2019-06-04
- Katherine Powers knew that joining Ninth Letter as an undergraduate would be a challenge, but she took the plunge in hopes that the skills she gains working for the highly touted literary journal will be valuable in her future career.
As many students before her would attest, her move was a wise one. Powers is a junior in...
2019-05-31 - What happens in the tropical Pacific Ocean doesn’t stay in the tropical Pacific. That’s how Jessica Conroy, professor in the Department of Geology and Department of Plant Biology, explains the significance of her upcoming fieldwork in the Galápagos Islands and on the islands of Palau. Conroy was...
2019-05-29 - It was 2017 when Eric P. Whitaker first met Hassana Alidou. They came from opposite sides of the world, but they had common ground: Whitaker, then acting deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs with 27 years of experience in the U.S. Foreign Service, was about to take on a new role as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Niger. Alidou, meanwhile, was the Nigerien ambassador to the U...
2019-05-28 - Projects looking at the music of Jay-Z and the impact of place in the short fiction of Edward P. Jones are among the first works from a digital publishing initiative at the University of Illinois. The open-access digital publications incorporate multimedia tools such as interactive visualizations, infographics, maps, and video. The project –...
2019-05-24 - The National Center for Supercomputing Applications has announced seven new faculty fellows for the 2019-2020 school year, including three professors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Rina Mehta, professor of comparative and world literature, Diwakar Shukla, professor of chemical and biomolecular...
2019-05-23 - Chemists at the University of Illinois have successfully produced fuels using water, carbon dioxide, and visible light through artificial photosynthesis. By converting carbon dioxide into more complex molecules like propane, green energy technology is now one step closer to using excess carbon dioxide to store solar energy – in the form of chemical bonds – for use when the sun is not shining and...
2019-05-22 - University of Illinois senior Gabriel Wacks, of Skokie, Illinois, and a graduate of Rochelle Zell Jewish High School in Deerfield, Illinois, has been selected as a Yenching Scholar at Peking University’s Yenching Academy. David Schug, the director of the National and International Scholarships Program at Illinois, said Wacks is the first U of I student accepted into Yenching Academy. Wacks in...
2019-05-21 - This year’s additions to the nearly century-old Bronze Tablet at Illinois include 102 graduates from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Each year, the Bronze Tablet is inscribed with the names of new graduates and placed in the Main Library. To achieve this honor, undergraduate students must rank at the top 3 percent of each college’s graduating class and must have a cumulative grade-...
2019-05-21 - At 89 years old, Merrill Thompson makes it a point to return to the University of Illinois campus whenever he can. It is, after all, a family place—a place where one goes to reflect and help out. His adoptive father was a graduate of the business school (now Gies College of Business) at Illinois who played football with Red Grange. Merrill and his late brother, Vince, attended the University of...
2019-05-16 - University of Illinois chemistry student Philip Kocheril was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater scholarship for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 academic years in recognition for his potential to contribute to the advancement of research in the natural sciences, mathematics, or engineering. According to David Schug, the director of the...
2019-05-14 - Tara Stewart Merrill was studying dance at the University of California—Santa Barbara when one day she helped her friend study for an exam on parasitology. The topic fascinated her, and, to make a long story short, today she is a doctoral student in the Program in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation Biology at the University of Illinois. Then there is...
2019-05-09 - How do you achieve success? One way is to go to college, get a degree, get a job, work hard, and get promoted. Another way is to go to college, get a degree, become a professional sports bettor, and read children’s books until you know the basics about, well, as far as anyone can tell, everything. Then you get on “Jeopardy!”, play it like nobody’s ever played before, break all kinds of records,...
2019-05-08 - Three College of LAS faculty members have been honored with Campus Awards for Excellence in Faculty Leadership. The Office of the Provost sponsors the campus-level awards in recognition of excellence in faculty leadership for those faculty who distinguish themselves with their vision of the future and their effort to enable and promote others in shaping that future. Each of the three awardees...
2019-05-07 - Researchers report that a protein known to be important to protein synthesis also influences muscle regeneration and regrowth in an unexpected manner. The discovery, reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could one day lead to new methods for treating disorders that result in muscle weakness and loss of muscle mass, the researchers said. Scientists have long studied leucine tRNA-...
2019-05-06 - They’re age-old questions pondered by parents everywhere: How are children affected by their environment and their inherited biological traits? How much of development is guided by a combination of both? Studies of twins provide key insights into these questions, and that’s why researchers at Illinois are recruiting families of twins to the Illinois Twin Project...
2019-05-06 - Chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Bill Hammack, known around the world as “The Engineer Guy,” has been chosen to receive the Carl Sagan Award for the Public Appreciation of Science. The award, given annually by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP), recognizes outstanding achievement in improving the public understanding and...
2019-05-01 - The Department of Classics at Illinois has received from LAS alumnus George Reveliotis an endowment commitment of $1.5 million, one of the largest gifts to a humanities program on campus. The George N. Reveliotis Family Hellenic Studies Endowment will support a lecturer position in the Department of the Classics, which offers courses in Ancient and...
2019-05-01 - Stephen P. Long, a professor of crop sciences and plant biology at the University of Illinois, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest professional honors a scientist can receive. He is one of 100 new members and 25 foreign associates recognized for “distinguished and continuing...
2019-04-30 - The University of Illinois has hired a Chicago design firm to begin planning the Altgeld Hall and Illini Hall project to modernize learning spaces and increase capacity in data science and other mathematical sciences. During their March meeting, the Board of Trustees approved CannonDesign to conceptualize and create schematic designs for the project, which will include the construction of a new...
2019-04-29 - Ten students in the College of LAS graduated this May with help from the Lincoln Scholars Initiative, making them the fourth class of LAS students who have earned a degree with support from the scholarship program. Formed in 2012 to support promising LAS students from the state of Illinois with financial needs, the ongoing Lincoln...
2019-04-26 - The Graduate College has announced Elizabeth Neumann, a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry, as the winner of the fifth annual Graduate Student Leadership Award. Recognized in her department for her scientific work in the area of analytical chemistry, including her recent published study on chemical analysis of the brain using mass...
2019-04-24 - The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois named eight students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as recipients of the 2019 Beckman Institute student awards. Beckman is an interdisciplinary research institute devoted to leading groundbreaking research in the physical sciences, computation, engineering, biology, behavior, cognition, and...
2019-04-23 - A persistent heartland myth paints the rural and small town Midwest as local, insular, isolationist – “the ultimate national safe space, walled off from the rest of the world,” says University of Illinois historian Kristin Hoganson. Dig into the history, however, which Hoganson has done for a new book, and you find the myth is far from reality. The...
2019-04-22 - You could say that Mark E. Hauber is interested in birds—if you think it's also enough to say that Red Grange was a decent athlete or that the water is a little cool off Iceland. Hauber has written almost 250 peer-reviewed articles about birds and has served as the editor-in-chief of The Auk: Ornithological Advances, associate editor of Behavioral Ecology and Sociology, Marine Biology, and...
2019-04-19 - Oxidants found within living organisms are byproducts of metabolism and are essential to wound-healing and immunity. However, when their concentrations become too high, inflammation and tissue damage can occur. University of Illinois engineers have developed and tested a new drug-delivery system that senses high oxidant levels and responds by administering just the right amount of antioxidant to...