Advancing our community

LAS influence

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is filled with accomplished, thoughtful, and dedicated faculty, staff, students, and alumni whose work influences many advancements throughout our community. LAS strives to address the world’s fundamental problems and grand challenges through indispensable research, innovative courses, and an ingrained focus on diversity.

Read on to learn how the College of LAS is advancing our community in Urbana-Champaign and beyond.

Rose Malanga using the drill they used to take ice core samples.

Lessons from a paradise of ice

Antarctic expedition shapes ESEC PhD student Rose Malanga’s research

LAS communications coordinator for SESE and Astronomy, Jake Keister interviews Rose Malanga, then a PhD student in the Department of Earth Science and Environmental Change at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Malanga and her advisor, Ellen Buckley, research the different processes that cause sea ice to form and grow, and whether those processes are changing as the climate changes.

Each morning before sunrise, Malanga and Buckley climbed to the ship's bridge to scan the ice below for a stable floe where they could collect samples. Once they identified a suitable patch of sea ice, they boarded a small Zodiac raft and headed out across the water, searching for ice thin enough to drill through but stable enough to stand on safely.

Continue

“It was awesome,” Malanga said. “I think the craziest part was that you wouldn't really feel that you were moving on it, but if you looked out to the horizon, you could see that you were bobbing up and down.”

Out on the ice, the silence was almost complete.

“If you were not making a noise, if the Zodiac engine was turned off, it was just the sound of the water lapping,” she said.

940 Feet series

Join LAS professors and students for a stroll on the Quad, and learn more about the influential people advancing our community.

Watch series

Ying Diao discusses research on chirality and energy efficiency

Diao studies how chirality — asymmetry in molecules and physical structures — might be able to make electronics more energy-efficient.

How does the film ‘The Odyssey’ compare with Homer’s epic poem?

Classics professor Eduardo García-Molina discusses how “The Odyssey” film compares with Homer’s epic poem and the story’s relevance today.

Finding could reduce effort required for time-consuming and critical task

A new study led by Illinois professor Joseph Trujillo-Falcón documents how the National Weather Service is using artificial intelligence to develop a comprehensive translation program that delivers life-saving forecasts and alerts in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Samoan, French and other languages.

Faculty research

The College of LAS has more than 600 faculty experts working on the world’s fundamental problems and grand challenges. Learn about their work.

LAS continues strategic investment in education and research

Building on the success of last year's inaugural effort, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is continuing its Strategic Investment Program to support innovation and excellence in education and research. The program advances the college's strategic priorities by accelerating innovation,...

Wings of bioinspiration

The first lesson Marianne Alleyne learned from working with engineers had nothing to do with insects.It had to do with language."Actually doing interdisciplinary research or transdisciplinary research is really difficult," said Alleyne, a professor of...

New book studies ‘persistent citizens’ of the Global South

A new book co-written by a U of I expert who studies development and governance explores the “state-centric persistence” of poor citizens of the Global South in their individual pursuit of benefits from government-run social welfare programs such as public healthcare and early childhood...

Emotion-regulation training reduces distress, changes the brain, team reports

A five-week training intervention taught college students to better regulate their emotions in response to negative events, a new study finds. After the training, the students reported less emotional distress when viewing negative images or thinking about difficult events from their own...

Illinois professor’s book examines contradictions in history of U.S. naturalization processes

Naturalization is a process that is typically celebrated as the end point on the path to U.S. citizenship. Immigrants choose to attach themselves to our nation, which extends to them its rights, freedoms and opportunities.A new book looks at naturalization from a different angle, considering...

Volatile weekly work hours have adverse effects on health, employment

Workers who juggle volatile work hours that change from week to week may experience adverse health effects that impact their ability to work, although the limitations vary by gender, say researchers who conducted a recent study. Men who experienced greater fluctuations in their work hours...