Virtual infinity

Studio Chyr won a 2026 DICE (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain) Award in February for immersive reality technical achievement for its virtual reality game Hotel Infinity. The awards were presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Will Chyr, AB’09, the studio’s creative director, led a team that included several alumni and current students, among them Sydney Glenn, AB’24, who designed levels; Zyad Elmasri, Class of 2026, who was a game tester; and Gemma Lippman, AB’26, who worked on in-game illustration and user interface design. Hotel Infinity earned praise for its innovative room-scale navigation, which allows players to move through a seemingly endless virtual space by walking in a two-by-two-meter real-life square.

Pain-free thumbs-up

In September Jonathan Tueting, MD’01, became the first surgeon in the United States to perform a carpometacarpal total joint arthroplasty—a procedure to alleviate arthritis in the thumb. Previously available only in Europe, the surgery replaces the thumb joint with a metal and plastic prosthesis recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Tueting, a shoulder, elbow, and hand surgery specialist at Rush Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine in Aurora, Illinois, compares it to a “tiny total hip replacement for the thumb.” Arthritis of the thumb is the most common hand arthritis experienced by women in their 50s and 60s and can interfere with everyday life. His patient, a professional cake decorator, was able to return to work soon after the surgery.

Basketball breakthrough

Claudia Goldin, AM’69, PhD’72, accepted just three special requests when she won the 2023 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for her work on labor market outcomes for women: throwing out the first pitch at a Red Sox game, being a guest on NPR’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, and advising the WNBA players’ union during their contract negotiations. Using many of the same methods that guided her Nobel-winning work, she analyzed trends throughout the history of the WNBA, calculated the average number of years players were in the league, and compared attendance and viewership data with that of the NBA. This concrete data helped the players secure a 364 percent salary cap increase in their 2026 contract—possibly the largest pay increase negotiated by any union in history, Goldin believes.

California composin’

Paul Novak, AM’22, a current PhD student in the Division of the Arts & Humanities, will be the composer in residence for the California Symphony from fall 2026 through spring 2029. During the residency he will participate in workshops with the orchestra and compose three new works. Novak’s numerous other honors include a Fromm Foundation Commission and a Barlow Endowment Commission, and his compositions have been performed by symphonies around the world. His current work explores dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. He is also the co–artistic director and flutist of Mycelium New Music, a Chicago-based ensemble that showcases emerging voices in contemporary music.

An opera runs through it

Opera Montana will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Norman Maclean’s (PhD’40) A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (University of Chicago Press, 1976) with a new operatic adaptation of the book’s title novella. Matt Foss and Kelley Rourke wrote the libretto; composer Zach Redler’s score mixes bluegrass, country, jazz, honky-tonk, and other styles to evoke the feeling of Montana’s natural landscapes and its people. The opera will debut in September with performances in Bozeman and Missoula and will be filmed by Montana PBS for future broadcast.

Hinojosa honored

In April Maria Hinojosa, LAB’79, received the George Polk Career Award honoring impactful investigative journalism for her reporting on public affairs and Latino communities. Hinojosa has hosted the Peabody Award–winning radio show (and later podcast) Latino USA since its debut in 1993. She and the staff of Futuro Media Group, an independent newsroom she founded, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting for the podcast Suave. The series follows David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez’s return to society after more than 30 years in prison for a crime he committed in his teens. For more about Hinojosa, see the UChicagoan.