2019-10-03
- Kohei Kishida works at the intersection of two fields that may appear to be unlikely partners — computer science and philosophy.
The humanities and STEM are two academic paths that typically lead to very different outcomes, but the professor of philosophy combines quantum computing and philosophy to further research quantum computers.
This year,...
2019-10-02 - From growing up on a farm in northern Iowa without indoor plumbing to graduating debt free with a doctoral degree at age 27, Ken Andersen knows the financial struggles endured by many college students who pursue higher education. That’s why the professor emeritus at the University of Illinois has created a new scholarship fund to support current students in the...
2019-09-30 - As he was transitioning out of his position as head of the Department of Political Science, Robert Pahre had no idea that his term would end with a surprise gift that would allow him to quite literally “pay it forward.” At the department’s first ever alumni awards ceremony in April 2019, members of the Board of Visitors, a political science alumni board,...
2019-09-27 - I am in Govindjee’s office suite and I don’t know where to look. Govindjee, a professor emeritus of plant biology who goes by the one name only, is a collector. There are layers of history here: artifacts and papers, books and photographs. There also are homemade scientific instruments that look like plumbing elbows, tiny satellites or props from...
2019-09-23 - Three departments in the College of LAS are part of a new nationwide initiative to change the culture surrounding doctoral education and career pathways. Led by the Association of American Universities (AAU), the PhD Education Initiative promotes student-centered doctoral education that will make the full range of career pathways available to PhD graduates...
2019-09-20 - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is generating new sources of revenue while continuing to invest in education, research, and public engagement. Through the Investment for Growth initiative, 18 projects from colleges and institutes across campus, including four in the College of Liberal Arts...
2019-09-17 - Earlier this year, Erin Joe, after serving for more than two decades in the FBI, was named the director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, where she leads efforts to analyze and understand cyber threats to the United States. Making the nation safer is an all-consuming, round-the-clock endeavor, and what she learned from studying...
2019-09-13 - Two professors in the College of LAS have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. Brian Allan, a professor of entomology, and Antony Augoustakis, a professor and head of the...
2019-09-12 - With more than 50,000 total students for the first time in university history, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has welcomed a record-breaking freshman class for the start of the 2019 academic year. The new freshman class is also the largest, most academically talented and most diverse in the history of the university. A new high in applications (43,509) yielded the freshman...
2019-09-11 - For many students, Altgeld Hall is just a place to learn mathematics, observe historic architecture, and listen to the chimes, but for two alumni it symbolizes the beginning of their very own love story. Betsy Alderman (BS, ’12, mathematics) and Nathan Alderman (BS, ’12, engineering mechanics) crossed paths for the first time in Altgeld Hall in 2008, when...
2019-09-06 - It’s tempting to think of professors of days gone by as stiff as the stone from which their busts are often hewn. But William Abbot Oldfather was not—as comedian Tom Lehrer once famously lampooned college elites—an “ivy covered professor in ivy covered halls.” He was adventurous, opinionated, passionate, and driven. And before his untimely death in 1945, he had a major impact on in his field,...
2019-09-06 - One morning last summer, a half dozen Illinois students climbed into cars and drove east of campus. They passed a few miles of houses and farmland before they turned onto a country road and parked near something unusual, at least for these parts. It was a forest. They put on their boots. They had a lot of work to do—and that’s an understatement, on the scale of giving someone a straw and saying...
2019-09-06 - Mei-Po Kwan had spent years using research methods that some believed to be incompatible before she stood on a sidewalk in Humboldt Park, Illinois, arming people with daily activity diaries, sound level monitors, and pollutant sensors—tools to map the patterns of their lives and what they were exposed to. The professor of geography and geographic...
2019-09-05 - You might call it Quad Day for the humanities. The first ever Humanities Expo was conducted last week at the Foreign Language Building, where almost 50 registered student organizations and academic units set up booths and tables for students to learn about majors, careers, and other opportunities available to those interested in the humanities disciplines. Presenters at the expo included...
2019-09-04 - The University of Illinois has created a new institute within the College of LAS to strengthen research, teaching, and outreach that deepens understanding of cultures and societies around the world. The Illinois Global Institute (IGI), which launched in August, is home to 10 longstanding international area studies centers and thematic programs. Bringing...
2019-08-30 - One of the region’s most prestigious honors for a life sciences researcher has been awarded to Martin Burke, a professor of chemistry and associate dean for research at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Burke will receive the 2019 iCON Innovator Award later this month from the Illinois Biotechnology...
2019-08-30 - Fifteen faculty members have taken new leadership positions in departments and other academic units within the College of LAS this fall. Feng Sheng Hu, the Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS, said that the leadership changes are a normal and healthy transition as the new school year begins. There are more than 60 academic units and more than 600 faculty members across LAS. “We...
2019-08-23 - Sept. 1 marks the 80th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland and the start of World War II in Europe, and world leaders will gather to mark the event. But what led Germans to embrace Nazi rule more than six years earlier, which would lead them into the war? University of Illinois history professor Peter Fritzsche has explored that at length and...
2019-08-20 - Anyone who thinks space is the final frontier should familiarize themselves with the research of Lijun Liu, professor of geology and a GeoThrust Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois. He knows that there’s a lot we don’t understand right beneath our own feet, in terms of the geodynamics of Earth’s interior. Liu’s insights, with help...
2019-08-16 - When Aida Guhlincozzi and Julia Cisneros were younger, they each attended science camps that helped spark their interest in the geosciences. As they moved up the academic ladder, however, and each finished their undergraduate degrees at Texas A&M before coming to graduate school at Illinois, they noticed there were fewer and fewer women—especially women of color. Guhlincozzi, a PhD...
2019-08-14 - The majority of brain activity is considered spontaneous because it does not occur in response to an external event. Researchers do not know how this inherent activity, whose spatial pattern is called the functional connectome, influences cognition. As a result, its role in mental disorders remains elusive. “The functional connectome measures to what degree regions in the brain are connected to...
2019-08-12 - The Department of Energy has selected 73 scientists from across the nation, including University of Illinois chemical and biomolecular engineering professor David Flaherty, to receive significant funding for research as part of its Early Career Research Program. The effort, now in its 10th year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by...
2019-08-09 - Editor's note: Anyone familiar with the research of Bruce Fouke would associate him with hot springs, kidneys, and coral reefs before they’d associate him with student-athletes. The geology and microbiology professor, however, a former collegiate basketball player at...
2019-07-30 - Last year, Jane Desmond, a professor of anthropology and director of the Summer Institute in Animal Studies at Illinois, wanted to publicize her concern and research findings about the plight of police dogs sniffing out opioids as they search for drugs. She had an opportunity to do so through a two-day training program offered to Illinois faculty with...
2019-07-30 - Mathematics professor Bruce Reznick doesn’t drink much beer, though he does have a certain joke about it he likes to tell. “Every time you see me not drinking a can of beer, the beer I'm not drinking is Champagne Problems,” Reznick likes to say. That’s because Reznick, who has been at the University of Illinois since 1979, was the inspiration for the label of Champagne Problems, a brut-...