LAS professors bring honor and recognition to the college.

Have an honor you'd like to share with the Office of the Dean? Email us.

January 2021

  • Zong-qi Cai

    Zong-qi Cai, professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures, received the Distinguished Editor Award at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, the highest honor given by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. The nomination cited, "The global impact of Cai’s editorial work is signaled by his efforts to bridge the work of North American and Chinese sinologists."

December 2020

  • Bobby Smith II

    Professors Bobby Smith II (pictured) and Eduardo Ledesma have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2021. The fellowship program supports advanced research in the humanities, and the recipients produce articles, books, digital materials or other scholarly resources. Ledesma is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Smith is a professor of African American studies.

  • Harriet Murav

    Harriet Murav, professor in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures and the Program in Comparative & World Literature, has received an honorable mention from the MLA (Modern Language Association) Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for her book "David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity." The prize is awarded each even-numbered year and is given alternately to an outstanding translation of a Yiddish literary work and to an outstanding scholarly work in English in the field of Yiddish.

November 2020

  • Alison Bell

    Two College of LAS professors have been elected as 2020 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Evolution, ecology, & behavior professor Alison Bell (pictured) and chemistry professor Prashant Jain are among the 489 scientists to be awarded the distinction of AAAS Fellow this year.

  • Stephen Long

    Two LAS faculty members have been named to the 2020 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list, which recognizes leading researchers in the sciences and social sciences from around the world. The highly cited researchers include plant biology professors Stephen Long (pictured) and Donald Ort.

  • Bruce Berndt 

    Mathematics professor Bruce Berndt was named as one of the world's ten most influential mathematicians by Academic Influence, a team of academics and data scientists that provide objective, influence-based rankings in higher education. Berndt's research is devoted to finding proofs of claims found in the notebooks of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), India's greatest mathematician.

  • Dolores Albarracin

    Dolores Albarracin, a professor in the Department of Psychology, has receive the Carol and Ed Diener Award in Social Psychology from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. This award recognizes a mid-career scholar whose work has added substantially to the body of knowledge to the social psychology field and/or brings together personality psychology and social psychology. 

October 2020

  • Bob Rauber

    Robert Rauber, director of the School of Earth, Society, and Environment and professor of atmospheric scienceshas been selected to receive the 2020 Colorado State University Atmospheric Science Distinguished Alum award. This award is given annually to an alumnus in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of atmospheric science.

  • Shaowen Wang

    Nicole Allen of psychology and Shaowen Wang (pictured) of geography and geographic information science have been chosen to participate in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program. This program identifies faculty with exceptional promise and prepares them for future leadership roles through a program including seminars and individual campus activities.  

  • Janice N. Harrington

    Janice N. Harrington (pictured), Christopher Kempf, and Corey Van Landingham, professors in the Department of English, have had poems included in the "The Best American Poetry 2020" anthology. According to the publisher, "Since 1988, The Best American Poetry anthology series has been 'one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world' (Academy of American Poets). Each volume in the series presents some of the year’s most remarkable poems and poets."

September 2020

  • Brian Fields

    Brian Fields, professor in the Departments of Astronomy and of Physics, has been elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society for his "pioneering contributions to cosmology, nuclear and particle astrophysics, nucleosynthesis, cosmic-ray physics, gamma-ray astronomy, astrobiology, and supernovae." 

  • Marianne Alleyne

    Marianne Alleyne, professor of entomology, has been elected as Vice President-Elect of the Entomological Society of America for 2022-2023. Alleyne's research on the multifunctionality of cicada, beetle, and fly wings has informed engineering of multifunctional materials and robotic systems.

August 2020

  • Sonia Lasher-Trapp

    Two atmospheric sciences faculty have been honored by the American Meteorological Society. Sonia Lasher-Trapp (pictured) has been awarded the American Meteorological Society's Edward N. Lorenz Teaching Excellence Award "for creating active learning and welcoming classroom environments, expanding student experiences, and advocating for women in science." Robert (Jeff) Trapp has been named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society for his outstanding contributions to the field of atmospheric sciencces.

  • Alexandra Harmon-Threatt

    Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, professor of entomology, has been elected as an Ecological Society of America Early Career Fellow. This honor was bestowed for her critical research in native bee ecology and conservation, as well as for excellence in teaching and public outreach.

  • Jeffrey S. Moore

    The Center for Advanced Study has appointed three College of LAS members to its permanent faculty—Jeffrey S. Moore (chemistry), Harriet Murav (Slavic languages and literatures), and Donald R. Ort (plant biology). CAS professors are selected based on their outstanding scholarship, and the appointments are one of the highest forms of campus recognition at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

July 2020

  • Tom Rudolph

    Tom Rudolph, head of the Department of Political Science, has been named a Lincoln Distinguished Professorial Scholar by the College of LAS for his leadership and scholarship on public opinion, political psychology, and political behavior in the context of American politics.

