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...
LAS News Archive
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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;...
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...
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...
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...
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. ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
2024-01-25 - The smell of cut grass is one of the defining fragrances of summer. Smells like that are one of the ways plants signal their injury. Because they cannot run away from danger, plants have evolved to communicate with each other using chemical signals. They use volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for a...
2024-01-19 - By one estimate, as many as 30 percent of people in the U.S. are in romantic relationships with partners who do not share their political views. In today’s hyperpartisan climate, where Democrats and Republicans have difficulty talking to each other and their views are polarized about media outlets...
2024-01-12 - Five College of LAS faculty members have been named as university endowed chairs or professors, an honor awarded to the highly distinguished scholars for their excellence and prominence in research, teaching and service. They are among nine professors chosen across campus. “An endowed chair is...
2024-01-12 - Eight alumni of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences will receive recognition during the college’s 2024 alumni awards at a celebration in April. They are researchers and entrepreneurs who have made incredible impacts in their fields and communities. LAS Dean's Quadrangle Award...
2024-01-11 - Craig Williams discovered his love of learning languages early in life. He began studying French in elementary school and, intrigued by the BBC series "I, Claudius," he signed up for Latin at his high school in Albany, New York. Eventually he earned his PhD in classical languages and literatures at...
2024-01-09 - As a top university student in India who was working toward a career in engineering, chemistry seemed far from the destiny of Prashant Jain. But his curiosity about the atomic world ultimately led him to discover his lifelong scientific passion, using...