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>>

he largest collaborative undertaking yet to explore the relic light emitted by the infant universe has taken astep forward with the selection of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to lead the U.S.Department of Energy’s portion of the project.This next-generation experiment,known as CMB-S4,or Cosmic Microwave Background Stage 4,will unite several existing collaborations to survey the microwave sky in unprecedented detail.The plan calls for 500,000 ultrasensitive detectors on 21 telescopes located in two of our planet’s prime places for viewing deep space:the South Pole and the high Chilean desert.The project,which is estimated to cost several hundred million to build,is intended to unlock many secrets in cosmology,fundamental physics,astrophysics and astronomy.As with the construction of new cameras for the first South Pole Telescope,which have made breakthrough observations of the skies and early universe,the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation are partnering to build the new telescopes.Last year,the NSF announced it was tapping the University of Chicago to lead the development for the NSF part of the project.Department of Energy Office of Science Director Chris Fall authorized the selection of Berkeley Lab as the lead laboratory for the DOE roles and responsibilities for the construction of CMB-S4,with Argonne National Laboratory,Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory serving as partner labs.The CMB-S4 science collaboration now numbers 236 members at 93 institutions in 14 countries and 21 U.S.states.Formerly established in 2018,the CMB-S4 collaboration has two current co-spokespeople:Julian Borrill,head of the Computational Cosmology Center at Berkeley Lab and aresearcher at UC Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory,and John Carlstrom,the Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and scientist at Argonne.“Ever since CMB-S4 was conceived,we have been working to pull the collaboration together and build the team,and we are now working toward afinal design so we can start construction on avery short timescale,”Carlstrom said.“This has been aterrific project—there’s alot of enthusiasm.There’s much remaining to learn from the cosmos,and CMB-S4 will take us asignificant step further in our understanding of the universe.” 查看详细>>

Washington Park residents and visitors will soon have another reason to stop,shop and participate in the arts and cultural activity produced on ahistoric stretch of Garfield Boulevard.Three new retail tenants—ReformedSchool,Hemp Heals Body Shop and Solo Noir—will be the inaugural fellows and occupants of the newly renovated L1 Creative Business Accelerator and retail shop,the latest addition to the University of Chicago’s Arts Block project.Located at 319 E.Garfield Blvd.,L1 is situated under the Chicago Transit Authority’s Green Line elevated tracks inside of the first“L”station,built in 1892.It is operated and managed by Arts+Public Life(APL),an initiative of UChicago Arts.“We are thrilled to welcome these outstanding Black-owned businesses to the Arts Block as models for the entrepreneurial possibilities in Washington Park,particularly in these very trying times,”said Isis Ferguson,Arts+Public Life Interim Co-Deputy Director and Assoc.Director of City+Community Strategy.“ReformedSchool,Hemp Heals Body Shop and Solo Noir offer high-quality,imaginative and original products,and their residency at L1 will help them to grow their brands by connecting deeply with the needs and hopes of South Side consumers.” 查看详细>>

The National Science Foundation has announced the formation of anew institute that will explore new ways to create and connect quantum computers and networks.Established with a$25 million,five-year NSF award,the new Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks(HQAN)includes the University of Chicago,the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.The institute,which will be headquartered at the University of Illinois’Quantum Information Science and Technology Center,will create new undergraduate and graduate training opportunities and includes partnerships with industry and government labs.It is one of only three Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes in the country.All three Midwestern research institutions are members of the Chicago Quantum Exchange,a hub to advance quantum science by connecting institutions and companies across the region. 查看详细>>

As physicians and researchers grapple with arapidly-spreading,deadly and novel disease,they need all the help they can get.Many centers are exploring whether artificial intelligence can help fight COVID-19,extracting knowledge from complex and rapidly growing data on how to best diagnose and treat patients.One University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory collaboration believes that AI can be ahelpful clinical partner for aparticularly important kind of medical data:images.Because severe cases of COVID-19 most often present as arespiratory illness,triggering severe pneumonia in patients,chest X-rays and thoracic CT scans are apotential exam.With agrant from the new c3.ai Digital Transformation Institute,computer-aided diagnosis expert Maryellen Giger will lead an effort to develop new AI tools that use these medical images to diagnose,monitor and help plan treatment for COVID-19 patients.Once developed,Giger hopes that the system will help clinicians in several different aspects of diagnosing and treating the disease.First,it potentially could aid radiologists in spotting the disease,both in patients already suspected of COVID-19 and in those who undergo lung screening for other conditions.Second,the AI model could help physicians differentiate between different stages of the infection,guiding treatment choices for individual patients.As time goes on,researchers also hope the new AI method could help identify cases of COVID-19 that were missed due to lack of symptoms or unavailability of tests. 查看详细>>

