LAS News Archive

2017-05-03 - Four University of Illinois professors have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest professional honors a scientist can receive.John Cronan, Jeffrey Moore, Donald Ort, and Gary Parker are among 84 new members and 21 foreign...

2017-05-01 -     A new study in mice reveals how a protein called Brd4 boosts the inflammatory response – for better and for worse, depending on the ailment. The study is the first to show that this protein, while problematic in some circumstances, also can protect the body from infection. The...

2017-04-27 -     Scott E. Denmark, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Denmark is one of 228 new members, including national and...

2017-04-26 - Thomas Dowling, a junior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was awarded a $30,000 Truman Scholarship. Dowling was one of 62 Truman Scholars selected from a pool of 768 nominees from colleges and universities across the country.Dowling, from Chicago and a graduate of St. Ignatius...

2017-04-25 -     Emad Tajkhorshid, a faculty member in the College of LAS and a world leader in developing and applying advanced computational techniques to understand proteins, has been named the J. Woodland Hastings Endowed Chair in ...

2017-04-21 - Faculty, advisors, teaching assistants, and teaching interns in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been recognized for excellence in educating and advising students at Illinois.Each year, the college selects outstanding educators for awards in several categories. The nomination process...

2017-04-20 - Twelve U of I students took advantage of spring break to visit Washington, D.C., for a week of site visits and career-building and networking events with professionals – many of whom were Illini alumni.The trip, organized by LAS career development specialist Melissa Schoeplein, was part of a class...

2017-04-19 -     Once hailed as a model for Islamic democracy, Turkey plays a key role in both the Syrian refugee crisis and the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State. On April 16, however, Turkish voters appear to have approved sweeping constitutional changes that many opponents and observers...

2017-04-18 -     For hundreds of years, the cold and wide Slims River, at some points 150 meters across, has carried meltwater northward from the Kaskawulsh glacier in Canada’s Yukon Territory to join Alaska’s Yukon River, where it would snake toward the Bering Sea. Jim Best recalls the strange...

2017-04-17 -     University of Illinois professor Erik S. McDuffie is the recipient of a 2017 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. McDuffie, a professor of African American studies and of ...

2017-04-13 - Thirty graduating seniors from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been selected to the Senior 100 Honorary for their notable achievements.LAS students from 17 majors, ranging from molecular and cellular biology to psychology, philosophy, history, gender and women’s studies, and more,...

2017-04-12 -     University of Illinois professor of religion Jonathan Ebel has been awarded a 2017 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Ebel is...

2017-04-12 - 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.Eduardo Ledesma, Spanish and Portuguese; Hong Jin,...

2017-04-11 - Many moviegoers were touched deeply by “American Beauty,” the 1999 Academy Award-winning drama about the midlife crisis of a frustrated 40-something dad named Lester Burnham. For Ryan Suffern (BA, ’99, English), now head of the documentary division at...

2017-04-07 -     A study of the DNA in ancient skeletal remains adds to the evidence that indigenous groups living today in southern Alaska and the western coast of British Columbia are descendants of the first humans to make their home in northwest North America more than 10,000 years ago. “Our...

2017-04-06 - Two LAS students have been honored in U of I's annual Image of Research competition, in which graduate students pair powerful images with compelling descriptions of research. Out of...

2017-04-04 -     During a recent evening, professors, staff members, and students gathered to take part in a new school tradition: They got up on their soapboxes before a lively crowd and debated on the books that had most changed the world. A panel of judges then determined the winner from a...

2017-04-03 -     Twelve students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have been offered Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation. An additional 12 students from the college were accorded honorable mention. In all, 22 students from Illinois received the...

2017-03-31 - Call it a case of history students determined to prevent history from repeating itself. Members of HIST 172/173 at Illinois, influenced by a class section on the Great Depression, recently organized a food drive that generated more than 300 lbs. of food to fight hunger in local areas.It started as...

2017-03-30 -     Instead of turning carbon into food, many plants accidentally make a plant-toxic compound during photosynthesis that is recycled through a process called photorespiration. University of Illinois and USDA/ARS researchers report in Plant Cell the discovery of a key protein in this...

2017-03-28 -     Timing the harvest and transport of highly perishable, hand-picked crops such as strawberries so these delicate products reach consumers at peak flavor and freshness is an intricate dance that partners Mother Nature with manual labor. However, many of the “smart farming”...

2017-03-24 -     Refugees seeking entry to the U.S. need “extreme vetting,” says the Trump administration in justifying its proposed travel bans. But U of I anthropology doctoral student Sophia Balakian, in her dissertation research, found that potential...

2017-03-23 -     Researchers are nebulizing soybean aphids with RNA, which, when incorporated into the body, can hinder the expression of specific genes. The new method of delivering “interfering RNA” in a mist will likely speed the process of discovering the function of many mystery genes in...

2017-03-21 - What role can the humanities play in science, education, engineering, and mathematics—and vice versa? It can be a significant one, said Antoinette Burton, director of the Illinois Program for the Humanities (IPRH) and professor of...