2018-02-15
- The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Illinois International Programs has recognized an alumnus, a graduate student, and an undergraduate student from the College of LAS with International Achievement Awards.Jinwoo Cheon, (PhD, chemistry, ’93), Richard Oliver Bido-Madina, a graduate student in...
2018-02-14 - The 35th Insect Fear Film Festival will focus on a creature that is important for humans to understand but that is not actually an insect at all.Ticks are arachnids, a class of arthropods that includes spiders, scorpions and ticks’ closest relative, mites. As such, full-grown ticks have eight legs rather than the six legs of insects, and...
2018-02-12 - Gene Robinson, a professor of entomology and director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), has been awarded the 2018 Wolf Prize in Agriculture for “leading the genomics revolution in the organismal and population biology of the honey bee.”Awarded each year since 1978 by the Wolf...
2018-02-12 - People today might think twice about going to a doctor or dentist who advertised by hanging a bloody rag outside their office door. But the concept wasn’t exactly cause for alarm a couple hundred years ago, according to Stephanie Hilger, head of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and professor of German,...
2018-02-08 - Professors, teaching assistants, and an advisor are being recognized by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences for excellence in educating and mentoring students at Illinois. A formal ceremony in honor of the winners will take place April 18.The LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching is being awarded to Brendan Harley, professor of ...
2018-02-06 - Slavery and racism played their roles in planting beliefs about race and racial difference, but so did medicine, says the author of a new book. Many physicians in pre-Civil War America and the West Indies developed ideas that black bodies were different in basic ways: naturally immune to some diseases, more susceptible to others, more tolerant of pain, in need of specialized care. Some of those...
2018-02-05 - Dmytro Shtohryn may have retired as a professor at Illinois in 1995, but his commitment to the university and the field of Ukrainian studies remains as vibrant and meaningful as the Ukrainian paintings hanging on the walls of his home. Shtohryn, 94, and his wife, Eustachia, still live in Champaign, where they’ve lived since 1960, when Shtohryn turned down a professional...
2018-01-31 - Three College of LAS faculty members have been named University Scholars, a program that recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. The faculty members, among six on campus who were chosen for the recognition, will be honored at a campus reception from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Jan. 31 in...
2018-01-30 - It’s no small feat of the mind to lead university faculty, students, and staff in academic programs ranging from Greek to economics and physics. But Richard Saller (BA, ’74, history and classics) has spent a career doing it at some of the nation’s most high-profile universities. It began with an...
2018-01-29 - The renovation of Altgeld Hall is coming closer to reality after a campus committee conditionally approved allocating $27 million in student funding to modernize and upgrade the iconic building.The Academic Facilities Maintenance Fund Assessment (AFMFA) Oversight Committee approved the amounts for fiscal years 2020 to 2021 contingent upon the university securing the remainder of funds from campus...
2018-01-24 - Six staff and academic professionals are being recognized for their particularly noteworthy efforts in advancing the mission of the College of LAS in 2017-18.Anu Murphy, Alejandra Stenger, and Beth Watkins have been selected by an awards committee to receive the LAS Academic Professional Award. The recognition comes with a $1,000 award, a $1,000 salary increment, and a commemorative plaque....
2018-01-23 - Four University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty members have been selected for endowed chairs deemed to be among the most distinguished honors on the campus.Stephen P. Long, a professor of plant biology and crop sciences, and Jeffrey S. Moore, a professor of chemistry...
2018-01-18 - Seasonal flu viruses continually undergo mutations that help them evade the human immune system, but some of these mutations can reduce a virus’s potency. According to new research at Illinois, certain mutations in the genome of influenza A may help counteract the weakening effects of other mutations. Influenza A causes tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. every year,...
2018-01-12 - The nature of what counts as the historical record, and how it is made, is rapidly changing. Through social media and other methods, people are quickly becoming accustomed to digitizing and sharing the events of their lives at a furious pace—and relying upon the Internet as a kind of vast historical archive. It’s a trend that greatly concerns historians, librarians, archivists...
2018-01-11 - When given the choice, honey bee foragers prefer to collect sugar syrup laced with the fungicide chlorothalonil over sugar syrup alone, researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports. The puzzling finding comes on the heels of other studies linking fungicides to declines in honey bee and wild bee populations. One...
2018-01-11 - The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is recognizing Bruce Rhoads, professor of geography and geographic information science, for his outstanding contributions to geographic research and education with an honorary, lifetime designation as an AAG Fellow.The ...
2018-01-10 - Several outstanding professors in the College of LAS have been selected by their peers to receive named professorial positions, which provide financial assistance to support their research and teaching duties. The positions were created through gifts to the college. For example, Richard Romano (BS, ’54, chemical engineering) and his wife...
2018-01-10 - Ying Diao arrived at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as a faculty member in 2015, and already the professor and Dow Chemical Company Faculty Scholar has generated widespread interest in her research of nanotechnology and materials. She’s been named an Innovator under 35 by MIT Technology Review,...
2018-01-09 - What’s more intense than playing in a Big 10 football game, landing cleanly after spinning 10 feet in the air, or pinning a trained wrestler to the floor? How about doing all that while also earning a college degree? With rigorous practice sessions and regular competitions, student-athletes at Illinois also balance demanding academic schedules.Athletes in the College of LAS participate in many...
2018-01-04 - In celebration of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s sesquicentennial, the Big Ten Network and the University of Illinois tell the stories of three men who left enduring marks on the campus. Max Abramovitz created spaces for the campus to come together. Robert Zuppke changed football and expressed himself through art, and Lorado Taft gave Illinois its most beloved symbol, the Alma...
2018-01-03 - Kevin Leicht, who heads the sociology department at Illinois, has focused his research on issues of economic development, inequality and class. He is a co-author of the 2014 book “Middle Class Meltdown in America.” In an...
2017-12-21 - Four assistant professors have been recognized for outstanding teaching and research as part of an ongoing program to spotlight and support promising junior faculty in the College of LAS.Eric Calderwood, comparative and world literature; Jenny Davis, anthropology, ...
2017-12-21 - Aron K. Barbey, professor of psychology, neuroscience, and bioengineering, is director of the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory, leader of the Intelligence, Learning, and Plasticity Initiative, the Emanuel Donchin Professorial Scholar in Psychology, and a member of the...
2017-12-19 - Recent stories in the national media are magnifying fears of a catastrophic eruption of the Yellowstone volcanic area, but scientists remain uncertain about the likelihood of such an event. To better understand the region’s subsurface geology, University of Illinois geologists have rewound and played back a portion of its geologic history, finding that Yellowstone volcanism is...
2017-12-15 - Ever since he was an undergraduate in sociology with the Student Patrol, Jeff Christensen has worked to protect the Illinois campus from crime and other hazards. As a police officer who rose through the ranks to eventually become executive director of public safety and chief of police at the University of Illinois...