There are few scientists who would describe condensed matter physics—a branch that studies the behavior of solid matter—as“simple.”But to Prof.Giulia Galli,it’s less complex than the problems she works on at the University of Chicago.“Problems like water and energy are much more complicated than what Iwas trained for in condensed matter physics,”she said.“All of my work is driven by problems.”It’s complex problems like these that the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering—the first of its kind to focus on this emerging field—was set up to solve.And it’s the kind of innovative research that Galli,a theorist who uses computational models to figure out the behavior of molecules and materials,is helping tackle through her pioneering work.The focus of Galli’s studies is to understand and predict how to harness molecular behavior to improve technology,particularly in the areas of purifying water,speeding up computation and sensing with quantum technology,and perfecting renewable energy technology. 查看详细>>

The National Science Foundation has awarded$4 million to the University of Chicago to host the development of an ambitious multi-institutional program to map the leftover light from the Big Bang in greater detail than ever before.Called CMB-S4,the groundbreaking project will allow us to see back in time to the earliest epoch of the universe.Remnant light from this period,called the cosmic microwave background,is still visible in the skies and holds clues to many of the most pressing mysteries about the universe—from its earliest moments to how it evolved to produce the wondrous structure of galaxies,stars and planets that we see today.“The history of the universe—and the physics that govern its evolution—are encoded in the cosmic microwave background,and rigorous,precise measurements will allows us to unlock this information and will likely lead to new discoveries,”said renowned UChicago cosmologist John Carlstrom,principal investigator for this initial phase of the project and co-spokesperson of the CMB-S4 collaboration,who also holds ajoint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory.“These are big,big topics in physics,many of which we don’t know how to get at any other way.”The CMB-S4 project builds on the success of pioneering observations of the cosmic microwave background from telescopes located in the high Chilean Atacama plateau and at the South Pole,including the 10-meter diameter South Pole Telescope—an international collaboration led by Carlstrom for more than adecade. 查看详细>>

New light has been shed on solar power generation using devices made with polymers,thanks to collaboration between scientists in the University of Chicago’s chemistry department,the Institute for Molecular Engineering and Argonne National Laboratory.Researchers identified anew polymer—a type of large molecule that forms plastics and other familiar materials—that improved the efficiency of solar cells.The group also determined the method by which the polymer improved the cells’efficiency.The polymer allows electrical charges to move more easily throughout the cell,boosting the production of electricity—a mechanism never before demonstrated in such devices.“Polymer solar cells have great potential to provide low-cost,lightweight and flexible electronic devices to harvest solar energy,”said Luyao Lu,graduate student in chemistry and lead author of apaper describing the result,published online last month in the journal Nature Photonics.Solar cells made from polymers are apopular topic of research due to their appealing properties,but researchers are still struggling to efficiently generate electrical power with these materials. 查看详细>>

The Chicago Quantum Exchange,a growing intellectual hub for the research and development of quantum technology,has expanded its community to include new industry partners working at the forefront of quantum technology and research.These corporate partners are Boeing,Applied Materials,Inc.,ColdQuanta,Inc.,HRL Laboratories LLC and Quantum Opus LLC.Together,the Chicago Quantum Exchange and its new industry partners will focus on developing anew understanding of the rules of quantum mechanics,leading to breakthroughs in quantum devices,materials and computing techniques. 查看详细>>

The Chicago Quantum Exchange,a growing intellectual hub for the research and development of quantum technology,has added Northwestern University as its newest member.Northwestern joins forces with the University of Chicago,the U.S.Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in enhancing anational leading collaboration in the rapidly emerging field of quantum information.The new partnership comes as Northwestern consolidates its strengths in quantum information science,a field that promises to transform communications,security,metrology,sensing,and computing.Northwestern’s new initiative,INQUIRE,brings together dozens of researchers in its leading programs,including chemistry,materials science&engineering,physics,and electrical&computer engineering to work on developing materials and methods that can propel the future of quantum science. 查看详细>>