LAS News Archive

2018-08-27 - A new financial-aid program aims to make attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign more affordable for qualifying families in the state of Illinois.Illinois Commitment will provide financial awards to cover the tuition and...

2018-08-22 -     Natural selection—that merciless weeder-outer of biological designs that are out of step with the times—also is a wily shaper of traits. Exhibit A is the pointy murre egg, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.   Common murres and...

2018-08-20 -     During her undergraduate days at Illinois, Meirav Malter had a common problem faced by curious people: She wanted to study pretty much everything. That’s how she wound up double majoring in global studies and Jewish studies with a minor in history—including courses on Hebrew,...

2018-08-17 -     It was an event that seemed to encapsulate the tumult of the 1960s. Police clashed violently with anti-war protesters in Chicago’s streets. Party factions waged political battle within the hall. What was happening in the 1968 Democratic Convention 50 years ago, and why?...

2018-08-13 -     Latinos are still a rarity on American television, especially in proportion to their population. That makes the study of Latino characters and how they’re represented even more important, said Isabel Molina-Guzmán, a professor of media and cinema studies and of...

2018-08-10 - The effects of global climate change taking place in the Arctic may influence weather much closer to home for millions of Americans, researchers report.The United States has experienced many changes in severe-weather behavior over the past decade, including fewer tornado touchdowns than in the past...

2018-08-09 -     Scholars from across the world came to Illinois for the Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute to delve deeper into the implications and discoveries from their studies of human-animal relations. This is the second year the university hosted the week-long institute, which is a...

2018-08-08 -     On a typical day, you can find Sampson hard at work alongside researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Instead of taking samples and calculating results, however, Sampson is ever watchful of Joey Ramp, a senior molecular and cellular biology major...

2018-08-07 -     Each day as she enters her office, the lessons that Pamela Greer learned from Robert Copeland come to mind as she sits in his old chair and waters the plant he left behind when he retired in 2001. In 1989, Copeland took a chance on Greer (BA, '89, speech communication) when she...

2018-08-06 -     After a primary tumor is treated, cancer stem cells may still lurk in the body, ready to metastasize and cause a recurrence of the cancer in a form that’s more aggressive and resistant to treatment. University of Illinois researchers have developed a molecular probe that seeks out...

2018-08-03 -     As a rising businesswoman in the 1970s and 1980s, Evelyn Ebbert (BS, ’63, science and letters) advocated tirelessly for other women as they worked their way up the ranks in the corporate world. Now, her nephew, John Ebbert, has set up a scholarship through the College of LAS to...

2018-08-02 -     Seismic waves are helping researchers uncover the mysterious subsurface history of the Tibetan Plateau, possibly lending insight to future earthquake activity in the region. The specifics of the deep geologic processes that occurred roughly 50 million years ago, when the Indian...

2018-08-01 - A College of LAS alumnus has been selected to direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). If his appointment is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he will serve as President Donald Trump’s top science adviser. The selection of Kelvin Droegemeier (MS, ’82; PhD, ’85;...

2018-07-30 - As online programs allow for almost limitless connection across the world, the University of Illinois recently served as host to an international conference that discussed the future of learning language. The annual Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium 2018 Conference (CALICO) took...

2018-07-27 - Even several years after retiring from the University of Illinois, Elaine Johnson Copeland continues to help students. Copeland, an associate professor emerita of counseling psychology at Illinois, spent much of her time in Champaign-Urbana trying to recruit underrepresented students and help...

2018-07-26 -     Bela Gandhi always had a knack for matchmaking. It was no small talent, either; many of the people she set up on dates eventually married and had children. Finally, Gandhi turned her talent for making love connections into a career and launched the...

2018-07-24 -     Illinois has selected 14 proposed campus projects, including three in the College of LAS, to receive a total of more than $5 million of Investment for Growth funding. Now in its second year, the Investment for Growth program is aimed at generating new sources of revenue while...

2018-07-23 -     A university professor has received a grant to conduct large-scale experiments on how certain pesticides are affecting soil and, subsequently, contributing to the overall decline in bee populations. “We’re really interested in how pesticides—specifically neonicotinoids—affect...

2018-07-20 -     Researchers have identified a key protein involved in the irregular brain cell activity seen in autism spectrum disorders and epilepsy. The protein, p53, is well-known in cancer biology as a tumor suppressor. The findings, reported in the journal Human Molecular Genetics and...

2018-07-20 -     When a man in a group wins, he’s likely to win again—thanks to a natural boost of testosterone, according to a study conducted by a university professor. For women, meanwhile, the effects of victories on biology are not so clear-cut. ...

2018-07-17 - Murugesu “Siva” Sivapalan, professor of geography and civil and environmental engineering, has been awarded the eighth biennial Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, a renowned global scientific award that recognizes scientists,...

2018-07-13 - The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has announced the recipients of its 2018 annual alumni awards. The recipients represent a variety of backgrounds and degrees, from microbiology and economics to history, psychology, and mathematics. Their remarkable achievements are linked to their...

2018-07-11 -     Since the 1940s, an introductory course sequence in oral and written communication has taught skills in critical thinking and argumentation to generations of Illinois students. Now, support from anonymous donors—along with the spirit of competition—has encouraged students to delve...

2018-07-06 -     The Supreme Court in June sidestepped a chance to rule on the limits of partisan redistricting, or gerrymandering. Wendy K. Tam Cho, an Illinois professor of political science, statistics,...

2018-07-03 -     Since joining the Illinois faculty in 2005, Jon Ebel, professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Religion, has studied the religious history of the United States. The author of two books (with two...