is somewhat disconnected from the real world, so it's easy to worry that people outside my field might not understand or care about what I am doing,” said Rahman. “Knowing that the Goldwater committee sees value in my research and aspirations has helped reaffirm my desire to keep pursuing my goals.”

Rahman is currently conducting research focused on general relativity. Under the guidance of Prof. Robert Wald, he is attempting to understand if, and if so, how, incoming gravitational radiation might alter the structure of a black hole and what consequences such an alteration might have. Rahman first developed an interest in general relativity when he took an introductory course on the subject from Wald. “I found the theory, in particular its elegant weaving of concrete physical ideas with high-powered mathematical machinery, to be both fascinating and profound.”

Rahman also has been engaged in a research project in mathematical hydrodynamics. Outside of the classroom, Rahman is a member of the Ransom Notes a cappella group and has served as a tutor for the Harper Tutors Program and the Department of Physics’ Bridge Program.

Sweeting is a mathematics major and history minor who plans to study number theory in graduate school. After earning a doctorate in theoretical math, Sweeting would like to teach at the university level.

Sweeting developed a love for math at a young age, and her interests were solidified through participation in math competitions at the middle school and high school level.

“I’ve always been fascinated by open problems—even ones that I knew were completely unapproachable,” said Sweeting. “I am amazed that with all the brilliance that has gone into mathematics for centuries and all the problems that have been solved, there are still simple mathematical questions that no one can answer. The thought of one day solving some of them myself has always been irresistible to me.”

Last summer, she completed an independent reading project about geometric measure theory and served as a teaching assistant at UChicago’s NSF Research Grant Summer Bootcamp, in which she planned curriculum and supervised student lectures. This summer, Sweeting will study number theory and arithmetic geometry at Emory University.

“I find number theory fascinating because it combines very concrete questions—many open problems could be understood by middle school students—with diverse and sophisticated methods drawn from very abstract areas of math.”

When she’s not engaged in math, Sweeting is a member of UChicago’s College Bowl team. She also participated in the European Civilization in Paris study abroad program.

Rahman and Sweeting were supported throughout their application process by the College Center for Scholarly Advancement, which supports undergraduates and College alumni through the highly competitive application processes for prestigious national scholarships and fellowships.

Two UChicago scientists win fellowships fostering ‘blue-sky’ research

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 17:10 -0500

Two University of Chicago scientists have earned fellowships through the U.S. Department of Defense that support innovative, “blue-sky” research at the limits of today’s technology.

Profs. David Freedman and Supratik Guha are among the 11 scientists and engineers chosen for the 2018 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program—awarded every year to conduct foundational research in fields including quantum information science, neuroscience, nanoscience, novel engineered materials, applied mathematics and statistics.

A professor of neurobiology, Freedman studies the mechanisms by which brains process and adapt to their environments. Guha, a professor in UChicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering and director of the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory, studies new materials and devices for electronics, sensing and energy. The awards are typically $3 million over five years.

Freedman’s lab works to decode how neurons process and react to their environments. They saw an opportunity to use that expertise to help artificial neural networks, which still struggle with tasks that the brain is incredibly good at—like taking knowledge from previous situations and applying it to new ones. His project will seek to deepen our understanding of the ways the brain generalize knowledge, and explore how to transfer it to artificial neural networks.

“For this proposal, we put our heads together to look at the most ambitious questions we could explore,” Freedman said. “We’re thrilled to have the flexibility to pursue the theoretical limits of what we can do in this area.”

Guha’s project studies the science behind new ways of creating single-crystal semiconductor thin films. This is relevant to a key limitation of processing for electronics like solar cells and microprocessors today: The crystalline semiconductor layers that make them up must be laid on top of a high-quality crystalline wafer.

“We’re very pleased with this award, which gives us the freedom to focus on long-term, fundamental semiconductor materials science with a strong high-risk, high-payoff component,” said Guha. “The ability to create single crystal layers without the need for an atomically matched underlying wafer will revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing.”

The fellowships aim to foster long-term relationships between the Department of Defense and university researchers—two groups whose paths don’t always cross regularly, Freedman said, so they’re looking forward to new connections.

The fellowships named for Vannevar Bush, who directed wartime scientific research and development during World War II. After the war, he authored a key report calling for expanding government funding in science and technology, calling basic research “the pacemaker of technological progress.”

Two UChicago faculty members win Sloan research fellowships

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 12:35 -0600

University of Chicago chemist Timothy Berkelbach and neurobiologist Mark Sheffield have been awarded Sloan research fellowships.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gives the awards annually to early-career scholars identified as the promising scientific researchers working today in the United States and Canada. This year's 126 winners will receive $65,000, which may be spent over a two-year term on any expense supportive of their research.

Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists, and fellows are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s independent research accomplishments, creativity and potential.

Tim Berkelbach, a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor, is a theoretical chemist who studies the electronic and optical properties of nanoscale materials. His group adapts computational models written for tens of atoms and scales them up to work for sets of hundreds or thousands—which you need to model materials for applications in solar energy, catalysis and manufacturing, chemical sensing and electronics.

“It’s an honor to be selected, especially alongside such an amazing lineup of people who have been recognized as Sloan fellows over the years,” Berkelbach said.

He joined the University in 2016.

Asst. Prof. Mark Sheffield studies memory—how memories are formed, retrieved and altered over time. Recent advances now let scientists identify, monitor and manipulate the neurons involved in a specific memory; his lab uses imaging and optogenetics to track how individual and groups of neurons in the hippocampus (the center of emotion and memory) interact.

“We know quite a lot about memory at a psychological level, but our understanding of the neurobiology that underlies memory function lags far behind,” Sheffield said. “We’re very excited, with the help of the Sloan fellowship, to move forward with these experiments, which we hope will provide insight for the development of treatments for memory disorders such as Alzheimer’s and PTSD.”

He joined the University in 2017.

Two UChicago mathematicians awarded one of field’s top prizes

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 12:23 -0600

University of Chicago mathematicians Alexander Beilinson and Vladimir Drinfeld have been awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize for Mathematics “for their groundbreaking work in algebraic geometry, representation theory and mathematical physics.”

Awarded by the Israeli Wolf Foundation, the prize honors the greatest achievements every year in the fields of agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, physics, medicine and the arts. The award for each subject area carries a $100,000 prize.

