LAS News Archive

2014-12-01 - From Long-Hand to CalculatorsApplied mathematics professor A. H. Taub (at left) writes a shock wave problem on a chalkboard in 1948. Though chalk and erasers are still used in classrooms, these days students also rely on calculators and computers to solve problems.From Pencil and Paper to...

2014-11-01 -     The water was extremely clear, even at 170 feet. Allan C. Campbell (BS, '65, zoology) had never dove to such a depth, 70 feet deeper than a recreational dive, but in 1991 he couldn’t pass up the chance to see the oldest excavated shipwreck in history up close. At the bottom...

2014-11-01 - Olivia Widalski, a junior majoring in English in LAS, has landed a job that must sound as good as Shakespeare to her favorite English professor, Christopher Freeburg. She works in computer technical support.Granted, it’s just an after-school job on...

2014-11-01 -     Ethan Zohn, a former professional soccer player, won the third season of the Survivor reality television series in 2002, but his greatest survival battle was yet to come, as he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009. When Zohn’s cancer returned in 2011, a new drug had just...

2014-11-01 -     William F. Banholzer cannot say much about what he considers some of his most important work in a long career in charge of research and development portfolios measured in the billions of dollars. That’s because this work was classified research on radar-absorbing materials for...

2014-11-01 - “Life is an adventure,” because you never know what path your career will follow, says Laura Bolton, one of six LAS award winners this year. Bolton majored in psychology but ended up becoming a leader in wound care management. Another 2014 award winner set his sights on music, but instead made...

2014-11-01 -     More than once, Alan Parsons (BA, '71, history) has parachuted into the Panama Canal from a helicopter. He did it multiple times as an Army Ranger in the 1970s, practicing jumps into water. At about 100 feet above the canal, you have to pull a pin that releases two of the...

2014-11-01 -     When Patrick Walsh first arrived in India with prototypes of an LED solar-powered lantern, his goal was to simply demonstrate that they could bring light to isolated areas in developing countries. So he was shocked when a man in India came up to him and asked to buy one of his...

2014-11-01 - A couple things dwell at the forefront of Merle Bowen’s mind these days, as terrible stories of Ebola have put nerves on edge around the world. One is that Ebola is indeed a deadly virus. The other is that fear of the affliction is only making matters worse. Bowen, director of the...

2014-11-01 -     When New York City firemen suffered burns, they would often request to be taken to the Cornell Burn Center, in part because the center used hydrocolloid dressings, which sped their recovery time. One of the key people in the development of hydrocolloid dressings was Laura Bolton...

2014-11-01 - As a professor of mathematics, Jayadev Athreya knows a thing or two about numbers, but there’s one math question that eludes him: How many children have been exposed to the new and innovative programming of the Illinois Geometry Lab (IGL) since it...

2014-10-01 - University of Illinois professor of entomology May Berenbaum has been awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor for achievement and leadership in advancing the field of science, according to an announcement from...

2014-10-01 -     The oldest person on the University of Illinois campus hails from Alaska and can be found in Davenport Hall, but don’t expect him to be roaming the Quad anytime soon. This particular man is over 10,300 years old. Actually, only a few bones and teeth remain of this individual,...

2014-10-01 - A little bit of support can go a long way, as demonstrated by a pair of exciting student success stories coming out of campus this fall. Both recipients of the first annual College of LAS Cook Award for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, awarded last spring, are taking their products and ideas to the...

2014-10-01 - A $1.5 million grant will help develop a tool to assist scientists in interpreting research data and make discoveries faster, says an astronomy professor and research scientist at the National Center for...

2014-10-01 - Computers and quantitative analysis have revolutionized the study of science. What can they do for the study of literature? Investigators have high hopes as a new multi-institutional partnership involving the University of Illinois turns to big data to better understand the vast history of novels...

2014-10-01 - All of Germany was riveted last year by a three-part television miniseries, Generation War—the story of five Germans swept up in the titanic upheaval of World War II. Roughly 7 million viewers tuned in for each episode, sparking national debate in a country that has been grappling with the...

2014-09-07 -     Adam Bleakney (BA ’00, English; MA ’02, journalism) and Josh George (BS ’07, journalism) visited the College of LAS Storyography project to discuss Illinois’ world-renowned tradition of wheelchair racing and innovative coaching. The...

2014-09-01 - If you were studying the behavior of African American girls, how might you collect your data? You’d watch them, of course. Well, as Ruth Nicole Brown knows, it’s not that simple—and her methods of researching female behavior are gaining attention across the country and recently earned her a slot in...

2014-09-01 - Nobody can say that members of the Illini 4000 aren’t willing to go the distance for their cause. The group of 20 bicycle riders from the University of Illinois—including eight from the College of LAS—has completed a nearly 4,500-mile cross-country journey from New York City to San Francisco, in...

2014-09-01 - When Ron McFarland arrived at the University of Illinois in the 1960s, the Floridian looked at the landscape around him—“uncompromising flatness” and “great country for soybeans and corn” were terms that came to mind—and, as he recalls, “my heart sank like a two-ounce sinker in a still pond.” For...

2014-09-01 - For the past five years, Barbara Wilson has kept on her office wall a photo of Lincoln Hall—the “old” Lincoln Hall, that is, pre-renovation—given to her by the Department of Communication when she left there to work in the Office of the Provost....

2014-09-01 - Ryan Foley is an expert at studying the oddballs of the stellar universe. “If it’s exotic or something strange, I’m your guy,” says Foley, a University of Illinois astronomer. “My thing is figuring out the weird ones.”That was certainly the case back in...

2014-05-01 - A professor of communication and executive vice provost for faculty and academic affairs at the University of Illinois has been selected to serve as the next Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Barbara J. Wilson,...

2014-05-01 - Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have just pulled off one of the oldest carnival tricks in the book: correctly estimating weight by sight alone. It wasn’t your grandmother they just exposed, however—it was the largest known galaxy cluster in the distant universe. By precisely measuring...