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 - When the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros closed Game 7 of the World Series, the connection between the two teams was secured in Major League Baseball history. The historic series gave the Nationals their first championship and dashed the hopes of the Astros securing two titles this decade. However, that isn’t the only connection between the two teams. The 2019 World Series contenders...
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...
2019-11-11 - The College of LAS is in the midst of fielding ideas and feedback for the college’s first strategic plan in more a decade. The plan will help guide the college’s decisions for the next five years, officials said. Kelly Ritter, associate dean for curricula and academic policy for LAS, said that the college has been reaching out to faculty, staff, and students this fall for their thoughts on...
2019-11-08 - The University of Illinois has taken a significant step toward breaking ground on the Altgeld and Illini Hall Project, with architects recently submitting conceptual designs for the plan to modernize and expand spaces devoted to data science and other mathematical sciences. Campus officials are now creating schematic designs for the infrastructure project, which includes renovating Altgeld Hall...
2019-11-07 - Susan Martinis, the former head of the Department of Biochemistry, has been named the vice chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the Board of Trustees. Martinis had served in an interim role since September 2017. The appointment was announced today in a...
2019-11-06 - The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has established the LAS Dean’s Distinguished Lecture to provide wider opportunity for people to hear from faculty who are leaders in their field. The inaugural lecture featured Gene Robinson, professor of entomology and director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. About 200 people showed...
2019-11-05 - From an evolutionary perspective, memory and prediction seem to be closely related. Humans would need to remember dangerous situations they have encountered in order to be able to later predict the outcome when they are faced with a similar situation. Researchers in the Cognition and Brain Lab have recently published a paper that investigates the other part of this equation: the effect of...
2019-11-04 - In the academic world, the study of humanities and sciences are often separated, with the subjects taught by different professors in different buildings and even different colleges. However, David Sepkoski, the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in History of Science, believes that there’s great potential in bringing the disciplines together, and he’s been working...