LAS News Archive

2004-02-01 -   An LAS microbiologist whose discovery of a one-celled organism changed biologists' understanding of life on Earth is this year's recipient of the $500,000 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences. The Royal Swedish Academy of...

2003-10-01 - Pop-up ads are considered mostly minor online annoyances, but a growing number have infectious code behind them that invades the user's computer and has the potential to slow performance. This code is called "spyware" and has the ability to reset the main page of a Web browser, keep track of...

2003-10-01 - Paul C. Lauterbur, a pioneer in the development of magnetic resonance imaging and a faculty member in LAS has been awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He shares the prize with Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in England. Mansfield was a research associate in...

2003-10-01 - If you looked out your window and saw a tree, and then blinked and the tree was gone, you'd notice it was missing right? Researchers studying change blindness, the term characterizing when someone fails to be aware of significant changes in scenery, say that there's a good chance you...

2003-10-01 - Fakhri Bazzaz (MS, '60; PhD, '63, plant biology) has an uncanny ability to predict the future…the future of plant ecology, that is. Bazzaz doesn't need a crystal ball to make his predictions, just a nice green house, maybe a beautiful New England forest or two, and of course, a well-equipped...

2003-10-01 - Anthropologists around the world are excited by the discovery of a 4,000 year-old gourd segment depicting the image of the staff god, the main deity worshipped in South America before the Europeans arrived. This small piece of gourd is important because it means that organized religion existed 1,...

2003-10-01 - Weird and exciting were the words Anthony Kim (AB '03, history) used to describe his feelings on the first day he walked into the 7th grade classroom at Champaign's Franklin Middle School that was to be his own. Of course, he'd experienced many "first days" as a student teacher, but there was...

2003-10-01 - Booths, colorful signs, free stuff, dance and musical performances, and hordes of people braving the sticky summer air. It sounds like a carnival, but this scene takes place at the start of every school year at the annual Quad Day.The tradition began 32 years ago as an experiment to familiarize new...

2003-10-01 - Every January for the past three years, John Micetich (BS, '69, psychology) and his wife have closed up their home in sunny San Diego and moved halfway across the country to spend the winter in Champaign-Urbana. It isn't the weather that attracts them to the Midwest. Micetich, a 1969 graduate in...

2003-10-01 - Don't tell Chapin Rose (AB, '97, political science; JD, '00, law) that he's too young to make a mark on the world. Six years after graduating with a degree in political science from the College of LAS and three years out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's College of Law,...

2003-10-01 - Joseph LaPalombara (AB, '47, AM, 50, political science) is the quintessential American success story. The son of Italian immigrants, he grew up on Chicago's west side in a neighborhood of row houses and patronage politics known for 150 years as Little Italy. His family dreamed of sending...

2003-10-01 - U of I's largest college just got bigger. This past fall, the Department of Economics moved its 40 faculty from the College of Business to LAS, becoming the college's 53rd department. The change was in response to the greater compatibility between the goals of the department and those of LAS versus...

2003-10-01 -     Scientists who study chromosomal proteins expect to find them on chromosomes, which is why Michel Bellini, a professor of cell and structural biology in LAS, and graduate student Brent Beenders were surprised to discover the...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...