“It is a great pleasure to see such deserving people recognized with this prestigious prize,” said Prof. Edward W. “Rocky” Kolb, dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences. “Their work in algebraic geometry is truly remarkable.”

Beilinson, the David and Mary Winton Green University Professor, and Drinfeld, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor, specialize in algebraic geometry, which uses abstract algebra to solve questions of geometry. Frequent collaborators, their association dates back to 1975, when they were both students of Yuri Manin at Moscow State University.

Several mathematical techniques and conjectures bear their names, including the Beilinson Conjectures, cited as a guiding influence in number theory and algebraic geometry; and the Drinfeld module, which Drinfeld used in 1974 to prove parts of the Langlands program.

“The Geometric Langlands Program is a far-reaching network of conjectures, and sometimes theorems, connecting number theory, algebraic geometry, representation theory and mathematical physics in unexpected and illuminating ways,” said Prof. Kevin Corlette, who chairs the Department of Mathematics. “It is wonderful to see Profs. Beilinson and Drinfeld recognized for their work, which has been fundamental to the development of this subject.”

In addition to his proof of a case of the Langlands conjecture, Drinfeld is also known for his work in representation theory, mathematical physics and quantum group theory. In 1990 he was awarded the Fields Medal, often described as the mathematics counterpart to the Nobel Prize, awarded only once every four years to a mathematician under 40. He is a member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Beilinson specializes in geometric representation theory and mathematical physics. His honors include the Ostrowski Prize and the Moscow Mathematical Society Prize.

Both Beilinson and Drinfeld joined the University of Chicago in 1998. They frequently work together—they co-authored a 2004 textbook called Chiral Algebras, one of the most prominent texts on the subject—and they jointly run a seminar called the “Geometric Langlands Seminar,” which runs Mondays from 4:30 p.m. “until both the speaker and the participants are regularly exhausted,” according to a 2006 collection of mathematics articles titled Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory.

Drinfeld called the Wolf Prize “a great honor.” “We’re in good company,” Beilinson added. “To receive a prize together with Paul McCartney—who would think it would happen?” (McCartney received the Wolf Prize in Music this year.)

The Wolf Foundation was established by the German–born inventor, diplomat and philanthropist Ricardo Wolf; he later served as Fidel Castro’s ambassador to Israel, where he lived until his death in 1981. The prizes will be awarded by Israeli president Reuven Rivlin at a May ceremony in Jerusalem.

Award honors Prof. Eugene Parker’s lifetime of physics research

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 15:11 -0600

Prof. Emeritus Eugene Parker’s ideas were once widely questioned in the physics world. This week, he will receive one of the field’s highest honors.

Parker will receive the American Physical Society’s Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research at a Feb. 1 ceremony in Washington, D.C. The medal citation notes Parker’s “fundamental contributions to space physics, plasma physics, solar physics and astrophysics for over 60 years.”

“I’ve been a member of the APS since 1952, so this is a nice honor,” said Parker, the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Physics at the University of Chicago. “I’m very pleased, particularly since people were skeptical about these concepts for a long time.”

Early in his career Parker proposed a theory that faced widespread skepticism—notably that a “solar wind” was carrying charged particles from the surface of the sun to the far reaches of the solar system. Beginning with the Mariner II space probe to Venus in 1962, however, measurements from spacecraft began to validate his predictions.

In addition to the solar wind, he has investigated magnetic fields, including the role played by cosmic rays in Milky Way magnetic fields and how cyclonic turbulence generates magnetic fields.

“Gene Parker has a wonderful and exceptional record of seminal contributions to solar, space and astrophysics over the many years of his distinguished career,” said Roger Falcone, chair of the 2018 APS Medal selection committee. “It is remarkable to see so many effects that bear his name.”

It’s been an eventful year for Parker, whom NASA honored in May 2017 by naming its first mission to send a spacecraft through the sun’s corona after the professor. The Parker Solar Probe, which recently embarked on its thermal testing phase to be frozen and then blasted with heat to simulate conditions on its journey, is scheduled to launch in July 2018. It is the first spacecraft to be named after a living person.

Scientists are eager to explore the surface of the sun, especially as flares, winds and ejections from the sun can affect electronics and infrastructure here on Earth.

Parker said he plans to travel to witness the probe’s launch this summer. He’s looking forward to it; he’s never seen a rocket launch. “I imagine it’s like the Taj Mahal,” he said. “Everyone’s seen a picture of it, but to see it in person is a completely different story.”

Historian Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo receives Humboldt Award

Wed, 17 Jan 2018 11:08 -0600

Prof. Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo has received a prestigious award from a German foundation for his research on Latin American history.

Granted annually by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, the Humboldt Research Award honors a scholar “whose fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.”

Tenorio-Trillo was nominated by Sebastian Conrad, a professor of history from the Free University in Berlin, in recognition of his work in global history, as well as his more recent pursuit studying the history of 19th-century world philology of the languages of the Iberian Peninsula, a region in Portugal and Spain.

“Starting in the late 18th century and the second part of the 19th century,” Tenorio-Trillo said, “I argue the world experienced a ‘logophilic,’ or love of words, moment, when people sought the meaning of words as concepts according to the evolution of different languages.”

Tenorio-Trillo, the Samuel N. Harper Professor of History, Romance Languages and Literatures, and the College, said he knew he was a candidate but didn’t expect to receive the award.

“It was a great and happy surprise,” Tenorio-Trillo said. “For me, I want to believe the recognition is a way to show the excellence of topics and languages which are often considered marginal in mainstream scholarship.”

The Humboldt Award comes with a prize of 60,000 euros, which Tenorio-Trillo will put toward travel and research in Germany for his project looking at the historical study of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan languages in the 19th century. In particular he is interested in the rise of “word hunters,” amateurs and professionals who became fascinated with the origins of languages, and who would eventually create the dictionaries and grammars of modern Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan.

“It is a fascinating history that involves book collectors, nationalists and imperialists of all sorts, poets, and professional philologists and linguists,” said Tenorio-Trillo. “And of course, behind any single world language there is always 19th-century German philology, thus my need to visit Berlin libraries and archives.”

Tenorio-Trillo joined the University of Chicago in 2007. In 2015, he received the Laing Prize from the University of Chicago Press for his book, I Speak of the City: Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, which looks at the decades between 1880 and 1930 when Mexico City emerged as a modern city.

Tenorio-Trillo received his PhD in history from Stanford University. He is also an affiliated faculty at the Center for Latin American Studies and the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, and an associate professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City.