  • Xiao Su

    Xiao Su (Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering) has received the 2020 Viktor K. LaMer Award from the Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. The LaMer Award recognizes an outstanding PhD thesis accepted by a U.S. or Canadian university during the three years prior to the award year.

    Su also has been selected as a Scialog Fellow to participate in the 2020 Scialog: Negative Emissions Science Initiative, jointly sponsored by Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been selected in recognition of his achievements and expertise in separations that address environmental problems including water purification. 

June 2020

  • Malaika McKee

    Four LAS professors have been named NCAS Faculty Fellows for the 2020-21 academic school year. The NCSA Faculty Fellowship is a competitive program which provides seed funding for new collaborations that include NCSA staff as integral contributors to the project. LAS fellows include David Cooper (Slavic languages and literatures), Xin Liu (astronomy), Malaika McKee (African American studies), and Ruoqing Zhu (statistics).

     

  • Jack Hutchens

    Jack Hutchens of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures has received the 2019 Article of the Year award from the Canadian Association of Slavists for his article "Julian Stryjkowski: Polish, Jewish, Queer," published in Canadian Slavonic Papers.

May 2020

  • Valeria Sobol

    Valeria Sobol (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures) has been awarded "Best Article in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture" from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. She received this honor for her article, “’Tis Eighty Years Since: Panteleimon Kulish’s Gothic Ukraine,” which was published in Slavic Review.

  • Leanne Knobloch

    Leanne Knobloch of the Department of Communication has been named as a Fellow of the International Communication Association. Fellow status in the International Communication Association (ICA) is a recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication.

  • Julie Cidell

    Julie Cidell, professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science, has received the Edward L. Ullman Award from the American Association of Geographers’ Transportation Geography Specialty Group for her contributions to the field of transportation geography. The Transportation Geography Specialty Group facilitates interactions among individuals who are interested in the research, practice, and education of transportation-related topics.

April 2020

  • Donald Ort

    Donald Ort, professor of plant biology and crop sciences, has recently awarded the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award from the American Society of Plant Biologists. Ort, who is also deputy director of the RIPE project, was honored for his distinction in research, education, outreach, and service to plant biology.

  • Carolyn Fornoff 

    Carolyn Fornoff (Department of Spanish & Portuguese) has received an inaugural Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Summer Faculty Research Fellowship. This fellowship is "designed to help faculty at the University of Illinois maximize the summer for research in service of their ongoing professional development." Fornoff will be working on a chapter on climate change and indigenous futurity which is part of her book in-progress, Subjunctive Aesthetics: Mexican Culture in the Era of Climate Change.

February 2020

  • David Cooper

    The American Association for Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) has awarded its 2019 Prize for Best Scholarly Translation to professor David Cooper (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures). Cooper was honored for his book "The Queen’s Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts With Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival."

  • Monica Fabiani

    Monica Fabiani and Gabriele Gratton of the Department of Psychology received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychophysiology by the Society for Psychophysiological Research. The award was bestowed for their "joint dedication to outstanding theoretical and methodological contributions in psychophysiology."

January 2020

  • Armine Kotin Mortimer

    The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded Armine Kotin Mortimer (professor emerita and research professor of French literature) a Literature Translation Fellowship to support her translation of Catherine Cusset’s novel "Un brillant avenir." Mortimer is one of 24 Literature Translation Fellows in 2020. 

  • John A. Lynn II

    John A. Lynn II, professor emeritus of history, has had his book "Another Kind of War: The Nature and History of Terrorism" named to the Outstanding Academic Titles List for 2019 by Choice, a publishing unit at the Association of College & Research Libraries. This prestigious list “reflects the best in scholarly titles reviewed by ‘Choice’ and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community.”

     

  • Ted Underwood

    Professor Ted Underwood (Department of English) has received a National Humanities Alliance grant for the project "Broadening Access to Text Analysis by Describing Uncertainty." Through this project, he will study "errors and paratextual noise in optically transcribed digital library texts, and the consequences of these errors on historical and humanistic conclusions measuring trends across time."

  • Naveen Narisetty

    Professor of statistics Naveen Narisetty has received the distinguished Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CAREER award supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Professor Narisetty's work explores several key aspects of Big Data and how statisticians and data scientists can more efficiently work within the Bayesian framework. 

December 2019

  • David Kranz

    David Kranz, Phillip A. Sharp Professor of Biochemistry, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. All together, fellows "hold more than 41,500 issued U.S. patents, which have generated over 11,000 licensed technologies and  companies, and created more than 36 million jobs."

  • Mara Wade

    Mara Wade, professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, has been appointed 41st president of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA). The RSA is the largest international academic society devoted to the study of the era 1300–1700 and has approximately 5,000 members around the world. “It is an increasingly diverse organization which welcomes innovative scholarship [...] and global perspectives,” said Wade.

