Three University of Chicago undergraduate students have received Barry Goldwater Scholarships,awarded annually based on academic merit and undergraduate research in the natural sciences,mathematics and engineering.Cameron Chang,Steven Labalme and Umar Siddiqi are among the 417 U.S.college students to be selected for this award out of apool of over 5,000 applicants.Considered the preeminent undergraduate award of its kind,the scholarship covers the cost of tuition,fees,books,and room and board up to$7,500 per year.It also helps STEM students fund their research during their final years of undergraduate study.As third-year students in the College,Chang,Labalme and Siddiqi were supported throughout their Goldwater application process by the College Center for Research and Fellowships as well as by the UChicago Goldwater faculty nomination committee.CCRF supports undergraduates and recent College alumni through highly competitive national and international fellowships.“The College’s commitment to funding undergraduate research through programs like the Quad Undergraduate Research Scholars program and Dean’s Fund for Research-Conference Travel,helps talented students to compete successfully for major scholarships like Goldwater,”said Dr.Nichole Fazio,associate dean of undergraduate research and scholars programs,and executive director of CCRF.Cameron Chang was undecided about his studies as afirst-year student.He originally thought he would double major in physics and art history.But math classes with Professors John Boller and Alexander Razborov completely changed his mind and reminded him of the joy he felt solving problems and understanding things on adeeper level.“I am confident Imade the right choice,”he said.“While to an outsider mathematics may seem like arigid science with arbitrary rules and regulations,to those who study it,it is an art.I love the potential for boundless creativity—there are many different ways to prove something,and often new proofs come with increased intuition as to why something is the way it is.”The third-year from Orlando,Fla.,now aims to pursue aPh.D.in either combinatorics or algebra,with the eventual goal of becoming aprofessor in mathematics.He hasn’t decided between the two but is interested in both of them as they pertain to structures,both finite and abstract.“Combinatorics studies finite structures,and Iwas first drawn to it when Idiscovered the surprising complexity of the finite world.The notion of finding structure in randomness is incredibly beautiful to me,”Chang said.“On the other hand,my interest in algebra arose from learning about the beautiful applications and connections that its abstract point of view unearths.”At UChicago,Chang has found awelcoming community with astrong affinity for mathematics,which he said is rare.This has made it easier for him to become excited about material he’s learning.“When Ican share the joy of the things I’ve just learned with others,it’s areally great experience for me,”he said.Chang said he is grateful for the financial support offered by the Goldwater scholarship,which will help supplement his tuition and help him purchase costly textbooks.“It definitely makes me want to continue working harder and delve deeper into the topics Iam researching,as well as learn more math and expand my horizons,”he said.“It’s asuper motivating factor,for sure.” 查看详细>>

Artificial intelligence is now all around us,powering everyday tasks in finance,advertising and entertainment.But the promise of AI for fueling new scientific discoveries is only just beginning.AI,machine learning and related approaches can augment scientists’ability to probe the greatest mysteries in the natural world,accelerating experiments and opening new areas of knowledge.A new University of Chicago initiative,the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship,a program of Schmidt Futures,will train the next generation of scientists combining research in both AI and science fields,including physics,astronomy and biology.The UChicago fellowship,part of a$148 million initiative announced today,will launch in January 2023 with its first cohort of postdoctoral researchers.Over the next five years,the fellowship will fund more than 50 early-career researchers working at the intersection of AI and science and engineering at UChicago and its affiliated laboratories.“The Schmidt Futures program will build upon the University’s strengths in rigorous,interdisciplinary inquiry across the sciences,”said Provost Ka Yee C.Lee.“We are grateful to Schmidt Futures for investing in this work and creating anew cohort of UChicago researchers that will leverage the potential of artificial intelligence for addressing complex questions in science and engineering.”The fellowship will expand upon an engaged,cross-disciplinary AI and science community that includes divisions and departments across the University,including the UChicago Data Science Institute,and UChicago-affiliated Argonne National Laboratory,Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Marine Biological Laboratory.Each fellow will work with mentors,choosing aresearcher from adiscipline in the natural sciences or engineering and an AI skills expert,and will join acohort of scholars for career development,training and research activities.“We have had arenaissance in machine learning in areas such as computer vision and natural language processing,leading to amazing results.But that success doesn‘t mean that AI can be used off-the-shelf for science,”said Rebecca Willett,professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Statistics,and faculty lead of the new fellowship program.“There are major open questions surrounding how we quantify uncertainty about the outputs of AI systems,how AI can facilitate the design of experiments,and how best to integrate physics-based knowledge with training data.We hope that,by thinking about AI in the context of science and engineering,we will advance the foundations of AI in addition to advancing the natural sciences.”The UChicago program is open to those who have completed aPh.D.in the natural or mathematical sciences,engineering or arelated field before the start of their fellowship and no earlier than 2018.Applications are now available for the initial cohort starting Jan.1,2023,and asecond cohort starting in September 2023.“I’m excited to see the kinds of scholars that apply for this fellowship,”said David Freedman,professor in the Department of Neurobiology and faculty co-lead of the new fellowship program.“We‘re looking for people that want to do world-class research in the natural sciences,but who can take advantage of and learn the latest in AI skills to accelerate that research.It goes both ways,too,because AI is afield that can also benefit in so many ways from the natural sciences.It‘s not just looking at AI as atool,but the interaction of the natural sciences providing inspiration to explain how AI works or develop anew approach.” 查看详细>>

