When Nobel season rolls around there’s a good chance area universities will be in line to win some. Northwestern economics professor Dale Mortensen is among them this year. The laureates’ search market theory helps explain the efficiency of recruitment and wage formation. For his part, Mortensen expanded the framework to the labor market. This helps to understand the ways in which unemployment, job vacancies, and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy. 

Meanwhile, other Nobel Prize winnersworked with technologies fit for science fiction. 

Picture a substance that’s transparent, only one atom thick but 200 times stronger than steel. It’s called graphene and it just won two scientists at the University of Manchester a Nobel in physics. 

Now scientists in Chicago are looking for new ways to use the material. Among them are Northwestern University’s Mark Hersam and Argonne’sNathan Guisinger.