FACCTS 2025

Confrères
Tem Horwitz
Sandra Barreto
George Austin
Jaime Thomas
Xiao Zhang
Gigi Mathews
Ryan Zaremba

FACCTS 2025 took place at the University of Chicago Center in Paris on April 18. I traveled with fellow confrères and Parker parents Tem Horwitz and Sandra Barreto and participated in person. Daniel Weissbluth, MD, another confrère and founder of Weissbluth Pediatrics, and his father, Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a retired pediatrician, attended in person as well. All other Parker confrères participated in the process without traveling to Paris. 

The FACCTS 2025 programming started on the evening of April 17 at Le Train Bleu, a beautiful and elaborately decorated traditional French restaurant in the Gare de Lyon train station. It was an experience that took you back to the “Golden Age” of train transportation in France. On the morning of the 18th, we met as a group at Hôpital Universitaire Pitié Salpêtrière at the Paris Brain Institute. We were given a chance to listen to the groundbreaking research being done at the institute and toured their facilities, including seeing their 7-Tesla (7T) MRI machine, one of only a few in the world. After this tour, we met back at the University of Chicago’s recently completed John W. Boyer Center, designed by famous Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, where we took a tour of the vertical campus as well as had lunch on their beautiful rooftop that overlooks Paris.

Before traveling to Paris, Parker’s confrères, George Austin, Jaime Thomas, Xiao Zhang, Gigi Mathews and I, reviewed the proposals received by the FACCTS committee. The Parker team chose four proposals of interest to the Parker community. While in Paris, I met with the FACCTS committee members, who are composed of University of Chicago faculties—the “Chicago team”—and members of French education ministry and staffs from the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. and Chicago Consulate responsible for promoting scientific research and collaboration—the “French team.” The committee met in the afternoon on April 18 to make funding decisions on received proposals. Each proposal has a Chicago and a French principal investigator. Confrères were able to listen to the committee’s discussions and evaluations of proposals. After the proposals were ranked, the confrères selected five proposals. The experience to meet with the committee and participate in the proposal review process has provided the confrères a unique window to the funding process for scientific research.

The following proposals are selected by the confrères:

Daniel and Marc Weissbluth:

Other confrères:

Tem Horwitz and Sandra Barreto:

The proposals chosen by Horwitz and Barreto were specifically chosen with the lens of sharing this work with the Parker community. These proposals have wide implications across scientific disciplines and will serve the Parker community well. We are looking forward to the opportunities for the five funded projects to connect with Parker students across age and discipline. Past presentations by researchers not only showed students cutting research topics of interest, but also unique and valuable perspectives on research and scientific careers. As climate and sustainability education has had a broader focus at Parker and is mission-driven, our hope is that the students are able to see connections between biology, chemistry, physics and earth sciences.

Click here for photos.