Up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards are granted each year by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which is named after the late Prussian naturalist and explorer.

Prof. Richard Thaler delivers Nobel Prize lecture

Fri, 08 Dec 2017 13:37 -0600

Until Prof. Richard H. Thaler came along, economists resisted the idea of basing their models on how real people behave. The reality is people don’t always know what they want, much less what’s best for them.

In October, Thaler was honored with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for his pioneering scholarship in the field of behavioral economics. On Dec. 8, the Chicago Booth scholar delivered his Nobel lecture in Stockholm as part of a weeklong celebration of the 2017 Nobel laureates. He will receive his Nobel Medal on Dec. 10 at a white-tie-and-tails affair at the Stockholm Concert Hall. (Live webcast begins at 7:30 a.m. CST here).

In his Nobel speech, entitled “From Cashews to Nudges: The Evolution of Behavioral Economics,” Thaler told stories of various field experiments in his everyday life—ranging from a dinner party as a graduate student in Rochester, N.Y. in the 1970s to the Swedish government’s present-day effort to get its citizens to sign up for retirement plans.

Prof. Richard Thaler delivers the 2017 Nobel Prize Lecture in Economic Sciences on Dec. 8. (Photo by Henrik Montgomery / TT)

“One lesson from these stories is that there are a bunch of things economic theory says we can leave out, and in fact, makes the strong prediction that they simply will not matter,” Thaler said in his Nobel address. “I call these ‘supposedly irrelevant factors.’ And really my research can be summarized as there are a lot of these supposedly irrelevant factors that are not irrelevant. They matter.”

Thaler launched his journey as one of the founders of behavioral economics with a bowl of cashews at a dinner party. He was concerned his guests were eating too many and that it would spoil their appetites, so he took them away. His guests, all economists, were happy when he removed the nuts, and that led to a discussion: How could they be happy, given that a first principle of economics is more choices are better than fewer choices?

“If we learn from other social scientists, we can improve economics and increase its explanatory power, and it can give us new tools we can use to improve people’s outcome. In short, we can nudge them.”Prof. Richard H. Thaler

Three UChicago faculty members named AAAS fellows

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 14:13 -0600

Three members of the University of Chicago faculty were named as 2017 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are elected by AAAS members for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.

Marcela Carena, a professor of physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, was named “for distinguished contributions to high-energy particle field theory, especially detection of Higgs fields, supersymmetry, electroweak baryogenesis, dark matter and extra dimensions.”

Carena’s research explores the possible connections between particle physics, supersymmetry, unification and dark matter, including how to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry observed in the universe using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Head of the Theoretical Physics Department at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, she is a pioneer in exploring how the direct search for Higgs bosons at the Large Hadron Collider and the search for dark matter in deep underground experiments—such as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment currently underway at Fermilab—could complement one another.

Don Q. Lamb, the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the College, was named “for outstanding contributions to theoretical astrophysics, especially for seminal contributions to the understanding of supernovae and for leadership in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.”

His research interests have included the properties of matter at high densities and temperatures, the evolution of white dwarfs and neutron stars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae and most recently, experiments that use intense lasers to study the origin of the magnetic fields in the universe. He played a key role in founding the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and was the co-leader and Mission Scientist for the NASA High Energy Transient Explorer. Head of the Flash Center for Computational Science, Lamb is also affiliated with the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago and the Harris School of Public Policy.

Panagiotis E. Souganidis, the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Mathematics, was named “for contributions to viscosity solutions, conservation laws, the theory of phase transitions, stochastic homogenization and stochastic partial differential equations.”

His areas of research include applied mathematics, analysis, ecology and evolution, stochastic analysis, partial differential equations and numerical analysis.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes 254 affiliated societies and academies of science.

The new fellows will receive their honors in February 2018 at AAAS’ annual meeting in Austin, Texas.

Chuan He honored for contributions to advancing cancer research

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 11:50 -0600

Chuan He, the John T. Wilson Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, is one of three recipients of this year’s Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research. The award recognizes promising investigators aged 45 or younger for their efforts in advancing cancer research.

“In order to tackle the problem of cancer, we need to develop a better understanding of the fundamental processes that lead to its formation,” said Craig B. Thompson, a former University of Chicago faculty member and now president and CEO of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “The 2017 Marks Prize winners all have contributed to a deeper and more fundamental understanding of cancer.”

He, who is also the director of UChicago’s Institute for Biophysical Dynamics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, will share the prize with Gad Getz and Aviv Regev of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

“We had an impressive assemblage of nominees this year, and these three young scientists are among the best of the best,” said Helen Piwnica-Worms, who chaired a committee of prominent members of the cancer research community that selected the winners. “The selection committee felt very strongly that this year’s recipients have already made critical contributions to the field of cancer research and are truly poised to continue playing major leadership roles in the coming years.”

He, the director of the Synthetic and Functional Biomolecules Center at Peking University in China, is an expert in the field of cancer epigenetics and RNA modification biology. Epigenetics involves variations in the way that genes are expressed that don’t affect the actual DNA sequence. He was the first to champion the idea that modifications to RNA are reversible and can control gene expression. Control of RNA, the molecule that carries DNA’s “message” to the protein-making machinery of the cell, can affect the outcomes of gene expression.

“When I started this work back in 2008 and 2009, we knew that proteins called writers could install modifications to RNA molecules that altered their function, but no one knew that there were also proteins called erasers that could undo these changes,” He said. His team went on to identify for the first time the eraser proteins. In later work, they characterized a series of reader proteins that explain how RNA methylation functioned.

“This research laid down the mechanistic pathways for our current understanding of how these modifications impact biological outcomes, including those related to cancer,” he said. “Cancer and other diseases can hijack aberrant RNA methylation to gain a survival advantage, allowing cells to proliferate and grow out of control.”

These types of RNA changes are known to play a role in many types of cancer, including endometrial cancer, acute myelogenous leukemia, and glioblastoma. He’s work forms some of the foundations for developing potential future therapies that target RNA methylation effectors against human cancer.

Each recipient will receive a $50,000 award and give a scientific presentation at a Nov. 30 symposium at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

—Adapted from a story on Science Life

Marshall Chin elected to National Academy of Medicine

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 14:41 -0500

University of Chicago Medicine physician Marshall Chin has been elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Chin was one of 80 new members elected to the Academy, it was announced Oct. 16. Election to the Academy is one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. It indicates that an individual has made major contributions to medicine and health care and demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

Chin, the Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics and associate chief and director of research for the Section of General Internal Medicine, is a general internist with extensive experience caring for both the clinical and social needs of vulnerable patients with chronic disease.

