2020-03-31
- “Shelter in place” is now the norm in much of the country, thanks to COVID-19. As a result, connections once made face to face are now happening electronically in both work and personal lives. John Caughlin heads the Department of Communication at...
LAS News Archive
2020-03-30 - A new artificial intelligence consortium that will include the University of Illinois has made fighting the COVID-19 pandemic its first order of business. The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, chaired by Thomas Siebel (BA ’75, history; MBA ’83; MS...
2020-03-26 - I’m standing on the edge of a high-rise in the middle of a city. I can hear the car horns, feel the traffic below and—just a few feet away—see the spiraling girder that’s my destination. Summoning my courage, I leap—and miss, plummeting rapidly towards the ground. Instead of making impact, however...
2020-03-23 - I grew up on the Kenyan coast, in a town called Mabafweni, in Kwale County. My parents were teachers, but their income was not enough to sustain us and send us to school. So, we also farmed. I got up early every day to work on the farm before school. When I was a young person working on my family...
2020-03-11 - According to Brendan Morris, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, treehoppers are the wackiest, most astonishing bugs most people have never heard of. They are morphological wonders, sporting bizarre protuberances that look like horns, gnarled branches, antlers,...
2020-03-09 - In the United States, voting for president is as old as the Constitution itself. The process by which presidential candidates are chosen by their parties, however, is much murkier, and marked by more than a century of shifting influence between political insiders and voters in caucuses and primary...
2020-03-09 - It may seem incredible in an age of polarized division, but Ned O’Gorman is making a proactive case for politics. His new book “Politics for Everybody” is true to its title. It’s a “defense of politics for people who...
2020-03-06 - A study of the early career paths of University of Illinois graduates reveals strong and steady success among new alumni from the College of LAS. About 89 percent of new LAS alumni are securing a first destination soon after graduation, according to the Illini Success initiative, a university-...
2020-03-04 - Before Julia Cisneros started working toward her PhD in geology at the University of Illinois, our understanding of sand dunes on the bed of large rivers was limited, and based largely upon observations in small rivers and laboratory experiments. After...
2020-03-03 - The College of LAS has selected winners of this year’s teaching and advising awards. Professors, graduate students, a lecturer, and an advisor have been honored for their service. The LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching is being awarded to Andrew Gaedtke, a professor of...
2020-03-02 - John Francis “Jack” Welch Jr., 84, the former CEO and chairman of General Electric Co., has died. He earned a PhD in 1960 in chemical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Welch went to work as a chemical engineer at GE immediately...
2020-03-02 - Editor’s note: The novel coronavirus that first broke out in Wuhan, China in late 2019 has now spread to almost 70 countries, and the first case of possible community spread has been reported in the United States. The...
2020-02-28 - Cloud seeding has become an increasingly popular practice in the western United States, where states grapple with growing demands for water. Measuring how much precipitation cloud seeding produces has been a longstanding challenge. Researchers have developed a way to use radar and other tools to...
2020-02-25 - The numbers are in from the third annual Datathon at Illinois, and the competitive event to expose students to real-world problem solving in analytics is a growing success. Divij Ranjan, president of the Illini Statistics Club, which...
2020-02-21 - As a student, Carol Greenleaf (then Johnson) was sometimes late to her physical anthropology class. Walking across the Main Quad between classes took more time than she had. Somehow, however, there was always a seat available next to a fellow student named...
2020-02-19 - The U.S. Census has gone through many trials since it counted 3.9 million people in 1790, but the upcoming 2020 Census may be one of the most difficult in a long time. With trust in government at a historic low, according to the Pew Research Center—and not to mention a growing U.S. population...
2020-02-18 - If someone had four weeks to walk the 550 miles from Chicago to Little Rock, they’d have to cover about 20 miles a day. For most people, this might seem impossible, but for Richard DePaolis-Metz, he’d just be sticking to his normal routine. DePaolis-Metz was the lead walker/runner for the College...
2020-02-17 - Murals removed for restoration from the former home of the Department of Latina/Latino Studies and La Casa Cultural Latina at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been reintroduced to the university and the local community. A viewing took...
2020-02-12 - In a new study, researchers report they can manipulate how the brain encodes and retains emotional memories. The scientists found that focusing on the neutral details of a disturbing scene can weaken a person’s later memories—and negative impressions—of that scene. The findings, reported in the...
2020-02-12 - Six early career professors have been recognized as Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors (LEAP) Scholars for their outstanding contributions and potential in research and teaching. The awardees are Marsha Barrett in the Department of History;...
2020-02-10 - University of Illinois professor Stephen Long, a renowned researcher known particularly for his work in photosynthesis and addressing food insecurity, has been named an Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences. ...
2020-02-07 - A microscopic animal produces a compound that can paralyze parasitic worms that have infected over 200 million people worldwide, an interdisciplinary team of scientists from the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin reported in a recent PLOS Biology article. The discovery of the...
2020-02-05 - The Department of Classics has received an estate gift of $750,000 from alumna Barbara Wallach (MA, ’70; PhD, ’74, classics) an emerita associate professor of classical studies at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. The estate gift will be...
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...
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...