News

Promoting new research directions in the physical and mathematical sciences.

Professor Cheng Chin has received the ’21–’22 Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award, a Divisional honor that provides $100,000 for intellectually exciting and innovative research ventures that enable new research directions.

Chin joined the University of Chicago in 2005 and has been a full professor in the Department of Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the James Franck Institute since 2012. He is a pioneer in using ultracold atoms to study the quantum phenomena that underlie the behavior of other particles in the universe.

“I am very excited about this generous support from the PSD, and especially from Stuart Rice,” he said. “The fund will enable a brand new research line into molecular quantum matter, on which my students and I are very excited to begin.”

The Marian and Stuart Rice Research Award was established by the family of Stuart Alan Rice, the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Chemistry and former chairman of the Department of Chemistry and dean of the Physical Sciences (1981-1995). It is awarded annually to promote new directions of research in the physical and mathematical sciences at the University of Chicago.

A general theory of non-reciprocal matter.

The Vitelli and Littlewood groups recently published a groundbreaking general theory of non-reciprocal matter using exceptional points and illustrated with examples found in simple systems such as groups of interacting toy robots. The work was original published in Nature in April and is now receiving wider attention via WIRED. Please see the links on the right and the UChicago News story as well.

Wired Story
Publication

Continuing to transform electron beam technology
A collaboration of researchers led by Cornell University and including the University of Chicago has been awarded $22.5 million from the National Science Foundation to continue gaining the fundamental understanding needed to transform the brightness of electron beams available to science, medicine and industry.

­The Center for Bright Beams (CBB), an NSF Science and Technology Center, was created in 2016 with an initial $23 million award to Cornell and partner institutions, including the University of Chicago and affiliated Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The center integrates accelerator science with condensed matter physics, materials science and surface science in order to advance particle accelerator technologies, which play a key role in creating new breakthroughs in everything from medicine to electronics to particle physics.

The center’s goals are to improve the performance and reduce the cost of accelerator technologies around the world and develop new research instruments that transform the frontiers of biology, materials science, condensed matter physics, particle physics and nuclear physics, as well as new manufacturing tools that enable chip makers to continue shrinking the features of integrated circuits.

“CBB has brought together a remarkably broad palette of researchers encompassing scientists from physics, physical chemistry, materials research, and accelerator science—an unusually diverse team that has the necessary skills and long-range vision to take on the challenge of helping the next-generation of accelerators come to fruition, with impact on many fields,” said Steven J. Sibener, the Carl William Eisendrath Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago, and a co-leader of CBB’s next-generation superconducting radio frequency materials research. “My role has been profoundly rewarding for my research group and for me personally, introducing us to new research directions in advanced superconducting materials design that will ultimately lead to the innovation of lower-cost accelerators with greatly improved brightness and performance.”

Recognized by Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

David DeMille, University of Chicago and the James Franck Institute, is among five physics and astronomy researchers to win Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s competitive Cottrell Plus SEED (Singular Exceptional Endeavors of Discovery) Awards for 2021.

DeMille received a SEED Award for "Developing a New Tabletop-scale Approach to Detect Particles One Million Times More Massive than the Higgs Boson.""

SEED Awards offer Cottrell Scholars the opportunity to start creative new research or educational activities, granting $50,000 for research projects.

Research Corporation for Science Advancement was founded in 1912 and funds basic research in the physical sciences (astronomy, chemistry, physics, and related fields) at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

The National Academy of Sciences recently published a biographical memoir of the remarkable scientific and personal life of R. Stephen Berry, the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and integral part of the James Franck Institute from 1964 to 2020. The memoir was written by Stuart A. Rice, Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Chemistry and the James Franck Institute, and Joshua Jortner, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Tel Aviv University. The memoir can be found online at the National Academy of Sciences and by direct download. More information about Prof. Berry's influential life and career can be found at the University of Chicago News.

National Academy of Sciences
Download Memoir

Opening up new fields in quantum chemistry and technology.

Researchers have big ideas for the potential of quantum technology, from unhackable networks to earthquake sensors. But all these things 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—one of the most important goals in quantum physics.

"People have been trying to do this for decades, so we’re very excited,” said senior author Cheng Chin, a Professor of Physics and the James Franck Instiute who said he has wanted to achieve this goal since he was a graduate student in the 1990s. “I hope this can open new fields in many-body quantum chemistry. There’s evidence that there are a lot of discoveries waiting out there.”

Publication

$2 Million award recognizes curiosity-driven basic research in chemistry and physics.

The Brown Science Foundation announced March 8 that it has chosen University of Chicago Prof. William Irvine for its inaugural Brown Investigator Award. The award, which recognizes 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, along with David Hsieh of Caltech.

“Even among a strong group of candidates, Hsieh and Irvine stood out for their scientific vision and willingness to take risk,” said Marc Kastner, senior science advisor for the Science Philanthropy Alliance and chairman of the foundation’s scientific advisory board, which selected the winners. “They’re clear examples of America’s reservoir of mid-career scientists with the proven track record and restless minds needed to advance daring ideas.”

