2024-03-11
- Deborah Lynch (BA, ’70, English) has always considered her time at the University of Illinois to be the foundation of her career. That’s why she has sponsored the Greenfield Lynch Endowed Lecture series to highlight Jewish American literature and literary studies. The next...
2024-03-06 - Chika Umeadi (BA, ’10, political science) is a product manager at Google where he helps drive key strategies with a variety of teams and stakeholders. In hindsight, the political science major and informatics minor believes, in many ways, the connections he made outside of the classroom provided a unique foundation for his life and career. Family...
2024-03-06 - Fragile X syndrome is one of the most commonly inherited forms of autism and intellectual disability, and no treatment currently exists. But a team of University of Illinois researchers led by Vipendra Kumar, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology, has discovered a novel receptor function that may be used in a therapeutic approach to treatment....
2024-03-06 - The University of Illinois System today announced the launch of Brasillinois, an initiative that will feature a student mobility program and build clusters of research and institutional collaboration around themes of climate and sustainability, medicine and public health, and social inclusion. The initiative seeks to create a new model for collaboration between American higher...
2024-03-05 - Science is a forward-looking endeavor. New ideas replace old ideas which are put on the shelf or forgotten like phlogiston. But what about the old ideas that weren’t wrong? Who looks back over their shoulder and sees them before they’re gone? Alexander Mironenko, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, remembers when he began to see the...
2024-03-01 - Of the nearly 30 years that Atul Jain has worked as an atmospheric sciences researcher and professor at the University of Illinois, the last one was a standout. In 2023, Jain was named for the third consecutive year to the annual Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list, for individuals whose research has been exceptionally...
2024-03-01 - From deep-dish pizza to towering skyscrapers, Chicago is a city like no other. Nearly 3 million people call it home, making it a hub of economic development, culture, and groundbreaking research. And for decades, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has played a meaningful role there. Here’s a snapshot of some of the LAS research and engagement initiatives currently unfolding in the City...
2024-03-01 - A student of astronomy might identify Joel Stebbins as the father of photoelectric photometry, a star-gazing technique so important that his workplace, the University of Illinois Observatory, was eventually named a National Historic Landmark. Not as many remember Stebbins for being the campus timekeeper and for being an influential...
2024-03-01 - Pavlo Dziuba had a long career in Ukraine before everything changed in 2022. For 20 years he worked as a professor of international finance at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and lived with his family in a small town of Irpin 16 miles outside of Kyiv. They stayed there even after Russia invaded—until one day their house was hit by a bomb. “Our house was...
2024-03-01 - Most days are easy to quantify. Eight-hour workday. Twenty-minute commute. Three meals. 10,000 steps. However, during the inaugural College of LAS Days of Service, the impact is tougher to tally. Of course, it’s easy to count the more than 50 volunteers providing more than 100 hours of service in three cities. And at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, 7,410 pounds of apples were separated...
2024-03-01 - When Danielle Zymkowitz (BS, ’11, communication) was playing on a travel softball team in California during high school, she and several of her teammates were aggressively recruited by Ohio State. But then Illinois coach Terri Sullivan suddenly showed up close to midnight following a grueling late-night loss. “I was so tired, but Coach Sullivan...
2024-02-21 - The 2024 Insect Fear Film Festival will bring its audience a bug’s-eye view of the world. The festival’s theme is “Ant-Men,” and it will feature films in which humans are shrunk to the size of ants and participate in ant societies. The 41st annual festival is Feb. 24 at Foellinger Auditorium at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign...
2024-02-20 - Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny died Feb. 16 while serving time in a remote Arctic prison. Navalny was the main political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin and an anticorruption activist who survived being poisoned in 2020, which many believe was a state-ordered assassination attempt. He was serving multiple prison sentences on what were widely considered trumped-up charges....
2024-02-20 - Nisha Chittal (BA, ’09, political science) graduated from Illinois at a time when social media was just finding its footing. She quickly realized social media could be a powerful tool for networking. Using social media, Chittal made connections at the crossroads of politics and journalism and has never looked back. Today she is the chief of staff at Vox....
2024-02-20 - Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor William S. Hammack was invested as Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering in a recent ceremony. The ceremony included remarks by John Coleman, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost; Christopher Rao, Ray and Beverly Mentzer Professor and head of the Department of Biomolecular &...
2024-02-16 - Tommy Li wanted a summer internship, but he wasn’t sure where to look. The junior majoring in communication had a lot of questions: What activities should he put on his application? What do employers look for in potential interns? How do you polish a resume? Li was guided to the Paul M. Lisnek LAS...
2024-02-14 - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political science professor Nicholas Grossman is the author of “Drones and Terrorism: Asymmetric Warfare and the Threat to Global Security” and specializes in international relations. Grossman spoke with News Bureau...
2024-02-14 - White people surveyed in a recent study indicated they would be more likely to confront those who post racist content on social media if their objective were to defend the norms for political discussions rather than to change the person’s prejudiced beliefs. Communication professors Stewart M. Coles of the University of Illinois Urbana...
2024-02-09 - Plant biologists report that a species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant. The fern, Cyathea rojasiana, reconfigures these “zombie leaves,” reversing the flow of water to draw nutrients back into the plant. The findings are reported in the journal Ecology. This weird phenomenon occurs...
2024-02-09 - Halfway through a true crime podcast, a morning commuter jerks the wheel to narrowly avoid a collision. When discussing the podcast with a coworker later that day, the driver can easily recall the details of the episode’s second half but retains only a blurry recollection of how it began. A new study from psychologists at the Beckman Institute for Advanced...
2024-02-08 - It’s been almost a year since workers lifted the cornerstone of Illini Hall. It was a momentous event, occurring during the building’s demolition that marked the opening phase of the Altgeld and Illini Hall Project. A crowd of onlookers and news media were on hand to witness the occasion—there were rumors of a time capsule. They didn’t...
2024-02-07 - Four professors from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been named 2024 Conrad Humanities Scholars. John Levi Barnard, John Gallagher, Maryam Kashani, and Natalie Lira have each been honored with the appointment. The Conrad Humanities Scholars Award recognizes promising mid-career scholars and provides financial support for continued achievement, research, and scholarship in...
2024-02-07 - Perusing a used bookstore was nothing out of the ordinary for David Obuchowski (BA, ’01, English) and his wife, Sarah Pedry, but the excursion was anything but typical the day that they found “Birds Asleep,” a 1989 scientific and comprehensive survey of bird sleeping habits written by naturalist Alexander Skutch. The discovery began a creative journey...
2024-02-02 - The College of LAS has selected 14 professors, graduate students, lecturers, and an advisor as the recipients of the 2024 teaching and advising awards. “We are proud to have such an impressive group of people advancing our vital teaching and advising goals,” said Venetria K. Patton, the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS. “We received exceptional feedback from students and alumni about...
2024-01-30 - Matthew DiCianni (BA, ’07, history and political science) is a labor and employment attorney at the law firm Cozen O’Connor where he has taken on cases of all sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to small family businesses. Now a U.S. citizenship case has become his proudest achievement. “My four years at the...