2003-10-01
- In the ongoing quest to understand human genetics, two LAS scientists have created a new process to aid in investigating how RNA splices within cells. Chemistry professor Scott Silverman and graduate student Yangming Wang have found a way to use artificial DNA enzymes to create lariat RNA, a key component in splicing named for its lariat or lasso-...
2003-10-01 - The brain is Clifford Saper's domain. And a complicated domain it is. Packed into three pounds of tissue are hundreds of billions of nerve cells, linked by trillions of connections into a network more intricate than any computer circuitry. Over the past three decades, Clifford Saper (BS, MS, '72, biology) has been recognized as one of the world's foremost neuroanatomists for his work in mapping...
2003-10-01 - John Law doesn't model his life after insects, but these six-legged creatures have revealed much to him about what it means to be human. John Law (PhD, '57, biochemistry) is a pioneer in the field of molecular entomology—a discipline that dissects insects, gene by gene, to understand the intricate biological pathways that govern everything from how ants alert each other to danger to how...
2003-10-01 - Roxanne Decyk would rather read a Jane Austen novel than a company report, but this English literature major has found her calling in composing corporate strategies. At 49, Roxanne Decyk (AB, '73, English literature) is among the handful of women who have reached the upper echelons of corporate America. As a senior vice president of corporate affairs and human resources at Shell Oil Company, she...
2003-05-01 - Peter Beak, the Roger Adams Professor of Chemistry in LAS, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer. He joins 71 other new members, in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.Since joining the Department of...-
2003-04-01 - Gene E. Robinson, a professor of entomology and the director of the Neuroscience Program, is one of two UI professors who are among the 184 artists, scholars, and scientists named as 2003 Guggenheim Fellows. Professor Robinson was honored for his work with genes and...
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2003-04-01 - David Smyth, a UI senior majoring in mathematics, is among 11 students nationwide to receive a Churchill Scholarship for study at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England. The prestigious scholarship is awarded for outstanding academic and extracurricular accomplishments by the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States to American undergraduate students planning to pursue...
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2003-04-01 - With applications at U of I up by at least 4 percent over last year, and with most of the increase coming from students wishing to enter LAS, the college is bracing for a larger freshmen class in 2003-2004. The college expects to enroll as many as 3,650 students, or about 400 more students than this year. The increase is in response to the growing size of Illinois' college-bound population.The...
2002-10-01 - “A rule of thumb is that high returns require high risks, but many smart people will ignore this common sense when promised that they can get 15 percent returns with low risk. A 9 to 12 percent return over the last decade in the stock market is about as good as anyone did.” - John Micetich It is 5 p.m. on a Monday night and John Micetich (BS, '69, psychology) is getting his second wind....-
2002-05-01 - Two LAS students were among the 77 students from 65 U.S. universities and colleges named by the Harry S. Truman Foundation as 2002 Truman Scholars. Kory Langhofer and Craig Williamson were chosen from a pool of 590 students nominated by colleges and universities nationwide for the $30,000 scholarships based on their excellence...
2001-10-01 - Penny Panayiota Deligiannis (AB, '87; AM, '92, speech communication) this year's LAS Young Alumni Award winner, prefers action to talk, despite graduating cum laude in speech communication. While completing her masters, Deligiannis got involved in overseas missionary work for her hometown church of Aurora, Ill., joining a Greek Orthodox Mission Teaching Team erecting a church building in Magoma...
2001-10-01 - A leader among academic administrators, Dr. Constantine "Deno" Curris (AM, '65, political science) has made his own mark in higher education. He has served as president of Clemson University, the University of Northern Iowa and Murray State University in his home state of Kentucky. Former University of Illinois president Stanley O. Ikenberry describes Curris's personal style and substance as, "...
2001-10-01 - The central theme running through the achievements of Dr. Phillip Sharp (PhD, '69, chemistry) is their vast impact on the direction of research in molecular biology and biochemistry. From his revolutionary discovery that gene sequences may be interrupted by noncoding "nonsense" stretches of DNA called introns—a landmark discovery in understanding how biological information is organized that was...
2001-10-01 - Native-born Illini Daniel R. Reedy (AM, '59; PhD, '62, Spanish) has come a long way since his childhood in Marshall, Illinois. An original academic protege of legendary College of Liberal Arts & Sciences' Spanish professor Luis Leal, he completed the second doctoral dissertation ever directed by Leal, and then moved on to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he served as an...
2000-10-01 - Unlike the candidates in the current presidential election, Steven Kulm (AB, '92, political science) was not born into politics, but by age 10 he knew that he was born for it. His blood was red, white, and blue, and now at 28, he is most obviously manifesting it. Kulm, a 1992 graduate in political science and this year's Young Alumni Award winner, exemplifies the drive, intelligence, and...- 2000-10-01 - The 40-year career at Merck Research Laboratories of chemist Seemon H. Pines (MS, '49; PhD, '51, chemistry) has been in pursuit of therapeutic agents that fight infection, reduce inflammation, and make us healthier. This College of LAS Achievement Award winner has accomplished the seemingly impossible by developing the means for economically synthesizing a staggering number of life-enhancing...
2000-10-01 - Everything is made of chemicals, but sometimes, it is necessary to separate one chemical from another—for instance, to purify metal ores, to clean up contaminated wastes, even to combat disease. One of this year's College of LAS Achievement Award winners, E. Philip Horwitz (MS, '55; PhD, '57, chemistry), is a master of such "chemical separations" technology: he has developed a number of...
2000-10-01 - Juvenile delinquency, crime, and violence are the steady diet of the urban magistrate. As chief judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Eugene N. Hamilton (AB, '55, general curriculum) has seen his share. But witnessing the outcome of poverty and despair has not jaded him. Quite the opposite. It has fortified his determination to improve the social conditions of those who daily...
2000-10-01 - The career of Susan Nagele (BS, '78, biology) is decidedly uncharacteristic of our times. In an age when many pursue instant wealth and leisure, this year's College of LAS Humanitarian Award winner, who is a Maryknoll Catholic missionary, aspires to serve humanity and forsake worldly amenities. It's been her dream for 16 years, and she wouldn't trade it for a dot.com fortune. After...- 1999-10-01 - Carol Stack (AM, '68; PhD, '72, anthropology) has been a force in cultural anthropology almost since the day she turned in her dissertation. All Our Kin, the book that sprang from her research, became an instant classic in ethnography and is still one of the most widely read examinations of African-American urban culture. Published in 1974, it tore down stereotypes and opened the way...
1999-10-01 - The life work of Jim Davis (BS, '54, psychology) has revolved around answering a single, deceptively simple question: How do small groups of people reach decisions? In the process of doing so, he has influenced business practices and Supreme Court decisions, reinvented the field of group decision making, and earned the honor of being considered the greatest social psychologist of his generation....
1999-10-01 - Molly Melching (AB, '71; AM, '79, French) arrived in Senegal in 1974 as a graduate exchange student on a six-month visa. Twenty-five years later she is still there. She has found a home among its people and her destiny in promoting literacy and self-help among its rural poor. Upon her arrival in this former French colony, Melching immersed herself in the Senegalese culture and mastered Wolof,...- 1999-10-01 - Ed Cupp (PhD, '69, entomology) saw his first victims of river blindness during a field trip to Guatemala in 1969. He was a graduate student at Illinois at the time, but he never forgot the sight. Lesions and nodules covered the bodies of children and had spread to the eyes of many adults. Today, Cupp is an internationally recognized medical entomologist whose exhaustive studies of the insect...