2015-12-18
- It’s been another exciting and productive year for LAS alumni, and each year the LAS Alumni Association and the dean of the College of LAS select past graduates to receive LAS Alumni Achievement awards, the LAS Outstanding Young Alumni Award, the LAS Humanitarian Award, and the LAS Quadrangle Award...
LAS News Archive
2015-12-04 - Drought takes a deep toll on crops—and there are places so dry that farmers won’t even try to plant there. A multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, however, will help researchers at the University of Illinois reduce the effects of dry spells and potentially turn millions of...
2015-12-01 - Ted Brown remembers the day he drove a car inside the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology–the large, interdisciplinary laboratory that anchors the northern edge of the University of Illinois campus. It was the late 1980s, and the beautiful building was still...
2015-12-01 - Financial gifts and renewed commitments of $420,000 will allow the Program in Modern Greek Studies at Illinois to offer more culture courses, develop a new academic minor and online courses, and increase international visibility and impact to...
2015-12-01 - Five University of Illinois faculty members, including four in the College of LAS, have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2016—the second year in a row that the Urbana-Champaign campus has garnered more of these awards than any other single institution.The...
2015-12-01 - A student in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences who has presented her award-winning research on statistical climate change modeling to Illinois legislators has been named a prestigious Marshall Scholar, for postgraduate study in the United Kingdom.Leah Matchett, a senior from Grand Haven,...
2015-12-01 - Darsh Wasan was only eight years old when his family escaped possible death and reached the refugee camps of Bombay, India. A Muslim friend warned his parents that they should escape on the next train because, as a Hindu minority in their village, they were targeted to be killed...
2015-12-01 - When you think about all the ways to take medicine, you might imagine pills, bottles, nasal sprays, or—take a breath—needles. Researchers at Illinois, however, are working on what they say is a more effective way to deliver drugs: Tiny, swimming biological machines in your...
2015-12-01 - A monstrous whale rams and sinks the whaling ship Essex, and the ship’s surviving crew members struggle to stay alive in whaleboats while attempting to reach South America. The 1820 maritime disaster served as inspiration for Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick.” A film of the story—“In the Heart of the...
2015-12-01 - There’s good reason Greek antiquities have lasted thousands of years: They’re pretty interesting, as evidenced by the turnout earlier this month when the LAS Alumni Association organized a gathering at the Field Museum to view 500 of the priceless objects. Some 200 LAS alumni and...
2015-12-01 - When David Kranz was growing up in the Chicago suburbs, his parents would pack their six children into the station wagon and head up to Wisconsin. There, he and his identical twin brother tracked down snakes and turtles, and went swimming and fishing. These trips fostered a love...
2015-12-01 - A pair of LAS alumni responsible for momentous breakthroughs in science have been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The late William Sparks (PhD, chemistry,’36) and the late Welton Taylor (BA, ’41, MS, ’47, and PhD...
2015-12-01 - Christina Brodbeck never could have predicted she would wind up working with computers, let alone be one of the earliest team members of a small startup company called YouTube. “I wouldn’t have imagined it, if I had to bet my life on it,” says Brodbeck, who was also the design...
2015-12-01 - World leaders met in Paris for the United Nations’ 21st Conference of the Parties climate talks from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11, reaching an agreement on climate change mitigation efforts at the end of the conference. Illinois atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain was among the many scientists worldwide...
2015-12-01 - Guy Padbury’s work for the Upjohn pharmaceutical company hit closer to home than he ever expected when his father was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Padbury’s team with Upjohn did the metabolism research on a molecule that was licensed to Eli Lily and went on to become the drug...
2015-12-01 - A teenage girl named Kacey survived the horrific shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, when 12 students and one teacher were massacred. However, a single shotgun blast had badly damaged her right hand, arm, and shoulder. In cases such as hers, most victims lose their arm to...
2015-12-01 - Seven University of Illinois researchers have been named to the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list for 2015, meaning that they produce some of the most influential work in their fields."About 3,000 researchers earned this distinction ... ranking among the top 1 percent most cited for...
2015-11-01 - Here’s an unsettling thought on a topic we thought was settled: Supervolcanoes, defined as massive eruptions with potentially global consequences, don’t blow up for the reasons we thought they did, according to new research by a geologist at the University of Illinois.Conventional models predict...
2015-11-01 - A University of Illinois political science professor has been appointed to a White House team that’s applying insights from social and behavioral science to improve access to federal programs.Jake Bowers began his stint with President Obama’s year-old Social and...
2015-11-01 - A new simulation system based on computer algorithms developed at the University of Illinois promises cosmologists an expanded suite of galaxy models—a necessary first step to developing more accurate, cost-effective, and relevant insights into the formation of the universe.The feasibility of this...
2015-11-01 - A team of investigators based at Illinois has been awarded an $8 million grant over five years to study DNA structure as part of the National Institutes of Health Common Fund’s 4D Nucleome Program. For years genome-mapping technology has understood DNA as a linear code, but that’...
2015-11-01 - Leslie Reagan is a well-respected professor of history who joined Illinois faculty in 1992. But this past Oct. 16, she was Leah Schwartz, an outspoken, disaffected factory worker from the year 1913 who makes button holes all day.She was a lively...
2015-11-01 - Most people on campus who knew Lincoln Hall before its renovation appreciate its vast improvement since it reopened in 2012. It turns out that people off campus are impressed, too.Lincoln Hall has been awarded a 2015 Citation of Merit in...
2015-11-01 - Myotonic dystrophy type 1, the most common form of muscular dystrophy, is like a hydra, attacking the body in several ways. That’s why it’s significant news that researchers at Illinois report that they’ve added new capabilities to an experimental drug agent to counter the disease...
2015-10-01 - A chemistry professor at Illinois has been named one of the first recipients of an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to help early-career women launch their research.Alison Fout will receive a $50,000 grant for...