The Brown Science Foundation, a member of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, was established in 1992 by Ross M. Brown. The foundation announced its invitation-only Brown Investigator Award program in 2020 with plans to make eight awards annually by 2025. The program supports the often-overlooked resource of mid-career physics and chemistry researchers in the U.S. According to its website, the foundation is “dedicated to the belief that scientific discovery is a driving force in the improvement of the human condition.”

Press Release

Discovery addresses problem of generating and moving energy efficiently.

Three scientists from the Maziotti group in the JFI have run the numbers, and they believe there may be a way to make a material that could conduct both electricity and energy with 100% efficiency—never losing any to heat or friction.

The breakthrough, published Feb. 18 in Physical Review B, suggests a framework for an entirely new type of matter, which could have very useful technological applications in the real world. Though the prediction is based on theory, efforts are underway to test it experimentally.

“We started out trying to answer a really basic question, to see if it was even possible—we thought these two properties might be incompatible in one material,” said co-author and research adviser David Mazziotti, a professor of chemistry and the James Franck Institute and an expert in molecular electronic structure. “But to our surprise, we found the two states actually become entangled at a quantum level, and so reinforce each other.”

Graduate student LeeAnn Sager began to wonder how the two states could be generated in the same material. Mazziotti’s group specializes in exploring the properties and structures of materials and chemicals using computation, so she began plugging different combinations into a computer model. “We scanned through many possibilities, and then to our surprise, found a region where both states could exist together,” she said.

“Being able to combine superconductivity and exciton condensates would be amazing for lots of applications—electronics, spintronics, quantum computing,” said Shiva Safaei, a postdoctoral researcher and the third author on the paper. “Though this is a first step, it looks extremely promising.”

Publication
Physics World

Breakthrough creates tough material able to stretch, heal and defend itself.

While eating takeout one day, James Franck Institute scientists Bozhi Tian and Yin Fang started thinking about the noodles—specifically, their elasticity. A specialty of Xi’an, Tian’s hometown in China, is wheat noodles stretched by hand until they become chewy—strong and elastic. Why, the two materials scientists wondered, didn’t they get thin and weak instead?

They started experimenting, ordering pounds and pounds of noodles from the restaurant. “They got very suspicious,” Fang said. “I think they thought we wanted to steal their secrets to open a rival restaurant.”

But what they were preparing was a recipe for synthetic tissue—that could much more closely mimic biological skin and tissue than existing technology.

“It turns out that granules of common starch can be the missing ingredient for a composite that mimics many of the properties of tissue,” said Fang, a UChicago postdoctoral researcher and lead author of a new paper published Jan. 29 in the journal Matter. “We think this could fundamentally change the way we can make tissue-like materials.”

The breakthrough allows the synthetic tissue to stretch in multiple directions but to heal and defend itself by reorganizing its internal structures —which is how human skin protects itself. The discovery could one day lead to applications from soft robotics and medical implants to sustainable food packaging and biofiltration.

Publication

JFI Doctoral alumnus advised by Clarence Zener.

University of Chicago alumnus John B. Goodenough was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering role in developing the lithium-ion batteries that now power our cell phones, laptop computers and electric cars.

Goodenough, SM’50, PhD’52, a Professor at the University of Texas, Austin, was one of three scientists on Oct. 9 recognized as foundational in the field of modern battery chemistry, sharing this year’s prize with M. Stanley Whittingham of Binghamton University in New York and Akira Yoshino of Meijo University in Japan. Goodenough is among the 92 scholars associated with the University of Chicago to receive a Nobel Prize.

“John Goodenough truly revolutionized modern life with his chemical insight into lithium batteries. His work as a physicist, chemist and engineer is a hallmark of the University of Chicago’s interdisciplinary tradition,” said Prof. Angela Olinto, dean of UChicago’s Division of the Physical Sciences. “This is well-deserved recognition for a career that has been nothing short of extraordinary.”

For contributions toward understanding novel phases in strongly interacting many-body systems and introducing original cross-disciplinary techniques.

Physicist Dam Thanh Son, University Professor at the University of Chicago, has been awarded the 2018 ICTP Dirac Medal for his contributions to revolutionizing human understanding of how quantum mechanics affects large groups of particles.

Son was awarded the medal with physicists Subir Sachdev of Harvard University and Xiao-Gang Wen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The three winners made independent contributions toward understanding novel phases in strongly interacting many-body systems, according to the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, which awards the Dirac Medal.

“I feel very honored to receive this award alongside two colleagues I deeply respect,” Son said. “The prize is especially valuable to me because ICTP is an institution created to help scientists from the developing world, and I am from Vietnam.”

Son joined the UChicago faculty in 2012 and serves as University Professor in Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, James Franck Institute and the College. University Professors are selected for internationally recognized eminence in their fields as well as for their potential for high impact across the University.

Press Release