2024-09-05
- I can barely hear Esther Ngumbi over the roar of greenhouse fans as she shows me around her rooftop laboratory in Morrill Hall. The benches are full of tomato plants, and the tomatoes don’t look good. Half of the plants are submerged in bins of water. Their leaves are yellow and withering. Some of the dying tomatoes have flowered. I see one or two baby tomatoes on a couple of spindly plants....
2024-09-04 - A newly funded U.S. National Science Foundation iBioFoundry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will build on more than a decade of research at the U of I to integrate synthetic biology, laboratory automation, and artificial intelligence to advance protein and cellular engineering. This is one of five new biofoundries to be established in the U.S. According to the NSF, these...
2024-09-04 - The tumultuous 2024 U.S. presidential election season is fraught with partisan battles over contentious issues such as abortion, immigration, racial violence and climate change. In a national political culture so heated and discordant that expressing differing views is often met with attacks on the speaker’s motives, patriotism and intelligence, is there a path forward to healing and...
2024-08-30 - Launched in 2021, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) extends our view into space more than ever before. Astronomy professor Yue Shen is principal investigator on a recently selected research project called the North ecliptic pole EXtragalactic Unified Survey (NEXUS) that will use JWST to...
2024-08-29 - Gender history is hiding in plain sight, at work in all aspects of our society, said history professor Antoinette Burton. “For many decades, histories were written without attention to women or gender or sexuality. Everything that mattered happened in congress or on the battlefield,” Burton said. “Gender makes a huge difference in how political...
2024-08-29 - Using evolution as a guiding principle, researchers have successfully engineered bacteria-yeast hybrids to perform photosynthetic carbon assimilation, generate cellular energy, and support yeast growth without traditional carbon feedstocks like glucose or glycerol. By engineering photosynthetic cyanobacteria to live symbiotically inside yeast cells, the bacteria-yeast hybrids can produce...
2024-08-29 - About five years ago, graduate students at the University of Illinois embarked on a project for their ASTRO 596 class. That project has since evolved into a sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning software that can identify objects from telescope images, such as stars and galaxies. The project, known as Detection, Instance Segmentation, and Classification with Deep Learning,...
2024-08-26 - Researching is like putting together a puzzle you don’t have all the pieces for, according to history professor Anna Whittington. Sometimes you don’t even know what the puzzle adds up to, she noted—and that’s where the fun lies. While research is a year-round endeavor, summertime, she said, is a window of opportunity unlike any other time to put the...
2024-08-26 - Four College of LAS students and recent graduates were offered Fulbright grants to pursue international education, research and teaching experiences around the globe this coming year. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program, builds international relationships to help solve global challenges. This flagship international...
2024-08-23 - Max Kim had this dream. He’d harbored it for all of his married life, but the timing never seemed right to pursue it. He and his wife, Bonnie, had kids to raise. A house to run. Jobs to hold. Then Max would look at a couple of old photos of his graduation from the University of Illinois, with him in his gown and Bonnie in her dress standing proudly at his side, and the dream would stir. They...
2024-08-22 - CENTRAL BELIZE — As the scorching May sun of Central Belize blazes down on us, temperatures soar to a staggering 106°F. Local farmers anxiously await the onset of the rainy season to sow their crops, but the much-needed first rain remains elusive. This property is owned by a community of Mennonites who live in the town of Spanish Lookout to the west. The maize fields lie empty except for us. We...
2024-08-22 - Politician and businessman Nelson Rockefeller was seen as a moderate or liberal Republican even as he embraced conservative policies as the Republican Party shifted to the right in the 1960s and ‘70s. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign history professor Marsha Barrett uses the political career of Rockefeller — the four-time New York governor and...
2024-08-20 - Twenty-one faculty members have accepted new leadership positions in departments and other academic units within the College of LAS for the 2024-25 academic year. Executive officers lead each of the almost 70 departments, programs, schools, centers, and other academic units within the College of LAS. Included among the new executive officers is a new associate dean who has been appointed...
2024-08-20 - JungHwan Yang, a professor of communication, is a co-principal investigator on a research project and a website — socialpolls.org — that examine the informal polls about the U.S. presidential election posted on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter. Yang spoke with News...
2024-08-16 - J. David Cisneros, a professor of communication and an affiliate of Latina/Latino Studies researches social movements and public rhetoric about race, culture, and citizenship. He spoke with research editor Sharita Forrest about the ways in which political candidates in U.S....
2024-08-16 - Anthropology professor Kendra Calhoun studies the creative language people use on social media platforms to fool algorithms that may incorrectly categorize content as “inappropriate” or “offensive.” Calhoun spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about this phenomenon, which she calls “...
2024-08-15 - The College of LAS has announced 40 faculty promotions to take effect this fall. The promotions include 20 faculty members who were promoted from associate professor to professor; 18 who were promoted from assistant professor to associate professor; and two who were promoted to clinical associate professor and teaching associate professor. The promotions are as follows: ...
2024-08-08 - The University of Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics has inducted eight new members into the UI Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2024, including three alumni from the College of LAS. They include Robert Holcombe, Laura DeBruler Santos, and Herman "Pete" Velasco, who made major contributions in football, volleyball, and fencing, respectively. Robert Holcombe (BS, ’08,...
2024-08-01 - Susan Koshy, a professor of English and Asian American studies, relies upon a unique perspective to study and write about colonialism, capitalism, race, gender, and sexuality. The Faculty Fellow with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation and author of “...
2024-08-01 - The College of LAS has honored 15 professors with named scholar and professorship positions in recognition of their contributions to research and education at the University of Illinois. The named positions include the I. C. Gunsalus Scholar, the Helen Corley Petit Scholars, and the LAS Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholars. The awardees are as follows: I. C....
2024-07-31 - History professor Robert Morrissey and Professor of chemistry Joaquín Rodríguez-López have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. The scholars program recognizes faculty excellence and provides $15,000 to each scholar for three...
2024-07-26 - It was the early 1980s. At the time, glioblastoma patients survived on average for only 10-11 months. Four decades later, the life expectancy has only marginally improved by a few months. For one team of scientists, these aren’t just statistics but family history. Though their grandfather died in the early 1980s, the shared childhood memory of his battle with glioblastoma (GBM)...
2024-07-26 - During a checkup with her obstetrician, Marilyn Hayes tells him about overwhelming exhaustion and possible symptoms of postpartum depression, such as feeling unsafe. Hayes, a Black woman, grows increasingly frustrated as her white, male physician, Dr. Richard Flynn, dismisses her symptoms and ignores her wishes when she refuses medication. Hayes becomes visibly uncomfortable when Flynn touches...
2024-07-26 - Understanding how soft materials fail under stress is critical for solving engineering challenges as disparate as pharmaceutical technology and landslide prevention. A new study linking a spectrum of soft material behaviors — previously thought to be unrelated — led researchers to identify a new parameter they call the brittility factor, which allows them to simplify soft material failure...
2024-07-24 - An exhibit showcasing butterfly nectar plants will be hosted at Urbana Park District’s Anita Purves Nature Center until the end of August. The exhibit, titled "Butterfly Elf, What’s Your Favorite Nectar?" features 17 pictures by professor James H. Yang, a visiting scholar from Taiwan who obtained his PhD...