Convocation

Divisional Academic Ceremony
Saturday, June 3, 2022

The Divisional Academic Ceremony for BSD PhD graduates with a welcome from Dean Kenneth Polonsky and presentation of the graduates by Dean Vicky Prince. The DAC video with featured speaker, Dr. Sean Carroll, is available for current students and faculty.

Divisional Academic Ceremony
Saturday, June 12, 2021, 11:00 AM
Premiere link

The Divisional Academic Ceremony for BSD PhD graduates, with a welcome from Dean Kenneth Polonsky; Dr. Jennifer Doudna as our featured speaker; remarks by Dr. Richard Fehon, 2021 Faculty Marshal; and presentation of the graduates by Dean Vicky Prince.

Wed., June 9: The University of Chicago 534^th Convocation, see https://convocation.uchicago.edu/ for information on viewing the ceremony.

1974

Donald Johanson: discovered a previously unknown hominin

On a survey in Ethiopia, in 1974, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, AM’70, PhD’74, discovered “Lucy,” a 3.2 million-year-old bipedal hominin skeleton that was 40 percent intact. Classified in 1978 as the first known member of Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy is a direct ancestor of the modern human. The discovery changed our understanding of human evolution.

A reconstruction of Lucy at the Warsaw Museum of Evolution

1977

Eugene Goldwasser: discovered source of red blood cell formation

Biochemist Eugene Goldwasser isolated erythropoietin (EPO), the hormone behind red blood cell formation. The 1977 discovery led to the development of the first blockbuster drug of the biotech age, which has since treated millions with anemia.

2016

Zhe-Xi Luo: discovered earliest-known arboreal and subterranean mammals

Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at UChicago, was part of a team of researchers from UChicago and Beijing who discovered fossils of the earliest-known arboreal and subterranean mammals. The fossils suggest that early mammals were as ecologically diverse as modern mammals. Luo’s student David Grossnickle (Evolutionary Biology) also contributed to the research and was an author of one of the Science paper published on this discovery.

Fossils of the earliest-known arboreal and subterranean mammals

2013

Robert Grossman: developed first NIH-approved cloud-based computing system to process cancer data

In 2013, data scientist Robert Grossman developed the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud, the first cloud-based computing system approved by the National Institutes of Health to process data from the Cancer Genome Atlas, the agency’s flagship cancer genetics study. In late 2014, Grossman became director of the Genomic Data Commons, an NIH-funded project based on Bionimbus that will be the nation’s most comprehensive data facility when completed.

1890s

Henry Chandler Cowles: led formational work in the study of ecology

Botanist Henry Chandler Cowles’s study of ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan in the late 1890s opened a new field of inquiry in the natural sciences: ecology. The investigation of a changing natural landscape carries increasing importance amid growing concerns about our environment.

Convocation

Divisional Academic Ceremony Saturday, June 3, 2022

Divisional Academic Ceremony Saturday, June 12, 2021, 11:00 AM Premiere link

Divisional Academic Ceremony
Saturday, June 3, 2022

Divisional Academic Ceremony
Saturday, June 12, 2021, 11:00 AM
Premiere link