LAS News Archive

2018-10-23 -     Atmospheric scientists at Illinois are headed to Argentina this November to lead an international team of researchers in a $30 million field campaign to research the most intense thunderstorms in the world. As springtime rolls into Pampas, a vast plains region spreading from the...

2018-10-22 -     Six professors from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been named Conrad Humanities Scholars. They are taking advantage of the new designation to pursue a variety of projects, from studying second language acquisition and black girlhood to researching immigration...

2018-10-18 -     A chemistry professor and a mathematics alumnus from the University of Illinois have received highly touted Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering for 2018. Renske van der Veen, a...

2018-10-15 - Entomology professor Gene Robinson, an international leader in honey bee research, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine “for pioneering contributions to understanding the roles of genes in social behavior.” Robinson directs the...

2018-10-15 - Genna Roth, a high school sophomore, dreams of following the career path of her favorite director, Wes Anderson, and weaving together math and art to create films. Two thousand miles away from the sound stages and shooting scripts in Hollywood, however, she...

2018-10-12 - Organizers of the ACES + LAS Career Fair at Illinois, held earlier this month, wanted to try something new: An LAS career fair devoted to connecting students in the liberal arts and sciences with potential employers. The result? It brought together more LAS students and companies than any other...

2018-10-10 -     What was Brad Evans, aka “The Big Noise” on Yahoo! Sports, doing prior to becoming a must-read analyst for fantasy football and college basketball fans? He was a history teacher in Champaign, Illinois. Read...

2018-10-08 -     Mary Lynn Reed will never forget the morning she woke up in San Diego to a phone call from her mother back in Florida. The day was September 11, 2001. “My mom told me to turn the TV on,” said Reed (MS, ’90; PhD, ’95; mathematics). “At that...

2018-10-08 -     Richard Clarida was strolling across the University of Illinois campus in the winter of 1979, his senior year, when he suddenly heard a song he wrote, wafting through the open window of an apartment building. He was also thrilled to hear his song being played at a keg party,...

2018-10-08 -     The stunning images of cells under the microscope were what first drew Anne Carpenter (PhD, ’03, cellular and structural biology) to the laboratory of LAS professor Andrew Belmont in 1997. But Carpenter said she also joined...

2018-10-08 - Like so many people in the United States, one of this year’s LAS alumni award winners saw her life permanently changed on September 11, 2001, when planes struck the World Trade Center. That’s when she decided to return to the National Security Agency.For another award winner, her defining moment...

2018-10-08 -     John Witt credits his passion for the University of Illinois to both the Big Four and the Big Ten. In 1957, Witt (PhD, ’61, chemistry) was trying to decide where to pursue his PhD studies, and his academic adviser recommended three...

2018-10-08 -     Joanne Chory’s approach to plant genetics has been described as “letting the mutants lead.” Chory (MS, ’80; PhD ’84; microbiology) is considered one of the country’s leading plant geneticists, and it was her use of...

2018-10-08 -     Marie Trzupek Lynch was a graduate student living on the north side of Chicago when a neighbor changed her life. The neighbor, who lived in the same apartment building, told Lynch (BA, ’94, history) that her friend had just turned down...

2018-10-08 -     It was Valentine’s Day, 2005, and for the first time since she could remember, Sarah was safe. Sarah had taken her two young boys and fled an abusive relationship, becoming one of the first people to find shelter in a new WINGS safe house in the Chicago suburb of Rolling Meadows...

2018-10-04 - Rebecca Sandefur, a professor of sociology and of law at the University of Illinois, has been awarded a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a “genius grant,” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The fellowship carries an...

2018-10-03 -     Avital Livny has always been interested in explaining the role of religious and ethnic identity in the politics of different nations. But when the professor of political science started looking at existing estimates of ethnic diversity...

2018-10-02 -     To be Hopi is to run. “That’s who we are and that’s what we do,” said Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert. So it’s no surprise that Gilbert, a professor and the director of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois, was...

2018-09-28 - Do liver cells divide? Results indicate that approximately 4 percent of liver cells are synthesizing DNA in preparation for cell division at any given time. These cells alternate with waves of other cells, and it is estimated that around 10 percent of the liver cell population is...

2018-09-26 - A chemistry professor has been named to Science News magazine’s SN 10: Scientists to Watch list, a prestigious distinction spotlighting early- and mid-career scientists for tackling major challenges facing science and society. Joaquín Rodríguez-López,...

2018-09-25 - Two College of LAS professors at the Urbana-Champaign campus have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. Alison M. Bell, a professor of...

2018-09-24 - Cupcake day was frantically approaching at Taylor Mazique’s high school. It was supposed to be a happy day, devoted to eating cupcakes and celebrating the various universities that seniors had decided to attend. But it was causing her stress: Mazique had no clue what colors or university logo she...

2018-09-19 -     Movie fans and scholars alike will soon be able to visualize an entangled network of Indian film stars, the history of Indian cinema, and the trajectory of Bollywood as it shot towards mainstream fame with an interface professor Rini Mehta is developing through a fellowship with...

2018-09-18 -     If you made a list of some of the worst things that could happen, wars and sick babies would be near the top. But these were the ingredients for the career of Daniel Bruzzini, whose military service as a physician included preparing doctors, nurses, and medics in the U.S. military...

2018-09-14 -     One of the new faculty faces on campus this fall is David Sepkoski, who has spent his career blending the fields of science and history. His father, a paleontologist at the...