“Marshall Chin is an international leader in improving care and outcomes for racial and ethnic minority patients and persons with social risk factors,” said Kenneth S. Polonsky, dean of the Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine and executive vice president of medical affairs.

“He has devised and implemented a series of innovative approaches to patient care with particular emphasis on the alleviation of difficult clinical, social and economic problems,” Polonsky added. “He is also a talented physician, with a lifelong commitment to improve patient care, reduce health care disparities and make the best use of available resources.”

Chin directs the NIH-funded Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research. He and Assoc. Prof. Monica Peek co-direct the South Side Diabetes Project, which has advanced diabetes care and outcomes through healthcare system and community interventions.

Chin also leads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Finding Answers: Solving Disparities through Payment and Delivery System Reform. Through that program, he and his team created the Roadmap to Reduce Disparities, a six-step framework to help health care organizations improve minority health and foster equity.

Chin studies the patient-centered medical home—a team-based care-delivery model—in safety net clinics, and efforts to improve shared decision-making between clinicians and LGBTQ persons of color. His research has improved care in federally qualified health centers through the national Health Disparities Collaboratives.

Chin co-chairs the National Quality Forum’s Disparities Standing Committee, which works to reduce health care disparities and reform clinical performance measurement and payment. He currently serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Preventive Services Task Force and is a former president of the Society of General Internal Medicine.

In addition to his clinical and research roles, Chin is a teacher and award-winning mentor, committed to providing opportunities for trainees and young faculty. He is also associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. He joined the UChicago faculty in 1994.

With Chin’s appointment, there are now 15 current or emeritus UChicago faculty members who have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, formerly known as the Institute of Medicine.

Jeffrey Hubbell honored for landmark biomaterials research

Tue, 09 May 2017 11:12 -0500

Jeffrey Hubbell, the Barry L. MacLean Professor of Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise at the University of Chicago, recently received the Society for Biomaterials’ 2017 Founders Award, the organization’s top honor, given for “long-term, landmark contributions to the discipline of biomaterials.”

“It is a great honor to be recognized as having developed, with my team, ideas that are foundational to our field,” Hubbell said.

Hubbell designs materials to assemble and function in such a way that they can stimulate the immune system to fight infection or malignancy—or turn off some aspects of the immune system to address auto-immune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes. He is credited with the term “immuno-modulatory materials” to describe this newly emerging field of research. Hubbell and his team develop molecular- and materials-engineering approaches in immunotherapy. It focuses on vaccination in infectious disease and cancer, as well as on an antigen-specific tolerance induction to protein drugs and autoimmune antigens.

The Society for Biomaterials is a multidisciplinary society of academic, health care, governmental and business professionals dedicated to promoting advancements in all aspects of biomaterial science, including education and professional standards, to enhance human health and quality of life. Hubbell is a former president of the society.

An entrepreneurial biomaterials scientist, Hubbell has co-founded five companies, three of which are based on or related to research he directs at his UChicago laboratory. Most recently, Hubbell and Cathy Nagler, the Bunning Food Allergy Professor at UChicago, worked with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Institute for Translational Medicine to found ClostraBio, a UChicago startup that is developing treatments for food allergies. Kuros Biosciences in Zurich, Switzerland is developing growth factor engineering and biomaterials technology for surgical sealants and tissue repair agents. QGel in Lausanne, Switzerland develops biomaterials matrices for cell culture in drug discovery. Anokion in Lausanne and Cambridge is developing immunological tolerance technology for treating autoimmunity and preventing immune reactions to protein drugs, while Kanyos Bio in Cambridge develops that technology in Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease in particular. Hubbell joined the UChicago faculty in 2014.

“Our lab tries to find a sweet spot where we can both use our biomaterials approaches to learn something new about biology and to develop new therapeutics,” Hubbell said. “Moving our approaches forward toward clinical applications is a key aspiration for us.”

Alexander Beilinson, Douglas Diamond elected to National Academy of Sciences

Wed, 03 May 2017 14:22 -0500

Two University of Chicago faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences: Alexander Beilinson, the David and Mary Winton Green University Professor of Mathematics; and Douglas W. Diamond, the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance. They are among the 84 new members the academy announced May 2.

Beilinson is a mathematician who has done pioneering work in algebraic geometry, geometric representation theory and mathematical physics. His “Beilinson Conjectures” serve as a guiding influence in the field of arithmetic geometry, while Beilinson has made substantial contributions to geometric representation theory. Beilinson’s work with Vladimir Drinfeld, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor at UChicago, is critical to geometric Langlands theory.

Beilinson’s honors include the Ostrowski Prize and Moscow Mathematical Society Prize and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A member of the UChicago faculty since 1998, Beilinson is one of eight University professors, selected for internationally recognized eminence in their field and potential for high impact across the University.

Considered the father of modern banking theory, Diamond changed the way people view banks. His pioneering research laid the groundwork for how central bankers, regulators, policymakers and academics approach modern finance. A UChicago faculty member since 1979, Diamond is known for his research into financial intermediaries, financial crises and liquidity. His research agenda for the past 30 years has been to explain what banks do, why they do it and the consequences of these arrangements.

His groundbreaking work on bank runs and financial crises earned him the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2015. He received the Morgan Stanley-American Finance Association Award for Excellence in Finance in 2012. Diamond is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Finance Association.

Two College students earn Goldwater Scholarships

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 13:37 -0500

Two third-years in the College have earned Barry Goldwater Scholarships, which honor undergraduates in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science and engineering.

The Goldwater Foundation selected UChicago’s Pradnya Narkhede and Clare Singer along with 238 other students from a field of 1,286 applicants nationwide. The one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to $7,500 per year.

Narkhede is a chemistry and biochemistry major who plans to earn a doctorate in chemical biology and conduct research on characterizing and manipulating biochemical systems, with pharmaceutical and environmental implications. She also would like to teach at the university level.

“My goal is to lead a team of researchers in using chemistry to probe the mechanisms and dynamics of biological systems,” she said. “I also aim to become a professor and impart my passion for chemistry and biology to the next generation of budding scientists.”

Singer is a physics and mathematics major who plans to pursue a doctorate in geophysical and atmospheric sciences and conduct research on atmospheric climate dynamics with the goal of influencing international climate policy.

