LAS News Archive

2016-12-01 -     Researchers at the U of I report in the journal Science that they can increase plant productivity by boosting levels of three proteins involved in photosynthesis. In field trials, the scientists saw increases of 14 percent to 20 percent in the growth of their modified tobacco...

2016-11-30 - Devin Weiss, of Northbrook, Illinois, has been named a Marshall Scholar. A 2013 graduate of Glenbrook North High School, Weiss is a senior at the University of Illinois majoring in sociology. Funded by the British government, the Marshall...

2016-11-28 -     A student in the College of LAS has been chosen for this year’s Lincoln Academy Student Laureate Award, given to university seniors for excellence in curricular and extracurricular activities.  Shivaliben “Shivali” Bhargavkumar Patel, a double-major in...

2016-11-23 -     To say Robert Carr remembers clearly his first college scholarship might be the biggest understatement you’ll hear today. He was a senior at Lockport (Illinois) Township High School, coming from a working class family, when he received a $250 college scholarship from the Lockport...

2016-11-21 -     Two faculty in the College of LAS are among six at the University of Illinois who have been elected 2016 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Bruce L. Rhoads, a professor of...

2016-11-21 -     There’s more than one way to approach questions of social science. To gauge the stress that mathematics causes the typical middle schooler, for example, a researcher could ask about recent math tests or conduct interviews with parents. On the other hand, an engineer could create a...

2016-11-18 -     Eight University of Illinois researchers, including six from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, have been named to the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list for 2016 (previously known as the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list). The list...

2016-11-18 -     When Susan Martinis studied at the University of Illinois as a doctoral student in the late 1980s, she had no idea that she would someday become a professor here, let alone the head of the Department of Biochemistry....

2016-11-17 - Andrew Zipkin isn’t your everyday archaeologist.As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology, his work begins with archaeology. But Zipkin’s research requires a few other techniques. By applying methods from...

2016-11-11 -     This year’s U.S. presidential election has been called one of the biggest political upsets in history. Just weeks ago, Hillary Clinton seemed headed for a big win. And though the race tightened in the lead-up to Nov. 8, almost every respected election forecast had her as a strong...

2016-11-07 -     When speaking of college recruitment, the first thing that may come to mind is football or basketball programs scouring the nation for top athletes. But the same holds true for Illinois’ Department of Mathematics, which recently...

2016-11-04 - Six assistant professors have been recognized for their exceptional accomplishments in teaching and research as part of a new program to highlight and encourage the contributions of outstanding junior faculty in the College of LAS.Selected faculty will retain the Lincoln Excellence for Assistant...

2016-11-02 -     I was first drawn to Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park as a natural laboratory for a NASA project to study how microbes form fossilized “markers” in ancient travertine rock deposits. The water temperature, chemistry and flow at Mammoth are similar to that found on...

2016-11-01 - One student spent the summer tracking prairie chickens near Salem, Illinois, returning to the lab to help analyze their DNA. Another co-wrote a study of the marsupial intervertebral disc, research he and his colleagues hope will offer new insights into human health. Another is designing his own...

2016-10-29 -     Martin Camargo, a professor of English and the associate dean for humanities and interdisciplinary programs at the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, has been designated interim dean of LAS while the university conducts an...

2016-10-27 -     Benjamin L. Hankin, a professor of psychology at Illinois, has been named the Fred and Ruby Kanfer Professor of Psychology. It is the first ever endowed named position in the Department of Psychology. An investiture is one of the...

2016-10-26 - Artist Horace Pippin was well-known in the 1930s and 1940s for his paintings of African-American life and for his commentary on war. But his work also was described by some as crude and unsophisticated.Poet Janie Harrington found inspiration for her latest book of poetry in the life and art of...

2016-10-24 -     Doris Derby remembers the exact moment her life changed. It was May 1963, just three months before the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. She was watching the television news and saw violence against protestors who were trying to...

2016-10-24 -     Elizabeth Pieroth is the first to point out that she is not gifted athletically. Growing up, her family nicknamed her “Grace” because of her lack of that quality in sports. But when it comes to protecting an athlete’s most important body part—the head—Pieroth is the go-to person...

2016-10-24 -     A mysterious ailment struck Deborah Paul’s younger brother, Tim, in 1982, when lymph glands all over his body suddenly became swollen. He recovered, but it took two years for doctors to finally figure out what had triggered the problem. In 1984, Paul’s brother developed...

2016-10-24 -     Sharon Mosher’s mother always kidded her that she was born with a rock in her hand. “I essentially wanted to be a geologist my whole life,” Mosher (BS, ‘73, PhD, ‘78, geology ) said. Mosher’s father would take her as a child...

2016-10-24 -     Some of this year’s College of LAS alumni award winners knew from an early age what they wanted to do in life. One of them was mixing chemicals—sometimes explosively—in his home chemistry lab as a child. But not all of them saw that far ahead. A pioneer in the treatment of...

2016-10-24 -     Laura Niklason first came up with the idea of growing human blood vessels while she was doing her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1990s. A patient was undergoing a heart bypass—a surgery in which a physician takes a blood vessel from another part of the patient...

2016-10-24 -     The room was packed with a standing-room-only crowd. The year was 1963, and the setting was Woods Hole, Massachusetts, renowned for its summer classes in biology. James Spudich (BS, ‘63, chemistry) had just finished his bachelor’s...

2016-10-21 -     Rivers are notoriously hard to study over long time periods. An international research team, however, has used new techniques, data, and methodology to reveal the threat posed by changing storm patterns to river deltas around the world. Jim Best, the Jack and Richard Threet...