Two UChicago scientists honored with 2024 Department of Energy Early Career Awards

Two University of Chicago scientists have been selected for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Early Career Research Program. The awardees will receive five-year grants to create new light harvesting technologies and develop new insight into cosmological questions.

UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Asst. Prof. Allison Squires will explore new tricks from nature that could be used to improve artificial light harvesting technologies such as solar cells; and Astronomy and Astrophysics Asst. Prof. Austin Joyce will use cosmological quantum field theory to understand how the universe evolved and got its structure.

They are two of 91 recipients of the Early Career Award announced Sept. 10. Established in 2010, the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program provides an annual funding opportunity for “outstanding scientists early in their careers” in universities and DOE national laboratories.

“I’m absolutely thrilled and honored to be selected for the DOE Early Career Award,” said Squires, a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering. “DOE program officers are great about connecting the scientists in their program to nucleate new collaborations, so I’m looking forward to meeting up with other folks in my program who are tackling similar questions from different angles.”

Joyce agreed: “It is a real honor. The DOE’s support of early career researchers, and particularly theoretical work, through this program is important. I am delighted to undertake this research in what is an exciting time for cosmology.”

Cyanobacteria and cosmology

Rather than explore photosynthesis in plants, Squires’ team will research how cyanobacteria, commonly called blue-green algae, efficiently turn light into energy in a wide range of environments, seasons, and weather events.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had solar cells that worked as well as photosynthesis?” Squires said. “Nature has evolved extraordinarily efficient, elegant, and adaptable mechanisms for harvesting energy from sunlight.”

Meanwhile, Joyce plans to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of the universe by studying how it evolved over time.

“The project will study quantum field theory in cosmological spacetimes, like our own, in order to help make progress on critical questions in cosmology. In particular, the history of the early universe is encoded in subtle correlations in the large-scale structures that we measure in the present universe,” Joyce said. “This project will further develop the tools that we need to decode these signals and learn about the universe in its earliest moments.”

—Partly adapted from an article first published to the Pritzker Molecular Engineering website.

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