“I am looking to work in a scientific community that also has political connections,” Singer said. “I sense the urgency in my field and want to position myself such that my research can have the largest, fastest impact on policy reform regarding climate change and carbon emissions.”

“We are delighted that the Barry Goldwater Scholarship program has recognized the hard and innovative work of Clare and Pradnya,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College. “Their research, in the fields of chemistry and physics, illustrates the ambitious and visionary creativity of our students in STEM fields.”

Conducting research in the field

Born in rural India, Narkhede said her interest in the natural world was kindled on her family’s farm, where she contemplated the effects of chemical use on sugar cane crops.

As a member of UChicago’s crew team, she became troubled by the impact of industrial pollution on the ecology on the Chicago River. The experience led to a summer internship conducting computation chemistry research with Friends of the Chicago River and DePaul University. She presented her findings to the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Council, for which she continues to collect and analyze data and advise on how to lower levels of bacterial and pharmacologically active compounds in the river.

“To study the river, a dynamic biological system of massive scale and complexity, through the lens of chemistry was unforgettable,” Narkhede said. “The work’s immediate relevance in preventing potentially grave environmental consequences stoked an insatiable passion for harnessing chemistry research to better the world.”

Narkhede is currently a data analytics intern at the U.S. Department of Defense and a 2016 Institute of Biophysical Dynamics Scholar with UChicago’s Department of Chemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, researching single-cell epigenetics. She serves on the board of UChicago’s Women in Science and is a participant in Out in STEM, both groups committed to the inclusion of women and other underrepresented groups in the sciences.

As an undergraduate, Singer has worked with research groups in the Departments of Physics and Geophysical Sciences. Last summer she received funding from the Institute for Molecular Engineering to conduct chemical engineering research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. She is currently vice president of the University of Chicago’s Society of Women in Physics, which aims to increase diversity and inclusion in the department through events that allow undergraduates to engage with students and faculty.

Singer said her interest in climate change began in sixth grade with a decision to become pescatarian. Her interests developed further in high school when she visited an experiment site in Iceland that used metal poles to track a glacier’s retreat. “It was one thing to read about ice melting, the planet warming and sea levels rising,” she said, “but seeing once-buried poles lying exposed on the ice with my own eyes was more powerful.”

Narkhede and Singer were supported throughout their application process by the College Center for Scholarly Advancement, which supports undergraduates and College alumni through the highly competitive application processes for prestigious national scholarships and fellowships.

Prof. David Awschalom awarded defense department grant for high-risk, high-payoff research

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 16:10 -0500

David Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor in Spintronics and Quantum Information, has been selected as a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow, which supports bold and ambitious research that can have revolutionary outcomes.

The fellowships are awarded annually by the Department of Defense to researchers at U.S. universities to conduct high-risk, high-payoff work that can transform disciplines, create new fields or disrupt accepted theories. It supports innovative basic research as well the development of the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Awschalom, a founding member of the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering, is a pioneer in semiconductor spintronics and quantum information engineering, performing experiments that explore photonics, electronics and semiconductor-based quantum information processing at the nanometer scale. As a Vannevar Bush Fellow, he will explore the quantum properties of two-dimensional matter as a potential foundation for quantum information processing technologies, receiving $3 million from the defense department for such research.

“I’m honored to be chosen for this fellowship, and extremely grateful for the confidence they’ve placed in our students to productively engage in an exciting new area of research,” Awschalom said. “This generous support will enable us to attract outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from various scientific disciplines to search for new quantum states in atomically engineered, two-dimensional matter. We hope to reveal their existence, investigate how they interact with each other and develop ways to control their behavior.”

The research will be done in collaboration with Jiwoong Park, professor of chemistry at UChicago; University graduate students and postdoctoral researchers; Nitin Samarth, professor of physics and the George A. and Margaret M. Downsbrough Department Head of Physics at Penn State University; and the Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium at Penn State.

The defense department recently announced a total of 13 fellows, awarding up to $3 million to support basic research in core science and engineering disciplines that underpin future technologies such as nanoscience, applied mathematics and fluid dynamics.

The fellowship is named after Vannevar Bush, who served as the director of the Department of Defense’s Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II. In his 1945 report to the U.S. President titled “Science, The Endless Frontier,” Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation. Bush was concerned about how scientific research supported by the department during WWII could be sustained with a focus on peacetime goals, believing that basic research was “the pacemaker of technological progress.”

Five UChicago scholars awarded Sloan Research Fellowships

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 09:05 -0600

Five UChicago faculty members have earned 2017 Sloan Research Fellowships: Bryan Dickinson, assistant professor of chemistry; Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan, assistant professor of chemistry; Joseph Vavra, associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; Abigail Vieregg, assistant professor of physics; and Alessandra Voena, associate professor of economics.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation on Feb. 21 announced that it awarded fellowships to 126 early-career scholars in the United States and Canada, whose achievements and potential mark them as the next scientific leaders. Winners receive a $60,000 grant to further their research.

Fellowships, given annually since 1955, are awarded in close coordination with the scientific community. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists, and fellows are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s independent research accomplishments, creativity and potential.

Bryan Dickinson focuses his research on creating technologies to measure and control biological systems. His laboratory employs synthetic organic chemistry, molecular evolution and synthetic biology approaches. His research program is motivated by the idea that innovative molecular technologies can spawn biological discovery.

Currently, his group is focused on three primary areas: small molecule approaches to interrogate how lipid modifications on proteins regulate metabolic signaling and disease; developing new evolutionary tools for the rapid creation of therapeutics; and creating new synthetic biology approaches to study and control cell signaling by RNAs and proteins. His team recently developed small molecule imaging reagents to discover a new type of dynamic lipid signaling with possible ramification in cancer and metabolic disease. His team also unveiled a completely new platform for creating biosensors for broad applications in biotechnology and molecular evolution.

Dickinson joined the UChicago faculty in 2014.

Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan specializes in theoretical chemistry and biophysics. He and his group develop and use tools of statistical mechanics to study the behavior of complex systems in physical chemistry, soft condensed matter physics and biophysics.

His research seeks to uncover the fundamental principles that allow microscopic biophysical and chemical systems—such as collections of molecular motors—to robustly self-assemble and perform functions even in noisy conditions. For instance, Vaikuntanathan’s current work has demonstrated how non-equilibrium growth dynamics can be harnessed for novel material self-assembly as well as how information processing mechanisms in biophysical circuits can be protected against rogue fluctuations.