ne day earlier this year,a dozen or so Chicago Booth students logged in to their virtual classroom and presented their assigned homework.But they didn’t turn in the usual slide decks or Excel analyses.Instead,one by one,they shared their homemade instruments—whimsical improvisations that included aglass jar packed with pennies,a xylophone made from silverware and aset of wine glasses filled to play different pitches.The students were ready to shake,strum,jingle,drum and clap their way through the lesson,staring down their stage fright and prepared to get alittle musical in their quests to become better leaders.It was showtime in the Leadership Studio course,one of three new leadership courses the Booth School of Business introduced in the 2019-2020 school year,and one of the most unique classroom experiences at aleading business school.Writing anew tune Stephen Kohler,MBA’02,a leadership coach and lifelong amateur musician who led the session that day in Spring Quarter,describes Leadership Studio as anew kind of course,in which students dig deep through rehearsals and hands-on lessons to discover their own leadership skills. 查看详细>>

Editor‘s note:This story is one in aseries that spotlights how faculty,students and alumni at the Harris School of Public Policy are driving impact for the next generation.Leading up to the May 3grand opening of Harris’new home at the Keller Center,these stories will examine three of the most critical issues facing our world:strengthening democracy,fighting poverty and inequality,and confronting the global energy challenge.Offering comprehensive supports to community college students can increase full-time enrollment in college and increase retention to the next term,according to new results from astudy by the University of Chicago Poverty Lab.The study found offering supports to students increased full-time enrollment by 13 percent and increased retention to the next term by 11 to 16 percent.The benefits for participating students are even greater;program scholars are 35 percent more likely to enroll full-time and 47 percent more likely to persist to the next term in their first year in the program.The preliminary findings are part of an eight-year,randomized controlled trial of One Million Degrees,a Chicago nonprofit that provides wraparound support to low-income community college students in the Chicago area.The results of its partnership with the Poverty Lab,a leader in providing data-driven solutions to study the effectiveness of programs,add to asmall but growing body of rigorous evidence on how to support community college students. 查看详细>>

How do you represent the passage of time?What is evidence?Is what we think is‘real,’really real?”These are just some of the challenging questions posed in anew series of classes that provides adistinct academic experience to undergraduates.The University of Chicago has long prided itself on intellectually rigorous and thematically eclectic courses.The new Experimental Capstone program,which Prof.Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer spearheads as director of the Stevanovich Institute for the Formation of Knowledge(SIFK),builds upon this long-standing commitment to academic exploration and interdisciplinarity,but brings its own ambitious aims.Although wide-ranging in their scope and subject,all courses in what’s known as the XCAP program incorporate scholarship from different disciplines;cater to students from all major tracks or professional aspirations;and privilege unconventional,hands-on experiments over traditional essays and tests.The classes typically meet once aweek,are three hours long,and are capped at 15 students to encourage collaboration and debate.Because courses are exclusively offered to fourth-year students,Bartsch-Zimmer conceptualizes the curriculum as“a humanistic response to pre-professional training,”providing students the tools to use their theoretical knowledge in pursuit of real-world impact.“It’s not about the grade;it’s about the experience.It’s about discussion among the students.It’s about the acquisition of something they didn’t have before,”said Bartsch-Zimmer,the Helen A.Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics and the Program in Gender Studies. 查看详细>>

For students attending the Clinton Global Initiative University,there was asimple question for Chelsea Clinton:What advice would you give your college-aged self?“I wish Ihad more time for the awe and wonder,”said the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation,speaking at an Oct.20 event at the University of Chicago.“And Ithink Iwould have,if Ihad asked for help more quickly.”Sitting next to her parents,President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,during the closing plenary of CGI U,Chelsea Clinton shared the pressure she felt to have“99.5 percent of everything figured out”instead of admitting her own shortcomings.“I could have learned things more quickly if I’d had the confidence—because Idon’t think it was the humility—to ask for help,”she said. 查看详细>>

The University of Chicago is building anew student wellness center,continuing the expansion and enhancement of health,counseling and wellness resources through an integrated,student-focused facility.“Providing excellent health and wellness services to students in the College,graduate and professional schools is an important priority for the University of Chicago and part of our commitment to supporting the well-being and academic success of our students,”wrote Provost Daniel Diermeier and Michele A.Rasmussen,dean of students in the University,in announcing the new center.The University in recent years has made aseries of enhancements to health and counseling services based on feedback from students and others across the University.Such steps include providing additional staff in student health and counseling services to meet the diverse needs of students and launching innovative new programs,such as telemedicine services,hereditary cancer screenings and drop-in counseling sessions.The new center,which is asubstantial investment in our health,counseling and wellness resources,will improve the existing student health facility on 59th Street and Maryland Avenue.The new center,which is scheduled to open in 2021,will bring together in one location the student health service,the student counseling service,and health promotion and wellness,with adedicated entrance on 59th Street,all of which are currently housed in separate locations.The new center will provide more space,allowing for the hiring of additional medical and mental health providers on staff.The center builds on programs and services launched in recent months including the appointment of afull-time case manager in the student counseling service,new programming for faculty to identify and support students in need of mental health resources,and a30-minute simulation,which is required for all incoming College students,to help students learn to recognize warning signs of psychological distress and encourage friends to seek help. 查看详细>>