2024-10-22
- Greg Dobbins (MA, ’73, mathematics) fondly recalls his time studying at the University of Illinois. His memories have led him to support the future of mathematics and other disciplines on campus.
Dobbins has pledged $1 million to the Altgeld and Illini Hall Project. His gift is intended to help...
2024-10-18 - In a ceremony hosted by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, communication professor Travis Dixon was honored as the new David L. Swanson Professor of Communication. Dixon, whose research focuses on the prevalence and impact of stereotypes in mass media, was recognized for his exceptional scholarship, mentorship, and teaching throughout...
2024-10-18 - By combining visible light and electrochemistry, researchers have enhanced the conversion of carbon dioxide into valuable products and stumbled upon a surprising discovery. The team found that visible light significantly improved an important chemical attribute called selectivity, opening new avenues not only for CO2 conversion but also for many other chemical reactions used in catalysis research...
2024-10-17 - Editor's note: This story first appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of LAS News magazine. We're resharing it in advance of the Memorial Stadium Rededication Game...
2024-10-16 - In 1898, two male lions terrorized an encampment of bridge builders on the Tsavo River in Kenya. The lions, which were massive and maneless, crept into the camp at night, raided the tents and dragged off their victims. The infamous Tsavo “man-eaters” killed at least 28 people before Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson, the civil engineer on the project, shot them dead. Patterson sold the lions’ remains...
2024-10-11 - After making landfall, Hurricane Helene moved north and dumped an enormous amount of rainfall onto the mountainous regions of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, leading to catastrophic flooding hundreds of miles away from the storm's initial landfall location. Professor Jim Best, an earth science and environmental change expert, ...
2024-10-07 - John Kelly (BS, ’86, economics) spends his office hours as an economist with the US Department of Labor in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, it’s his work with his non-profit that feeds his soul. Kelly founded A Meal to Heal following the death of his mother when his family found comfort sharing a meal at their family’s favorite restaurant....
2024-10-04 - Violeta J. Rodriguez, professor of psychology in the department’s clinical/community division, recently received the National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award for early career researchers. She will use the funding to advance her innovative research on...
2024-10-02 - Now in his 10th year at the University of Illinois, Simon Rogers studies rheology, the science of how materials flow and deform. The professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and native of New Zealand is highly respected in his field, being awarded the Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award from the Society of Rheology in 2022. He is editor-in-chief...
2024-10-02 - More than 50 new tenure-track faculty members arrived in the College of LAS this fall, in departments from history to political science, statistics, Asian American studies, biochemistry, sociology, and many more. Some come with faculty experience from other universities and institutions, and others are taking their first tenure-track position. Read on for profiles of a few of them along...
2024-09-30 - When it comes to understanding language acquisition, there are few scholars as renowned as Silvina Montrul. “In her field of second language acquisition, it’s not a stretch to say that (Montrul is) the single most impactful scholar of her generation worldwide,” said Colin Phillips, distinguished scholar-teacher and director of the Language Science Center at the University of Maryland. The...
2024-09-27 - Every text from Jazmin Olivas’ parents end with the words “Echale ganas,” which, translated from Spanish to English, mean “keep giving it your all” and serve as a constant reminder of both her support system and her future. Now, after receiving an award for her work with immigrants, Olivas is beginning to find her own way. Olivas, a senior studying ...
2024-09-26 - In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign tackled a thorny problem: How do nutritional stress, viral infections, and exposure to pesticides together influence honey bee survival? By looking at all three stressors together, the scientists found that good nutrition enhances honey bee resilience against the other threats. Their findings are detailed in the...
2024-09-26 - Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology demonstrated that emotion enhances memory for contextual details, challenging the view that emotion impairs the ability to remember such information. The report was led by Paul Bogdan, who is currently a postdoc at Duke University, and Florin and Sanda Dolcos, professors of...
2024-09-24 - The Big Ten Academic Alliance has pledged $30,000 in grants to a proposal from the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota to build transgender studies across the Big Ten campuses. Now, faculty members in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies are leading efforts to make the endeavor a reality. Transgender studies is a relatively new...
2024-09-20 - How are schools of thought defined? The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has more than 60 academic units, and some, like English and chemistry, have been within LAS since the beginning. But how is it that the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, for example, resides in LAS, while physics, the science of matter and energy, is within...
2024-09-20 - For evolution, ecology and behavior professor Alison Bell, asking big questions seems to be a lifelong habit. As an undergraduate studying the history and philosophy of science at the University of Chicago, many of those questions were epistemological: How do we know what we know? How is knowledge...
2024-09-20 - Professor of classics Clara Bosak-Schroeder’s first book, “Other Natures: Environmental Encounters With Ancient Greek Ethnography,” (UC Press 2020), explored how ancient Greek authors cast humans and nonhumans in complex, inter-dependent relationships. Her latest work blends creative nonfiction and scholarship to examine ancient monuments. ...
2024-09-20 - Before social media, before podcasts, before streaming television — it was 1993, and Eboo Patel was a freshman hoping to find his way while living on West Gregory Drive in Allen Hall. And that made all the difference. The eclectic, diverse residence hall community became a rich environment where Patel (BA, ’96, sociology) could debate the issues of...
2024-09-20 - Jane Desmond remembers the day she and several colleagues drove to the great ape center in Des Moines to visit Kanzi, a bonobo who is one of the first non-human primates to show an understanding of human language. The center’s researcher asked Kanzi if his visitors could take photos of him. But Kanzi, communicating through printed symbols, said, “No photos.” Instead, the ape...
2024-09-20 - Ricardo Diaz still remembers the night chemistry professor Joaquin Rodriguez-Lopez walked into a room full of kids and told them to throw ketchup on a volunteer wearing a special shirt. Soon the room was enveloped in ketchup, laughter, and gasps as they watched the shirt magically repel everything they threw at it. In an instant, they...
2024-09-20 - Kameno Bell knows that fumbling is inevitable — in football, and in life. Bell (BS, ’92, biology; MD, ’01), a former fullback for the Fighting Illini, has excelled in the classroom and on the gridiron, playing two seasons of professional football for the Miami Dolphins before launching an ongoing career in emergency medicine. In recognition of his...
2024-09-19 - Thanks to a serendipitous discovery and a lot of painstaking work, scientists can now build biohybrid molecules that combine the homing powers of DNA with the broad functional repertoire of proteins — without having to synthesize them one by one, researchers report in a new study. Using a naturally occurring process, laboratories can harness the existing molecule-building capacities of bacteria...
2024-09-16 - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students Gabrielle Capone, Leland Pan, and Frankie Ward are recipients of the Voyager Scholarship, the Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service. Capone, who is majoring in geography and geographic information science, is planning to conduct community-based research within the Global South, utilizing geospatial...
2024-09-16 - Taking inspiration from enzymes, chemists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a catalyst to simplify the synthesis of ethers, key functional components of many drugs, foods, personal care items, and other consumer goods. The catalyst puts the two chemical ingredients in just the right proximity and position to come together, bypassing the need for the steps and quantities...