Vaikuntanathan joined the UChicago faculty in 2014.

Joseph S. Vavra is a macroeconomist who studies monetary economics, labor and computational economics, as well as the ways durable consumption responds to stimulus, and how prices respond to exchange rate movements. His current research argues that monetary policy is less effective during volatile recessions. His recent papers include “Regional Heterogeneity and Monetary Policy,” co-authored with Erik Hurst, Martin Beraja and Andreas Fuster, which finds that the Federal Reserve’s move to pump money into the economy provided the least amount of stimulus to the areas hit hardest by the recession.

Vavra also is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2012.

Abigail Vieregg is interested in answering questions about the nature of the universe at its highest energies through experimental work in particle astrophysics and cosmology. In particle astrophysics, she focuses on searching for the highest energy neutrinos that come from the most energetic sources in the universe. In cosmology, Vieregg works with a suite of telescopes at the South Pole to help determine what happened during the first moments after the Big Bang by measuring the polarization of the cosmic microwave background.

Vieregg was a NASA Earth and Space Sciences Graduate Fellow at UCLA and a National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Vieregg joined the UChicago faculty in 2014.

Alessandra Voena is a labor and development economist whose research focuses primarily on the economics of the family. Her recent work includes examining the effects of the 1996 United States welfare reform on marriage and divorce, household decision-making around fertility and education in Zambia, and the economic consequences of the cultural norms around marriage in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Asia.

Voena has published research in The American Economics Review including on the important role German-Jewish emigrants played on innovation in the United States. She is currently a faculty research fellow at National Bureau of Economic Research and served as a Ruffolo Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

Voena joined the UChicago faculty in 2012.

National Academy of Sciences honors Prof. Bernard Roizman for microbiology research

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 14:55 -0600

Bernard Roizman, the Joseph Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Virology, has been awarded the 2017 Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology for his pivotal research on how herpes viruses replicate and cause disease.

Supported by the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology, the National Academy of Sciences gives the award biannually to recognize a major advance in the field of microbiology. The honor is accompanied by a $20,000 prize.

“I am deeply honored to be a recipient of an award bearing Selman Waksman’s name,” Roizman said. “His research laid the foundations for discoveries of potent antibiotics, and over the course of half a century his pioneering research saved billions of lives. He continues to be an inspiration for scientists involved in research to curb the spread of infectious agents.”

Over the past five decades, Roizman’s contributions to the scientific understanding of herpes viruses have helped to improve human health. His research first identified viral herpes genes and proteins, as well as the structure of viral DNA, and defined the principles of herpes simplex virus gene regulation. He also constructed the first recombinant virus specifically targeted to malignant cells.

Using biochemistry, novel genetic strategies and cell biology, Roizman’s ongoing research focuses on how the herpes simplex virus, which has fewer than 100 genes, can take over a much more complex human cell, which contains more than 20,000 genes. This led to the first engineered virus, which has been used to study and target lethal tumors in humans.

Roizman’s role as a mentor has extended his research beyond his lab, with dozens of graduate student and postdoctoral fellows energizing the field of virology in premier universities in the United States, Europe and Asia.

A member of the University faculty since 1965, Roizman was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1979 and to the National Academy of Medicine in 2001. He is a foreign associate of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the recipient of honorary degrees in the United States, France, Italy and Spain.

He will be honored April 30 during the National Academy of Sciences’ 154th annual meeting.

This article first appeared in Science Life.

Prof. Thomas Gajewski honored for pioneering cancer research

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 16:37 -0600

The National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded an Outstanding Investigator Award to Prof. Thomas Gajewski. The award supports scientists who demonstrate remarkable productivity in cancer research and guarantees $600,000 in direct costs per year for seven years.

Gajewski, professor in medicine and the Ben May Cancer Institute and director of the immunology and cancer program at the University of Chicago Medicine, is a pioneer in the field of cancer immunotherapy, one of the most promising approaches to cancer treatment in decades.

Cancer immunotherapy exploits the power and specificity of the immune system to fight cancer. First tested in melanoma, immunotherapy has led to complete remissions in many cancer types, often with limited side effects.

“The Outstanding Investigator Award pulls together a number of separate but related projects from our lab and blends them into one massive, cohesive undertaking,” said Gajewski, AB’84, MD’89, PhD’91. “Such funding is necessary for our lab and many others to make continual progress toward preventing and treating cancer using the host immune system. It inspires us to be even more aggressive, to move the field forward as broadly and quickly as we can.”

By providing seven years of financial stability, these awards encourage investigators to take on long-term projects with significant potential.

“It allows funded investigators to take greater risks and be more adventurous in their research,” Gajewski said. “We can now focus entirely on doing the work and worry less about writing grant applications, making us more productive and efficient.”

Gajewski’s team studies new ways to overcome a tumor’s ability to resist immunotherapy, with a focus on drugs that help the immune system, especially T cells, gain access to tumor sites.

Their approach is multidimensional. “We have treated a large number of melanoma patients using immunotherapies,” he said, “and we now have a great deal of data about the interactions between a patient’s tumors and his or her immune system. We know who responded to treatment and who didn’t. Now we’re cataloguing genetic clues that correlate with response versus resistance. This not only should help us predict who is most likely to benefit, but more importantly identify new therapies to overcome resistance and expand efficacy.”

They are also looking at connections between the gut microbiota—the microbes that live in a patient’s digestive tract—and the immune system’s response to cancer. In 2015, Gajewski’s laboratory showed that a particular strain of bacteria in the digestive tracts of mice could stimulate the immune system to attack tumor cells. They are now refining this approach and analyzing a large cohort of human samples.

A third element is investigation of a protein complex known as STING—short for STimulator of INterferon Genes—which plays a crucial role in detecting cells in which the DNA is in the wrong place, within the cell but outside the nucleus. In 2014, Gajewski’s laboratory showed how the STING pathway signals the body’s innate immune system to attack such tumor cells. “We are now working with a small molecule drug that appears to trigger this response when injected directly into a tumor,” he said. Clinical testing is underway.

“So much of this work is collaborative,” Gajewski said. “We have a lot of faculty and trainees working together to translate these basic observations into systems we can test in the clinic. A major next step is to integrate the various components.”

Being awarded an OIA is “a significant honor and a pleasant surprise,” added Gajewski. “It celebrates and builds on a long research path, made possible by public as well as private support.”

