2016-09-06
- If you already know of Ted Sanders, you probably like good stories. The rising author is the creator of The Keepers, a widely acclaimed children’s book series from HarperCollins that the New York Times Book Review likened to the work of J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan.But have you heard his comeback story? Here it is in a nutshell: In 1992, he flunked out of the University of...
2016-09-02 - Casey Fletcher always knew he wanted to play baseball at the University of Illinois. Growing up in Oakwood, Ill., Fletcher saw baseball and Illinois as a family tradition — Fletcher’s father, Darrin, was enrolled in the College of LAS and played for the Illini prior to leaving for a 14-year career in the major leagues, and his grandfather, Tom, an alumnus, played for the Illini...
2016-09-01 - Researchers call it the Valley of Death—“the place where drugs go to die,” according to Paul Hergenrother, a University of Illinois chemistry professor. “Getting through the Valley of Death means you have gone from a drug’s discovery to actually treating the first patient,” he explained. “It’s experimentally challenging, time consuming, and expensive—all of those things.”...
2016-08-31 - The College of LAS launched the 2016-17 academic year with 16 new faculty and staff leaders in departments and units across the college. In most cases, new leaders officially assumed their roles at the start of the fall semester. LAS is home to more than 60 departments, centers, schools, and programs. Barbara Wilson, interim chancellor and Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of...
2016-08-30 - Thomas J. Hanratty, a pioneer in fluid dynamics, passed away on Wednesday, August 24, in Urbana, Illinois. Hanratty was a longtime chemical engineering professor who found joy in both research and teaching. He was a leader in establishing multiphase flow as a new academic discipline by relating macroscopic behavior to small-scale interactions. Hanratty was a respected and integral part of the...
2016-08-26 - A new study from the University of Illinois has deepened understanding of the “chemobrain” phenomenon in cancer patients, with researchers reporting long-lasting cognitive impairments in mice when they are administered a chemotherapy regimen used to treat breast cancer in humans. Cancer survival rates have increased substantially during the past few years due to both earlier...
2016-08-25 - A professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois has been recognized by a global media company as one of the top young innovators in science. Ying Diao was named among MIT Technology Review’s annual list of Innovators Under 35 for her work in nanotechnology and materials. Diao joined Illinois in 2015 and is currently Dow Chemical Company Faculty Scholar in the...
2016-08-24 - Terrible headlines of violence and loss have unfortunately become a normal part of American life. But a professor of sociology and African American studies at Illinois is collaborating on a project in Chicago to show that shootings and murders are more than just headlines—they are life-...
2016-08-23 - Health officials recently reported the first U.S. cases of Zika traced to local mosquitoes, in Miami, and the virus is spreading rapidly in Puerto Rico. Given the link between Zika and microcephaly in some babies born to infected mothers, it renewed questions about how Americans might respond to a potential epidemic. Could it bear any resemblance to a German measles epidemic a...
2016-08-22 - Following years of discussion, Illinois has added a course in U.S. minority culture to the core curriculum for undergraduate students in hopes of helping better prepare students to live in an increasingly diverse society.The University Senate approved a committee proposal to make the course part of the university’s General Education requirements beginning in Fall 2018. The senate is a group of...
2016-08-19 - New psychological research at Illinois focuses on a fundamental human habit: When trying to explain something—why we’re giving that special someone roses on Valentine’s Day, for example—we often focus on the traits of the thing itself (“They’re almost as beautiful as you!”) and not its context (“The flower shop had some effective advertising.”) In a new study, researchers found that...
2016-08-17 - In early 2014, months before the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement began, the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, with help from professors in LAS, began offering police recruits classes that challenged their views about race and racism, introduced them to critical race theory, and...
2016-08-12 - A chemistry professor at Illinois has been selected to receive the Electrochemical Society Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship to advance his work in advancing green energy technology. Joaquin Rodriguez-Lopez was one of three recipients selected for the prominent fellowship, which will provide him a minimum of $50,000 for his research on optimizing the performance of fuel cell...
2016-08-11 - Look no further than your favorite location-based smartphone app, and you’ll see the vast potential for students in geography and geographic information science. This field of study in LAS just got stronger with the recent launch of a Professional Science Master’s program that melds training in both geographic information science and business. Faculty in the...
2016-08-10 - A seed grant, along with some hard work by U. of I. student volunteers and museum staff, has grown a butterfly garden at the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum in Champaign. The Growing Prairies and Growing Minds butterfly garden and an archaeology exhibit opened recently at the museum, 346 N. Neil St., Champaign. Students in the ...
2016-08-09 - Ever wonder how a show makes it to television? Jason Lee works as a film editor at an independent production company in Hollywood pitching new shows to TV networks. It’s fast-paced, meaningful work (there’s more to reality television than people stuck in a house), and Lee’s decision to create an individual plan of study at LAS has been critical to his success...
2016-08-05 - Millions will be sampling Brazilian culture for the first time, in person or through the media, during the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Part of the soundtrack will be samba. Born in Rio, it was once the country’s undisputed national music and is still a prominent part of popular culture. History professor Marc Hertzman is the author of Making Samba...
2016-08-02 - Think Brazil and you might think beaches, rain forest, the 2016 Olympics – all far removed from central Illinois. Yet the University of Illinois is perhaps the most comprehensive center of Brazilian studies in the U.S. Illinois’ research and teaching connections with Brazil are “distinctively broad,” said Jerry Dávila, director of the university’s Lemann Institute for...
2016-07-26 - If someone had asked the great artist Loredo Taft, creator of the Alma Mater, what people would call his iconic statue in the year 2016, it's safe to say that the words Pokegym never would have crossed his lips.Even a month ago, few people could have foreseen how the Pokemon Go craze has hit campus, with Alma, the Eternal Flame, and scores of other campus landmarks being drawn into the augmented...
2016-07-15 - Professor Adrian Burgos Jr. has been named interim director of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Burgos' appointment is effective Aug. 16, 2016.“Our American Indian Studies Program has endured a difficult few years. It remains an important part of LAS and our campus community, and it plays a critical...
2016-07-08 - Editor’s note: Scenes from oil-rich Venezuela show a country descending into chaos: desperate people looting stores and food trucks, political unrest, rising crime and hyperinflation. Damarys Canache, professor of political science at Illinois, is a native of Venezuela who studies the country’s politics and has conducted public opinion research there. She spoke with News...
2016-07-07 - Brendan Harley, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s 22nd annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering (USFOE) symposium.The academy invites engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines to...
2016-07-06 - Ashley Young has spent the better part of every school year since 2012 preparing a group of fellow college students for the ride of a lifetime. The students, all members of a group called Illini 4000, bike from New York City to San Diego every summer, raising money for cancer research along the way. Young, a senior in...
2016-07-05 - Until now, simulations of black hole collisions (and the matter that swirls around them) have been built upon simplified approximations. For the first time, however, researchers at Illinois and elsewhere created 3-D simulations of the collision of two supermassive black holes using Einstein's general theory of relativity.Stuart Shapiro, professor of physics and astronomy at Illinois, presented...
2016-07-05 - In an era of so many scientific and technological breakthroughs—advances in genome editing, the discovery of Higgs boson or the “God particle,” the launching of deep space satellites—two award-winning University of Illinois scientists have teamed up to re-introduce people to a remarkable 19th century lecture series about the candle. Yes, the deceptively simple candle. “There is no...