2020-08-28
- To some, an invasion of insects that come crawling out of the earth is just another disturbing chapter of the year 2020, but entomology professor Marianne Alleyne knows that there’s a lot to learn from cicadas. She even looks forward to seeing—and hearing—the noisy, flying creatures.
“The sound of cicadas in the summertime, together with the...
2020-08-27 - The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture are announcing an investment of more than $140 million to establish seven artificial intelligence institutes in the U.S. Two of the seven will be led by teams at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They will support the work of researchers at the U of I and their partners...
2020-08-25 - Crops grow dense canopies that consist of several layers of leaves—the upper layers with younger sun leaves and the lower layers with older shaded leaves that may have difficulty intercepting sunlight trickling down from the top layers. In a recent study published in Food and Energy Security, scientists from Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) aimed to understand how...
2020-08-21 - The 2020 U.S. election will be unlike any other in history. The results are hard to predict—there’s nothing unusual about that—but questions also remain about safety, how COVID-19 will affect attitudes and turnout, and even how people will vote. We asked Brian Gaines, professor of political science at Illinois, for an expert’s view of what’s coming on...
2020-08-20 - To most people the term “shoot for the moon” is a figurative term for high ambition, but Rishi Chandra would, in fact, like to get to the moon. The physics major is following an individual plan of study in planetary science. “There’s something romantic to me about the exploration of the Solar System,” he said. “I’d really like to be a part of the...
2020-08-20 - While many academic institutions are searching for ways to prevent sexual assault and sexual coercion among their faculty members, staff, and students, they are failing to address the most common forms of gender-based harassment, said experts who study harassment and discrimination at work and in academic and health care settings. In an opinion published in the Proceedings of the National...
2020-08-18 - Cosmic rays from nearby supernovae could be the culprit behind at least one mass extinction event on Earth, according to researchers at the University of Illinois. Finding certain radioactive isotopes in rock could confirm this scenario. A new study led by astronomy and physics professor Brian Fields explores...
2020-08-14 - Bill Hammack, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been awarded the Hoover Medal. The award is named for its first recipient, U.S. President Herbert Hoover, who was an engineer by profession. Established in 1929 to honor “...
2020-08-13 - As the fall semester begins, there is a new name the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences community will want to note – Interim Dean Gene Robinson, Swanlund Chair in Entomology. Robinson began his new role in Lincoln Hall on July 1; although, he has spent his entire 30-year career at the University of Illinois. “This is a big university, and that means two things,” he said. “First...
2020-08-13 - It’s early evening as I follow the researchers to their work site on the Phillips Tract, just east of Urbana. When we get there, I immediately notice two things: We are standing in a vast grid of prairie plots with neatly mowed paths between them, and there are tents – dozens of dollhouse-sized tents. The vegetation is only about thigh-high – the researchers planted the site in 2018 – but it’s...
2020-08-11 - A new initiative based in the University of Illinois Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies aims to develop more effective partnerships based in culturally and linguistically sensitive support and collaborations with the Champaign-Urbana Maya community. The Illinois Maya Initiative plans to connect researchers, community social service...
2020-08-06 - The Center for Advanced Study has appointed seven new members to its permanent faculty. CAS professors are selected based on their outstanding scholarship, and the appointments are one of the highest forms of campus recognition at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The new CAS members connected to the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences are Jeffrey S. Moore,...
2020-08-05 - As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, scientists and health care providers are seeking ways to keep the coronavirus from infecting tissues once they’re exposed. A new study suggests luring the virus with a decoy – an engineered, free-floating receptor protein – that binds the virus and blocks infection. Erik Procko, a professor of...
2020-08-04 - The fall semester is just weeks away, but preparations at the University of Illinois to create a meaningful, reliable, and safe learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic have been progressing all summer long. While the onset of the pandemic forced faculty, students, and administrators to finish about half of spring semester online, much was learned from the experience, and campus has used...
2020-07-31 - Big data has become a top resource in countless professions, although massive data sets are useless without a mechanism to efficiently organize patterns and develop real word applications. Statistics professor Naveen Narisetty hopes to contribute to this need. Narisetty received a distinguished Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award that...
2020-07-31 - They say a picture says 1,000 words, but the photo that Charles Gammie helped take in 2019 generated more than a few awe-inspired gasps as well. The professor of astronomy and physics helped lead the Event Horizon Telescope Project that captured the first-ever image of a black hole. Gammie refers to that as his...
2020-07-28 - There’s a reason why people often forget to take a daily medication or respond to that email they’ve been meaning to send, and it can be chalked up to the gulf between intention and actually completing an action, according to new research co-written by a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign expert who studies social psychology. Mundane behaviors that are repeated over time and occur in the...
2020-07-24 - An experience consoling a World War II veteran in the last days of his life fostered a passion for advocating for mental health awareness in Benjamin Ray, a student in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology and CEO of vrtumind. Pronounced “virtue-mind,” the startup applies...
2020-07-23 - Prior to joining the University of Illinois in the 1990s, Scott Althaus was a soldier stationed in Germany during the tail end of the Cold War. He saw things in news reports from the United States that didn't align with events in Europe as he observed them in the mid-1980s. This piqued his interest in researching news bias in political coverage. Today he has a joint appointment in the...
2020-07-20 - Editor’s note: Daniel A. Gilbert is a labor and history professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the 2013 book “Expanding the Strike Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency.” Gilbert, a cultural historian...
2020-07-17 - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been awarded a $5 million grant renewal from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its Humanities Without Walls (HWW) initiative at the Humanities Research Institute (HRI). Now a 16-member consortium of universities,...
2020-07-14 - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will open the fall semester with as much in-person instruction and residential occupancy as COVID-19 precautions and space availability allow. In announcing the decision reached after extensive consultation with faculty members, staff, students, the Academic Senate, community members and health officials, Chancellor Robert Jones said the...
2020-07-14 - The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $15.5 million to four universities in Illinois, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to create an institute to bring powerful mathematical ideas to bear on key contemporary scientific and technological challenges. Researchers at the new Institute for Mathematical and Statistical...
2020-07-14 - Six professors from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been named 2020 Conrad Humanities Scholars. The Conrad Humanities Scholars Award is funded by a gift from the late Arlys Conrad, whose estate gift recognizes mid-career scholars with potential for continued achievement in humanities. The recipients are using the awards to pursue a variety of research topics, from Latin American...
2020-07-09 - Researchers use a variety of modelling approaches to study form and function. By using a basic biomechanical model for studying body form and center of mass stability in ants, new research identifies the benefits of “simple models” and hope that it can be used for bio-inspired designs. “Most organisms are constrained in their shape and size because they are juggling different needs such as the...