As the new academic year begins, University of Chicago students and faculty are returning from a range of international experiences. Their summer activities included research, study, and internships in countries such as Mexico, India, France, and Germany.
In Teotitlán del Valle near Oaxaca, Mexico, UChicago scholars worked with local textile artists to examine plants and animals used for natural dyes. The workshops combined traditional knowledge with scientific methods like DNA barcoding. Oscar Pineda-Catalan, senior associate instructional professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division, said: “These textile communities are some of the oldest ones in the Americas.” Sonia Hernandez, research associate professor and member of The Biodiversity of Color team, added: “This is, to our knowledge, one of the first scientific projects doing genetic and morphological analysis by community members posing their own research questions.” Results from these workshops will be owned by the artists involved.
In India, 15 UChicago College students participated in the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth’s new India Summer Fellows Program at Ahmedabad University. The program focused on energy, climate change, and sustainable growth through classroom learning and fieldwork. Parjanya Tiwari reflected on a lecture about gender and climate: “I was struck by how vulnerable home-based women workers are in Indian cities with little to no infrastructure that accounts for sanitation, heat protection and access to transportation,” Tiwari said. Samantha Alderden noted her interest in air pollution’s health effects: “It was fascinating to hear, at the molecular level, how the pollutants I’ve learned so much about this past week do damage to the body.”
Max Bogan, a Ph.D. candidate with the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, spent July on France’s Atlantic coast studying kelp biochemistry at Station Biologique de Roscoff. Bogan collaborated with French researchers after meeting them at the John W. Boyer Center in Paris through an IRC Discovery grant supporting partnerships between UChicago and French institutions. “Kelp has this really weird, unique chemistry; it's something the Roscoff team was already working on,” Bogan said. She also commented on international collaboration: “So much of our interpretation of science comes from language and metaphor… When you have another language's set of metaphors… it can be really productive.”
Michael Bolgov, a third-year student at UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, interned at Bruker in Germany developing medical devices that help identify bacterial infections causing sepsis. Bolgov stated: “This summer has opened up the world of industrial customer-focused applications of engineering… I have enjoyed working on medical devices that will be used by hospitals in the next few years.” He also observed aspects of German work culture: “Everyone worked hard, but breaks were respected… Even the typical lunches were fresh and balanced…”
These global experiences reflect UChicago’s emphasis on combining academic inquiry with practical engagement across disciplines.