News: 2023

Congratulations to Adina Feinstein for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on “Young Stellar and Planetary Systems from the UV to the IR”.

Congratulations to Alex Drlica-Wagner, who has been promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, part-time, in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Robert Rosneris a theoretical physicist who since 1987 has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, as well as in the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Harris School of Public Policy. 

Irina Zhuravleva, a Clare Boothe Luce assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, has earned a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship.

“Capturing the Stars: Women’s Networks and the Advancement of Science at Yerkes Observatory, 1895–1940”, Richard G. Kron (Astronomy and Physics), Kristine Palmieri (Institute on the Formation of Knowledge), Andrea Twiss-Brooks (The University of Chicago Library), Emily Kern (History).

Prof. Michael Gladders is the 2022-2023 recipient of the Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award, a U. Chicago Physical Sciences Divisional honor that provides funding for intellectually exciting and innovative research ventures that enables new directions of research.

Assoc. Prof. Erik Shirokoff, a University of Chicago astronomer who built instruments to understand the earliest ages of the universe, died Jan. 26. He was 43.

Analysis combines Dark Energy Survey, South Pole Telescope data to understand evolution of universe

Combining data from the Dark Energy Survey and the South Pole Telescope, scientists piece together a coherent story of the Universe from galaxy and CMB surveys. These are some of the most stringent tests of the standard cosmological model using cross-correlations of independent data sets.

Robert Rosner likes big questions.
How could nuclear power help humanity in a warming climate? How can physicists better explain their work to the public? And why are magnetic fields… well, everywhere? “The nerve of them, being so ubiquitous,” he says.

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky.

Joalda Morancy, who studied astronomy and astrophysics, takes readers on journey through solar system and beyond

Mandy Chen was born and raised in Guizhou Province, Southwest China. Before coming to the University of Chicago she was studying at the University of Hong Kong, where she got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics and astronomy. This is her fifth year as a PhD student in astronomy and astrophysics. Her research focuses on observations of the diffuse circumgalactic medium—the outermost envelopes of galaxies. She says she “seeks to better understand the dynamical state of this diffuse gas, and its connection to the star-formation/supermassive blackhole activities of galaxies and the cosmic baryon cycle in general.”