2024-11-22
- Brian Gaines is a professor of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Honorable W. Russell Arrington Professor in State Politics at the U of I System’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Gaines, who studies elections and public opinion, spoke with News Bureau...
2024-11-22 - Many students in LAS move on to careers in politics, legislation, and other roles in government. A common stepping stone for such students is an internship in an elected official’s office. We asked a few current students about their experiences as interns for various offices and positions—from Illinois state representatives to the White House—and how it helped them shape their ideas about the...
2024-11-22 - A University of Illinois student is helping migrant families in her Chicago hometown by harnessing her academic interests and passion for public health. Hannah McGee, a junior pre-med student in the School of Molecular & Cellular Biology, has teamed up with her friend Sofia Castro, a junior studying ...
2024-11-20 - Three researchers in the College of LAS have been named to the 2024 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes researchers and social scientists who have demonstrated exceptional influence, as reflected through their publication of multiple papers frequently cited by their peers during the last decade. The highly cited Illinois researchers this year are: ...
2024-11-15 - Powerful hurricanes, the COVID-19 pandemic, spiraling public debt, and political corruption triggered humanitarian, economic, and environmental crises in Puerto Rico. However, a new book suggests that the Puerto Rican and U.S. governments made these multilayered crises catastrophic through the socioeconomic, legal, and racialized structures and conditions they created. “...
2024-11-08 - The largest and longest-lasting society formed by people who escaped slavery and their descendants endured for a century in northeastern Brazil, and it continues to be a potent political symbol of Black pride today. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Marc Hertzman wrote about the settlement and how memories of it survive in his...
2024-11-08 - When professor Leslie J. Reagan entered her graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison she and the other students in her cohort were told they would never get a job. The field of women's history was virtually nonexistent at the time. “I thought, that's okay, I’ll work in a women's bookstore. Little did I know that most of those independent bookstores would disappear and that...
2024-11-08 - A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study is the first to describe an electrochemical strategy to capture, concentrate and destroy mixtures of diverse chemicals known as PFAS — including the increasingly prevalent ultra-short-chain PFAS — from water in a single process. This new development is poised to address the growing industrial problem of contamination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl...
2024-11-06 - Creating and nurturing beauty in dark times helps us endure another day. Beauty can help us appraise how we live and how we can build better lives. Its presence or absence is a critique of the social and political structures that are necessary to allow it to flourish, said Mimi Thi Nguyen, a professor of gender and women’s studies. Nguyen wrote about the...
2024-11-05 - Elizabeth Powers is a professor of economics at Illinois and serves as the associate director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs (IGPA). Prior to her position with the University of Illinois, Powers worked in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland as an economist, for...
2024-11-05 - Chronic pain — defined as daily or significant pain that lasts more than three months — can be complicated to diagnose and treat. Because chronic pain conditions are clouded with uncertainties, patients often struggle with anxiety and depression, and they and their doctors often find these conditions challenging to discuss and manage, studies have indicated. A recent study of 200 adults with...
2024-11-04 - The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences has announced that Jon Solomon, a professor of classics and the Robert D. Novak Chair of Western Civilization & Culture, will give the 2025 Dean’s Distinguished Lecture on March 4. The annual Dean’s Distinguished Lecture is an opportunity for the campus community to hear engaging...
2024-11-04 - Inspired by his experience as an international athlete, LAS senior Mitchell Leshchiner created ElectroKare, a start-up company that tracks electrolyte levels through smartwatches. ElectroKare is one of several startups coming out of the iVenture Accelerator program. The program started in 2015 and is based in...
2024-10-31 - Two newly minted PhD scholars have been selected to be part of the College of LAS Public Humanities Fellow program, which gives post-doctoral researchers the opportunity to pursue a public engagement project with the Humanities Research Institute. Descriptions of the first cohort of awardees within LAS follow. Alonza Lawrence, a post-doc in the School of...
2024-10-30 - Editor's note: This is an installment from the U of I's Behind the Scenes series, which features blog posts, photos, and videos from Illinois faculty, researchers, students, and staff about their work and lives. Tamira K. Brennan is a graduate of the College of LAS (BA, '02, anthropology) I stand at the edge of an archaeological excavation on...
2024-10-30 - Thin, stretchy skin — like that of a pig or human — significantly lessens the underlying damage that occurs when it’s punctured. Pig skin even outperforms synthetic materials that are designed to mimic skin, a new study finds. Its special qualities, in particular its ability to dissipate the energy of a puncturing object, greatly reduce the damage to deeper tissues, researchers report. Their...
2024-10-25 - It’s a blazingly sunny September Saturday afternoon at Riggs Beer Company, a family-friendly brewery located on the edge of Urbana. It’s not surprising to see crowds of families basking in the dog days of summer with their food truck lunches and locally brewed pints of beer. Unexpected, however, are the patrons donning medieval and fantasy garb, accompanied by young children, some in princess...
2024-10-25 - New vaccinations against influenza and the virus that causes COVID-19 are available and arriving at physician offices and pharmacies. Microbiology professor Chris Brooke is a virologist who studies respiratory viruses. He sat down with News Bureau biomedical sciences editor Liz Ahlberg Touchstone to discuss what’s in the new...
2024-10-25 - A new mouse model mimicking the liver symptoms of myotonic dystrophy type 1 — the most prevalent form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy — provides insight into why patients develop fatty liver disease and display hypersensitivity to medications, making treatment difficult. The new model opens avenues for screening new medications for liver toxicity prior to patient trials, University of Illinois...
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, ...