—Story first appeared on UChicago’s Science Life blog.

National Academy of Sciences honors Prof. Sian Beilock for psychology research

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 10:00 -0600

Sian Beilock, the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology, has been awarded the 2017 Troland Research Award for her pioneering work on anxiety and performance in high-stress situations.

The National Academy of Sciences gives the award annually to two investigators no older than 40 to recognize their unusual achievements and to further research in the field of experimental psychology. The honor is accompanied by a $75,000 prize.

“Uncovering the brain and body factors that explain why we sometimes perform poorly in highly stressful situations has tremendous implications for our daily lives,” Beilock said. “It is an honor to have this research recognized by the National Academy, and I look forward to furthering our understanding of how worries, anxiety and pressure relate to learning and performance from the classroom to the athletic field to the workplace.”

The research of Beilock, who is executive vice provost at the University, sits at the intersection of cognitive science and education, exploring how the brain, mind and body support learning and why performance breaks down in high-stress or high-pressure situations. In her laboratory, the Human Performance Lab, Beilock uses research methods ranging from performance on tests to neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI to better understand how thinking and reasoning change when the pressure is on and the techniques people can successfully employ to perform their best when it matters most. Her work also takes her into the classroom to conduct large-scale studies with students from early elementary school through college.

In addition to Beilock’s work exploring “choking under pressure” in all types of performance situations, from test-taking and public speaking to athletics, she also has investigated the power the body and its physical surroundings have in shaping how humans think, feel and behave. Beilock’s recent work has examined the anxiety parents and their children feel about doing math and how this math anxiety can hinder children’s school achievement.

Beilock’s research has resulted in more than 100 scientific papers and two critically acclaimed books: Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveals About Getting It Right When You Have To and How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel. Her work has produced wide-ranging insights into education, athletic performance and workplace training, resulting in techniques through which people can improve their performance both in daily tasks and on some of the world’s largest stages.

A member of the University faculty since 2005, Beilock joined the Provost’s office in the fall of 2014 as vice provost for academic initiatives. She was named executive vice provost last year.

Beilock will be honored April 30 at a ceremony during the National Academy of Sciences’ 154th annual meeting. This is the second year in a row that a member of the UChicago faculty was selected for the Troland award; David Freedman, a professor of neurobiology, received the honor in 2016.

Award boosts development of solar cells with atomically thin semiconductors

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 14:50 -0600

Chemistry professor Jiwoong Park has won a $120,000 award over two years from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation to support a postdoctoral fellow who will help develop advanced photovoltaic materials at the University’s Institute for Molecular Engineering and Department of Chemistry. Park selected Yu Zhong, who just finished his doctorate in chemistry at Columbia University, for the fellowship.

Solar energy is one of the most promising ways to replace fossil fuels, thereby reducing pollution and minimizing climate change, Park said. “This award will be used to develop new materials and architecture for high-performance hybrid solar cells in the form of economical, detachable, lightweight photovoltaic films.”

The materials will utilize semiconductors that are only one atom thick and will therefore be especially suited for photovoltaic materials that will power nanomachines, such as sensors and detectors.

“When miniaturizing machines, a current limitation is the size of the power source,” Park said. “The thin photovoltaic materials that we will develop will be foldable, like an umbrella. They will be very small when folded but larger when open.”

Such nanomachines would have many applications, he added. “For example, imagine sending thousands of them into the air to gather data about crops or the weather.”

To achieve this, the researchers will synthesize, functionalize and stack atomically thin semiconductors called transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMD), along with other components, into photovoltaic material. The new material will have unique mechanical and electrical characteristics that broaden the application of solar cells and improve their performance, the researchers say.

Their work will combine two active and competitive fields of research: inorganic TMDs, for which Park is renowned, and organic photovoltaics. The former provides a flexible matrix and the latter provides a method for doping the material, which refers to the deliberate, controlled introduction of impurities to semiconductors as a way to alter their mechanical and electrical properties.

“While the layers of TMDs will provide a solid-state material that acts like a platform with advanced physical properties, the organic photovoltaic molecules will provide additional functionalities and allow for direct tuning of the hybrid material’s doping and magnetic fields,” Park said.

“These detachable solar cells will chart a new path to economical, reusable photovoltaic devices for renewable energy sources,” he added.

“There is a great untapped potential in bridging TMDs enhanced with organic photovoltaic materials,” Zhong said. “In order to make hybrid solar cells from these materials, we need to chemically functionalize the materials. My background in organic chemistry and solar cells made me suitable for this work.”

Zhong will be the first fellow in Park’s group of four postdoctoral scholars and six graduate students, all of whom have moved from Cornell University to the University of Chicago.

“There are many opportunities and possibilities in the overlapping realm of inorganic TMDs and organic materials, and the University of Chicago, with its interdisciplinary environment, is a great place to explore these ideas,” Zhong concluded.

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation is a nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of chemical sciences. This is the University’s seventh Dreyfus postdoctoral fellowship.

Four UChicago faculty members named AAAS fellows

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 11:00 -0600

Four University of Chicago scientists representing the Biological Sciences Division have been named as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Fellows are elected by AAAS members for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. They are among 391 newly elected AAAS fellows this year.

The 2016 UChicago fellows are:

Geoffrey Greene, the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor and chair of the Ben May Department for Cancer Research: For distinguished contributions to the field of steroid hormone action and breast cancer, particularly for the development of estrogen and progesterone receptor antibodies.

Zhe-Xi Luo, professor in Organismal Biology and Anatomy: For outstanding descriptions of mammals from Jurassic and Cretaceous strata of China, and for documenting the diversity, ecology and relationships of early mammals.

Clifton Ragsdale, professor in Neurobiology and Organismal Biology and Anatomy: For exceptionally insightful experimental observations on the evolution and development of the brain.

Jonathan Staley, professor in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology: For distinguished contributions to the RNA splicing field, particularly conformational rearrangements, maintenance of fidelity and active site of the spliceosome, a highly dynamic RNA-protein machine.

The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science as well as several other journals and EurekAlert, the premier science news wire service. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. The tradition of AAAS fellows began in 1874.

The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more.

This year’s AAAS fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science on Nov. 25. New fellows will also be honored on Feb. 18, 2017 at the AAAS annual meeting in Boston.

