2020-02-03
- A University of Illinois professor emerita and a former professor have been awarded Literature Translation Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Armine Kotin Mortimer is a professor emerita of French literature. Elizabeth Lowe, a professor of translation studies, is the founding director of the U of I’s...
2020-01-30 - A team of experts representing the three campuses of the University of Illinois System will discuss urban sustainability and resilience during Night of Ideas Chicago 2020 at 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30 at The Field Museum. The Night of Ideas Chicago 2020 is part of La Nuit des Idées, a global series coordinated worldwide by the Institut Français, and will take place Saturday, Jan. 25 through...
2020-01-29 - When did pronouns become a thing? The use of a singular personal pronoun is not a modern concept. Over the years, various alternatives have emerged. Notably, the earliest recorded use of "they" as a gender-neutral personal pronoun dates back to the 14th century, found in a French poem titled William the Werewolf. In his just-released book “What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He and She,” linguist...
2020-01-27 - It takes a lot of energy to collect, clean, and dispose of contaminated water. Some contaminants, like arsenic, occur in low concentrations, calling for even more energy-intensive selective removal processes. In a new paper, researchers address this water-energy relationship by introducing a device that can purify and remediate arsenic-contaminated water in a single step. Using specialized...
2020-01-21 - The College of LAS is creating a new scholarship program, and expanding an already existing program, to significantly increase the number of need-based scholarships for students from Illinois to study liberal arts and sciences. Feng Sheng Hu, the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS, said that the new scholarship, called the LAS Morrill Scholarship, will offer $4,000 per year (renewable...
2020-01-14 - Scientists have developed new drug compounds that thwart the pro-cancer activity of FOXM1, a transcription factor that regulates the activity of dozens of genes. The new compounds suppress tumor growth in human cells and in mouse models of several types of human breast cancer. The researchers report their findings in the journal NPJ Breast Cancer. FOXM1 is a naturally occurring protein that...
2020-01-13 - Mauro Nobili has been studying the pre-colonial and early colonial history of West Africa for more than a decade. Through the years, Nobili, a professor of history, has pieced together evidence that shows the Tarikh al-fattash, a West African chronicle written in Arabic that is widely believed to have been produced in the 17th century, was in fact...
2020-01-10 - David Kranz, the Phillip A. Sharp Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois, was one of 168 to be elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. The program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions...
2020-01-09 - There’s more to literature than the ideas conveyed by the writer. It turns out there’s also something to be learned from the physical creation of the words—and paper—themselves, as students discovered through a hands-on experience in a Greek course at Illinois. Students in Greek 201: Intermediate Ancient Greek, taught by classics...
2020-01-08 - Here’s a question for Illinois sports fans: Who at the University of Illinois changed the face of college football in the 1920s? If you answered Red Grange, you’d be right, but there was someone else on campus whose work led to a slew of national football titles. It wasn’t a star player or coach, but a number-crunching economics professor named Frank...
2019-12-20 - Classics professor Angeliki Tzanetou and her students explored issues of war and trauma through Greek tragedies and learned how the themes presented in the ancient dramas are connected to present-day crises. Tzanetou taught “The Aftermath of War in Greek Tragedy” for the first time this fall semester. “The reason tragedy survives, its timelessness,...
2019-12-19 - When Robert and Beata Kaminski immigrated to the U.S. from Poland, they knew nothing about American colleges, and relied on their oldest son, Szymon, to guide them. Szymon explained to his parents the credits it takes to graduate, how to pay tuition, and about the classes he needs to take. They were lessons that came in handy when his two younger siblings followed him to U of I. All three...
2019-12-17 - Side effects are strange. In the computer world, they are known as an observable effect besides the returned value. In the world of medicine, they’re everything from life-threatening to hilarious (“David after Dentist” on YouTube has almost 140 million views). It turns out that they’re equally compelling and perplexing in terms of psychology theory. Sean Laurent, however, a professor of...
2019-12-13 - What’s the scoop on John Lowe? He studied political science at Illinois, entered law school, and began practicing law for a premier corporation. Naturally, the next step was to accept an offer from his close friends to become CEO of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. In this role, Lowe has helped the company transform into a nationally loved ice...
2019-12-12 - Indian cinema has exploded in popularity in recent years, but few understand the phenomenon more than Rini Bhattacharya Mehta, who will publish a book on the topic in 2020. Whether it's through her popular course on Indian cinema (the largest of its kind in the U.S.) or her data-based research approach, Mehta hopes to widen our understanding of and love for the worldwide art of...
2019-12-12 - Erika Jones forged her connection with campus as an undergraduate working at the Illini Union. As a student worker in catering, Jones spent time maneuvering around tables where important people made significant decisions. When she took the job, she thought she would only be pouring coffee; however, the opportunity put her in rooms where she witnessed the vital role alumni play in the success of...
2019-12-11 - To some, one of the best ways to improve societies is the gathering of data. It’s a cause that Lori Montana (BA, ’79, political science) can relate to, as she’s been recognized for supporting the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research in its mission to transform information into knowledge that can help...
2019-12-10 - Daniel Stelzer used a stylus to carefully form symbols in a piece of clay. The University of Illinois student was practicing writing the symbols in a class on Hittite, an ancient language that uses cuneiform, one of the oldest human writing systems. The U of I offered the class in Hittite for the first time this fall. “I’m...
2019-12-05 - The Bloomberg 50 annual list includes innovators and leaders who have impacted and defined our world—and beyond—in 2019. So, it is no surprise to find the Event Horizon Telescope leadership team, including Charles Gammie, astronomy and physics professor at Illinois, recognized among the most influential authorities of the last year. The EHT team...
2019-12-02 - When they share habitat, orangethroat and rainbow darters tend to avoid one another, even though they are closely related and can produce “hybrid” offspring. The males compete with males of their own species and will almost always ignore females of the other species. A new study offers an analysis of the genomic changes that occur when these fish hybridize, offering insight into the gradual...
2019-11-26 - All gardens start with a vision, but even a backyard pepper patch requires a certain level of planning and grit that thwarts most from ever becoming more than a morning coffee musing. How powerful does the vision have to be, then, to design and build a full-blown Japanese garden in east-central Illinois? For James Bier (MS, ’57, geography), creator...
2019-11-25 - Four faculty members in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been named to the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list, a global listing of scientists who produced the past decade’s most influential papers, compiled by the Web of Science group, a Clarivate Analytics company. The list recognizes researchers “...
2019-11-22 - The University of Illinois celebrated two stellar faculty members with recognitions as endowed chairs deemed to be among the most distinguished honors on campus. Antoinette Burton, professor of history, has been named the Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair, and Jeffrey Moore, a professor of chemistry,...
2019-11-15 - When she was in middle school, Elena Wilson would spend several weekends a year going around her hometown of Rockford, Ill., to help out at soup kitchens and other service organizations. In high school, Wilson’s circle of service grew and she traveled to different states around the Midwest to help people far from home. When Wilson came to Illinois as a student, she wanted to continue helping...
2019-11-13 - More than 190 scholarships with a combined total of more than $675,000 were awarded to LAS students this academic year. This was commemorated during the LAS Scholarship Celebration at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center, where recipients, their families and friends, LAS donors, and faculty gathered to reflect upon scholarships that have made college experiences possible. The $675,000 came from...