2024-12-06
- A new greenhouse custom-designed to support research at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) is now open at the University of Illinois Research Park.
The Plant Biology Innovation Greenhouse (PBIG) features unique cutting-edge capabilities that are already benefiting plant and microbial science researchers on the U of I campus. It...
2024-12-05 - The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences is recognizing seven staff members and academic professionals for their outstanding professional contributions. Heather Gillett, Nicolas Morphew, and Billy Vermillion have been selected to receive the LAS Academic Professional Award, which provides a cash award as well as a salary increment funded by LAS alumni. Melissa Odom, Audrey Ramsey, and Brenda...
2024-12-05 - The Econometrics Data Lab in David Kinley Hall is building on a win-win concept for everyone: Give students data from ongoing research and let them crunch the numbers. The result is an experiential learning opportunity that’s allowing students to apply what they’re learning in the classroom to help resolve real-world problems....
2024-12-04 - When Monica Turchyn was completing her undergraduate degree in community health at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she took an online course on drug use and misuse. The course had an open access textbook written by the course instructor, which the students in the class used free of charge. Saving money on a textbook made a big difference...
2024-12-04 - As an oral historian, Illinois history professor Yuridia “Yuri” Ramírez records the stories of people who have never been written about in history books. “These people have, in some ways, made the most impactful legacies in their communities, and people don’t know who they are,” Ramírez said. Through the...
2024-12-04 - Brilliant characters often play key roles in movies and TV shows. However, when these characters are played by women and people of color, some audience members dismiss them as unrealistic, even if they portray real people and events, a recent study found. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign communication professor...
2024-11-22 - Many students in LAS move on to careers in politics, legislation, and other roles in government. A common stepping stone for such students is an internship in an elected official’s office. We asked a few current students about their experiences as interns for various offices and positions—from Illinois state representatives to the White House—and how it helped them shape their ideas about the...
2024-11-22 - A University of Illinois student is helping migrant families in her Chicago hometown by harnessing her academic interests and passion for public health. Hannah McGee, a junior pre-med student in the School of Molecular & Cellular Biology, has teamed up with her friend Sofia Castro, a junior studying ...
2024-11-22 - Brian Gaines is a professor of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Honorable W. Russell Arrington Professor in State Politics at the U of I System’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Gaines, who studies elections and public opinion, spoke with News Bureau...
2024-11-20 - Three researchers in the College of LAS have been named to the 2024 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes researchers and social scientists who have demonstrated exceptional influence, as reflected through their publication of multiple papers frequently cited by their peers during the last decade. The highly cited Illinois researchers this year are: ...
2024-11-15 - Powerful hurricanes, the COVID-19 pandemic, spiraling public debt, and political corruption triggered humanitarian, economic, and environmental crises in Puerto Rico. However, a new book suggests that the Puerto Rican and U.S. governments made these multilayered crises catastrophic through the socioeconomic, legal, and racialized structures and conditions they created. “...
2024-11-08 - The largest and longest-lasting society formed by people who escaped slavery and their descendants endured for a century in northeastern Brazil, and it continues to be a potent political symbol of Black pride today. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Marc Hertzman wrote about the settlement and how memories of it survive in his...
2024-11-08 - When professor Leslie J. Reagan entered her graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison she and the other students in her cohort were told they would never get a job. The field of women's history was virtually nonexistent at the time. “I thought, that's okay, I’ll work in a women's bookstore. Little did I know that most of those independent bookstores would disappear and that...
2024-11-08 - A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study is the first to describe an electrochemical strategy to capture, concentrate and destroy mixtures of diverse chemicals known as PFAS — including the increasingly prevalent ultra-short-chain PFAS — from water in a single process. This new development is poised to address the growing industrial problem of contamination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl...
2024-11-06 - Creating and nurturing beauty in dark times helps us endure another day. Beauty can help us appraise how we live and how we can build better lives. Its presence or absence is a critique of the social and political structures that are necessary to allow it to flourish, said Mimi Thi Nguyen, a professor of gender and women’s studies. Nguyen wrote about the...
2024-11-05 - Elizabeth Powers is a professor of economics at Illinois and serves as the associate director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs (IGPA). Prior to her position with the University of Illinois, Powers worked in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland as an economist, for...
2024-11-05 - Chronic pain — defined as daily or significant pain that lasts more than three months — can be complicated to diagnose and treat. Because chronic pain conditions are clouded with uncertainties, patients often struggle with anxiety and depression, and they and their doctors often find these conditions challenging to discuss and manage, studies have indicated. A recent study of 200 adults with...
2024-11-04 - The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has announced that Jon Solomon, a professor of classics and the Robert D. Novak Chair of Western Civilization & Culture, will give the 2025 Dean’s Distinguished Lecture on March 4. The annual Dean’s Distinguished Lecture is an opportunity for the campus community to hear engaging...
2024-11-04 - Inspired by his experience as an international athlete, LAS senior Mitchell Leshchiner created ElectroKare, a start-up company that tracks electrolyte levels through smartwatches. ElectroKare is one of several startups coming out of the iVenture Accelerator program. The program started in 2015 and is based in...
2024-10-31 - Two newly minted PhD scholars have been selected to be part of the College of LAS Public Humanities Fellow program, which gives post-doctoral researchers the opportunity to pursue a public engagement project with the Humanities Research Institute. Descriptions of the first cohort of awardees within LAS follow. Alonza Lawrence, a post-doc in the School of...
2024-10-30 - Thin, stretchy skin — like that of a pig or human — significantly lessens the underlying damage that occurs when it’s punctured. Pig skin even outperforms synthetic materials that are designed to mimic skin, a new study finds. Its special qualities, in particular its ability to dissipate the energy of a puncturing object, greatly reduce the damage to deeper tissues, researchers report. Their...
2024-10-30 - Editor's note: This is an installment from the U of I's Behind the Scenes series, which features blog posts, photos, and videos from Illinois faculty, researchers, students, and staff about their work and lives. Tamira K. Brennan is a graduate of the College of LAS (BA, '02, anthropology) I stand at the edge of an archaeological excavation on...
2024-10-25 - New vaccinations against influenza and the virus that causes COVID-19 are available and arriving at physician offices and pharmacies. Microbiology professor Chris Brooke is a virologist who studies respiratory viruses. He sat down with News Bureau biomedical sciences editor Liz Ahlberg Touchstone to discuss what’s in the new...
2024-10-25 - A new mouse model mimicking the liver symptoms of myotonic dystrophy type 1 — the most prevalent form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy — provides insight into why patients develop fatty liver disease and display hypersensitivity to medications, making treatment difficult. The new model opens avenues for screening new medications for liver toxicity prior to patient trials, University of Illinois...
2024-10-25 - It’s a blazingly sunny September Saturday afternoon at Riggs Beer Company, a family-friendly brewery located on the edge of Urbana. It’s not surprising to see crowds of families basking in the dog days of summer with their food truck lunches and locally brewed pints of beer. Unexpected, however, are the patrons donning medieval and fantasy garb, accompanied by young children, some in princess...