News: 2024

The APS Fellowship Program was created to recognize members who may have made advances in physics through original research and publication, or made significant innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. They may also have made significant contributions to the teaching of physics or service and participation in the activities of the Society.

SkAI Institute will develop AI tools and accelerate astronomy’s data-driven revolution

UChicago-led analysis measures universe expansion rate, finds there may not be a ‘Hubble tension’
We know many things about our universe, but astronomers are still debating exactly how fast it is expanding. In fact, over the past two decades, two major ways to measure this number—known as the “Hubble constant” —have come up with different answers, leading some to wonder if there was something missing from our model of how the universe works.

The field of cosmology is just the small matter of understanding the entire universe: how it began, how it works, and how it’s changing. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago, which brings together theoretical and experimental astronomers and physicists to investigate these expansive questions within the University’s distinctly interdisciplinary culture.  

Astronomy & Astrophysics and KICP Professor and FNAL Senior Scientist Dan Hooper has been selected as the new director of the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC). 

Congratulations to Elyssa Brooks for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "Developments of Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors".

Every now and then, tiny particles of antimatter strike Earth from cosmic parts unknown. A new balloon-borne experiment launching this spring may at last find their source.

CCAPP is proud to announce Abigail Lee (U. Chicago) and Hanjue Zhu (U. Chicago) as the winners of the 2024 Price Prize in Cosmology and Astrophysics

Prof. Freedman is a Canadian-American cosmologist at the University of Chicago who works in the area of refining measurement of the Hubble Constant. She is renowned for her work on Cepheid variable stars through a Hubble Space Telescope Key Project. Her work and accomplishments are closely connected to the big-bang theory of Georges Lemaître.

John Carlstrom, Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the College, receives this prize in recognition of his critical contributions to the Physical Sciences Division and the continued success of both academic departments.

Ava Polzin, Astronomy and Astrophysics “The Smallest Pieces of the Puzzle: Using Dwarf Galaxies to Understand the Universe”

“We suspected that magnetic fields are acting as the walls of the chimney and that hot gas is traveling up through them, like smoke”, said Scott Mackey of the University of Chicago, who led the study. “Now we’ve discovered an exhaust vent near the top of the chimney.”

Congratulations to Zhuowen (Ben) Zhang for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on "Forward modeling of cluster systematics for cluster cosmology".

Congratulations to Mandy Chen for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "Toward a Physical Understanding of the Dynamic Circumgalactic Medium"

Gabriel Hoshino, PhD student, was awarded the DOE’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Fellowship to work with Prof. David Miller, Andrew Sonnenschein, and  Stefan Knirck on "Instrumentation for a Terahertz Reflector-Based Search for Axions and Dark Photon”