Prof. Neil Shubin honored for research on limbs, organ evolution

Wed, 02 Nov 2016 14:30 -0500

Neil Shubin, the Robert Bensley Distinguished Service Professor in Organismal Biology and Anatomy, has been selected to receive the Addison Emery Verrill Medal from the Yale Peabody Museum at a Nov. 4 ceremony.

The Verrill Medal, created in 1959 to honor “signal practitioners in the arts of natural history and natural sciences,” is named for the late Addison Emery Verrill, Yale’s first professor of zoology and one of the Peabody Museum’s first curators. He described more than 1,000 species across virtually every major taxonomic group.

Shubin was selected for his research on the evolution of new organs, especially limbs. He has discovered some of the earliest mammals, crocodiles, dinosaurs, frogs and salamanders in the fossil record. He uses their anatomy to explore hypotheses about the genetic and developmental processes that led to anatomical transformations. One of his most significant discoveries, the 375-million-year-old Tiktaalik roseae fossil, is an important transitional form between fish and land animals.

Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011, Shubin has written two popular science books: the best-selling Your Inner Fish (2008), named best book of the year by the National Academy of Sciences and made into a celebrated PBS series, and The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body (2013). He has conducted fieldwork in much of North America, including Greenland, as well as China and Africa, and is preparing to hunt fossils in Antarctica this December.

Also receiving Verrill Medals will be May Berenbaum from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Naomi Pierce of Harvard University and Geerat Vermeij from the University of California at Davis. Since the award’s inception, there have been 18 recipients.

MBL Director Huntington Willard elected to National Academy of Medicine

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 13:00 -0500

Huntington F. Willard, president and director of the Marine Biological Laboratory and professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the academy announced Oct. 17.

Election is considered one of the highest honors in the health and medical fields and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievements and commitment to service. This year’s class of 79 members was elected by peers in the academy.

Willard is a respected leader in the fields of genetics and genome biology. His research interests include genetics and epigenetics; genome and chromosome biology; and the genome sciences and their broad implications for biology, medicine, and society. At the MBL, he contributes to the development of ‘new’ non-traditional model organisms, taking advantage of the wealth of species, genomes and phenotypes to be found among marine organisms.

“Hunt Willard has distinguished himself as a unique scholar of the human genome,” said National Academy of Medicine member Jonathan Gitlin, director of the Division of Research at the University of Chicago-affiliated MBL. “His discoveries have significantly advanced our understanding of the basic biology of gene expression in all organisms and have had a direct and important impact on human health. This is a much deserved honor for him and continues the long tradition of recognition of scientific excellence at the laboratory.”

Formerly known as the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Medicine is an honorific and advisory organization. Established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences, it is recognized as a national resource for independent, scientifically informed analysis and recommendations on health issues.

UChicago scientists receive honors from Simons Foundation, American Chemical Society

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 15:30 -0500

The Simons Foundation and the American Chemical Society have honored a quartet of faculty members in the Physical Sciences Division.

The Simons Foundation has named Jeffrey Harvey, the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Service Professor in Physics, as a 2016 Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics. The fellows program provides funds for a faculty member to take up to a semester-long research leave from classroom teaching and administrative obligations to foster creativity and intellectual stimulation. For his Simons project, Harvey is working on new kinds of mathematical moonshine and thinking about ways to connect umbral moonshine and related mathematics to string theory. He also is developing novel mathematical applications of these ideas.

Jacob Waldbauer, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences, has received a Simons Early Career Investigator Award in Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution. The award seeks to help launch the careers of outstanding investigators who use quantitative approaches to advance the understanding of marine microbial ecology and evolution. Waldbauer’s protect is titled, “Forging the Missing Link: A Protein-Level View of Marine Microbial Ecology.”

One of the American Chemical Society’s 2017 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards will go to Guangbin Dong, professor in chemistry. The Cope Award recognizes and encourages excellence in organic chemistry. Dong will be honored “for his outstanding accomplishments on transition-metal catalyzed synthetic methods involving carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bond activation.”

The 2017 ACS Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry will go to Hisashi Yamamoto, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Chemistry. The Adams Award recognizes and encourages outstanding contributions to research in organic chemistry. Yamamoto, who also is professor and director of the Molecular Catalyst Research Center at Japan’s Chubu University, will receive his award on April 4, 2017 during the 253rd ACS National Meeting in San Francisco.

Jared Lewis receives Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award

Fri, 27 May 2016 14:15 -0500

Jared Lewis has been selected for a 2016 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Lewis, an assistant professor in chemistry at the University of Chicago, is one of 13 Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award recipients this year. He will receive an unrestricted grant of $75,000 to support his research on “Engineering Proteins for Selective Catalysis.”

Lewis joined the faculty in 2011, and was named a Searle Scholar the same year.

Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards support outstanding young academic researchers at an early stage of their careers. Recipients are selected based on their independent contributions to research and education in the chemical sciences. The Dreyfus Foundation is a leading nonprofit organization devoted to the advancement of the chemical sciences. For more information, visit their website.

Juan de Pablo to receive 2016 DuPont Medal for excellence in nutrition and health science

Wed, 25 May 2016 10:11 -0500

The Danisco Foundation has selected the University of Chicago’s Juan de Pablo as the recipient of the DuPont Nutrition and Health Science and Excellence Medal 2016.

The Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, de Pablo will be honored for his work that led to optimal processes to stabilize live bacteria for survival and extended stability performance after lyophilization (freeze-drying). Such processes are now used throughout the world in the food and probiotic industries. de Pablo holds several patents on the underlying technology, which also has pharmaceutical and medical applications for preservation of drugs, cells and tissue.

The technology that de Pablo and his students developed was originally inspired by nature’s own mechanisms to withstand prolonged periods of drought and low temperatures. His team developed detailed molecular models to explain such mechanisms, whose results were subsequently translated into working bacterial formulations and processes.

The foundation grants the medal upon recommendations from DuPont Nutrition & Health’s Technical Fellows to a senior scientist broadly recognized by the fellows for scientific and operational excellence and a remarkable record of accomplishment in the industry. DuPont Fellows are scientists and engineers who define new technologies, influence research directions, and mentor scientists both inside and outside the company. The award includes an invitation to address the Nutrution and Health Technical Fellows at a ceremony to be held in Denmark.

Danisco, a subsidiary of DuPont, is a Danish biotech company that employs more than 7,000 people in more than 40 countries. Its products, used in ice cream, jams, bread, and many other food products, are eaten regularly by more than 100 million people worldwide.