News: 2021

October

Professor Yau Wah becomes APS Fellow

October 28, 2021

Wah has been selected to be an APS Fellow for leadership in the experimental study of rare neutral kaon decays, in particular, the search for KL to pi0 nu nu-bar, the so-called golden mode of rare kaon decays.

Professors Aash Cleark and Liang Jiang from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering became APS fellows as well.


September

Welcome to our Incoming Grad students!

September 17, 2021

The UChicago Physics Department welcomes this year's incoming graduate students. 


UChicago scientist Young-Kee Kim elected to presidency of the American Physical Society

September 17, 2021

Prof. Young-Kee Kim, an eminent experimental physicist at the University of Chicago, has been elected future president of the American Physical Society. She will assume the position in 2024, when she will become the ninth UChicago scientist to do so.


Kaeli Hughes awarded 2021 Price Prize in Cosmology and Astrophysics

September 9, 2021

The Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize recognizes research excellence and exceptional promise in areas related to CCAPP initiatives. Two recipients are hosted by CCAPP for a week, during which they give a Price Prize seminar on their research, establish long-term collaborative relationships, and receive a $2,000 honorarium.
Kaeli Hughes' research focuses on the radio detection of astrophysical neutrinos above 10 PeV.


July

Leading Xenon Researchers unite to build next-generation Dark Matter Detector

July 20, 2021

Grandi in one of the final phases of XENONnT Time Projection Chamber assembly. The next generation detector is expected to feature an active volume from 5 to 10 times larger.


May

UChicago scientists harness molecules into single quantum state

May 1, 2021

Researchers have big ideas for the potential of quantum technology which all depend on a major technological feat: being able to build and control systems of quantum particles, which are among the smallest objects in the universe.
That goal is now a step closer with the publication of a new method by University of Chicago scientists. Published April 28 in Nature, the paper shows how to bring multiple molecules at once into a single quantum state.


April

Graduate Student Ihar Lobach: Using Fluctuations to Measure Beam Properties

April 1, 2021

Scientists planning future particle accelerators and synchrotron light sources strive for tighter, more powerful electron beams. But as beams get narrower, it becomes harder to measure important properties. Now, Ihar Lobach of the University of Chicago and colleagues have demonstrated a new way to measure a beam’s vertical emittance more precisely than existing methods.

See also from Fermilab


March

UChicago Physicist William Irvine selected for $2 million Brown Investigator Award

March 13, 2021

The award, inaugurated this year and recognizing curiosity-driven basic research in chemistry and physics, supports the investigators’ research with $2 million over five years to their respective universities. Irvine, who researches fundamental problems in fluid dynamics and condensed matter, is one of two scientists chosen.


January

Roger Hildebrand, Manhattan Project veteran and ‘giant’ of physics and astrophysics, 1922-2021

January 31, 2021

Prof. Emeritus Roger Hildebrand, who worked on the Manhattan Project as an undergraduate before conducting pioneering work in particle physics and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, died Jan. 21. He was 98.


PUEO Selected by NASA for Pioneers Program

January 8, 2021

NASA has chosen four small-scale astrophysics missions for further concept development in a new program called Pioneers. 

PUEO is a balloon mission designed to launch from Antarctica that will detect signals from ultra-high energy neutrinos. The principal investigator is Abigail Vieregg of the University of Chicago.