February
Suri Vaikuntanathan awarded Sloan Research Fellowship
February 21, 2017
Prestigious early-career recognition.
The Sloan Research Fellows are the rising stars of the academic community,” says Paul L. Joskow, President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “Through their achievements and ambition, these young scholars are transforming their fields and opening up entirely new research horizons. We are proud to support them at this crucial stage of their careers.”
Press Release
New method uses heat flow to levitate variety of objects
February 15, 2017
Undergraduates in Chin group lead breakthrough work.
Third-year Frankie Fung and fourth-year Mykhaylo Usatyuk led a team of UChicago researchers who demonstrated how to levitate a variety of objects—ceramic and polyethylene spheres, glass bubbles, ice particles, lint strands and thistle seeds—between a warm plate and a cold plate in a vacuum chamber.
“They made lots of intriguing observations that blew my mind,” said Cheng Chin, professor of physics, whose ultracold lab in the Gordon Center for Integrative Science was home to the experiments.
Publication
New SPIFF method improves accuracy of imaging systems
February 4, 2017
Collaborative work by the Dinner, Rice, and Scherer groups
The newly developed SPIFF (single-pixel interior filling function) method provides a way to detect and correct systematic errors in data and image analysis used in many areas of science and engineering.
“Anyone working with imaging data on tiny objects — or objects that appear tiny — who wants to determine and track their positions in time and space will benefit from the single-pixel interior filling function method,” said co-principal investigator Norbert Scherer.
Publication
January
Myford Super 7 lathe dedication
January 30, 2017
New tool for the JFI Student Machine Shop
Stuart Rice generously donated a Myford Super 7 Lathe to the JFI Student Machine Shop, and we had a dedication ceremony on January 10, 2017. The lathe is already being put to good use.
Prof. Robert Gomer, 1924-2016
January 12, 2017
Former JFI Director and pioneering chemist passes away at the age of 92.
Prof. Emeritus Robert Gomer, a chemical physicist who pioneered techniques for studying molecules and taught at the University of Chicago for nearly a half-century, died Dec. 12 of complications related to Parkinson’s disease. He was 92.