November 2019

  • Florencia HenshawFlorencia Henshaw of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese has been selected to serve on the Editorial Advisory Board for "The Language Educator." This publication, produced by the American Council of the Teaching of Foreign Languages, “provides educators of all languages at all levels with a single, comprehensive source of news and information." 

  • Mei-Po Kwan

    Geography & Geographic Information Science professors Mei-Po Kwan (pictured) and Sara McLafferty have been named as American Association of Geographer (AAG) Fellows for 2020. The AAG Fellows program recognizes geographers that have made significant contributions to the field.

  • Eric Calderwood

    Professor Eric Calderwood (comparative literature) recently received multiple awards for his book, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture (Harvard University Press 2018). They include: The L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize, awarded annually to an outstanding book in the area of North African Studies; Honorable Mention for the Nikki Keddie Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association; and the 2020 Laura Shannon Prize.

  • Raquel Goebel

    Raquel Goebel of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese has received a Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Partnership grant, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and housed at the Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) at Michigan State University. Through this cross-university initiative, Goebel will develop an online model of LCTL instruction reflecting best practices in proficiency-oriented instruction.

October 2019

  • Paul Kenis

    Paul Kenis, the Elio E. Tarika Endowed Chair and head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has received the 2020 Energy Technology Division Research Award from the Electrochemical Society. This award "recognizes outstanding and original contributions to the science and technology of energy related research areas that include scientific and technological aspects of fossil fuels and alternative energy sources, energy management and environmental consequences of energy utilization."

September 2019

  • Ann Abbott

    Ann Abbott of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese is a recipient of the 2019 City of Champaign Community Impact Award. This award recognizes community-based organizations, non-profit, public sector institutions, or local government “which demonstrates exceptional commitment to serving and advocating for local immigrants in our community.

  • Antony Augoustakis

    Two College of LAS professors have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. Brian Allan, a professor of entomology, is interested in the ecology of infectious diseases. He uses a broad array of tools in approaching these questions. Antony Augoustakis (pictured), a professor and head of classics, researches the cultural poetics and the sociopolitics of Flavian poetry. His “accomplishments in the areas of research, teaching and service, and his national and international reputation are outstanding,” his nominator wrote.

  • Paul Kenis

    Paul Kenis, the Elio E. Tarika Endowed Chair and head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been named Fellow of the Electrochemical Society. Kenis was cited for his exceptional contributions to the invention, characterization and development of innovative processes based on microfluidic systems for diverse applications in electrochemical energy conversion, chemical synthesis, and biology.

  • Julie Dowling

    Julie Dowling of Latina/Latino studies has been appointed as Chair of the US Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations. This group advises the Census Bureau on topics such as hard-to-count populations, race and ethnicity, language, aging populations, American Indian and Alaska Native tribal considerations, new immigrant populations, and much more.

  • Emad Tajkhorshid

    Emad Tajkhorshid of biochemistry has been awarded the 2020 Thomas E. Thompson award for his seminal contributions to advancing our understanding of membrane structure and function. The Thomas E. Thompson award is presented by the Biophysical Society. It celebrates outstanding research in the field and the legacy of Thomas E. Thompson, a pioneer in the field of membrane structure and assembly.

  • Charles Gammie

    Astronomy and physics professor Charles Gammie has been named as one of the scientists honored with the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Gammie headed the theory working group for the EHT Project that produced the first image of a black hole. The Breakthrough Prize will be shared equally by the 347 scientists in the collaboration.

August 2019

  • Eva Pomerantz

    Eva Pomerantz, professor in psychology, has been appointed as a 2019-2020 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Provost Fellows. Each Provost Fellow focuses on a critical campus strategic initiative to ensure the University of Illinois is living up to its full potential in scholarly missions. Pomerantz's area of focus through the fellowship will be on promotion and tenure.

  • Guillermo Del Pinal

    Guillermo Del Pinal, professor of philosophy, recently appeared in The Philosopher's Annual, which picks the ten top articles in philosophy from the 2018 literature. Guillermo was named to the list for his “Meaning, Modulation, and Context: A Multidimensional Semantics for Truth-Conditional Pragmatics,” which appeared in Linguistics and Philosophy.

  • Larry Di Girolamo

    Larry Di Girolamo—Blue Waters Professor and Daniel Shapiro Professorial Scholar in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences—has received the 2019 Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement. Established by the Provost in 2001 and endowed by Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhuri Sheth in 2006, this award recognizes an Illinois faculty member for exemplary accomplishments in teaching, research, and public service in the international arena.

  • David Flaherty

    The Department of Energy has selected chemical and biomolecular engineering professor David Flaherty among 73 scientists from across the nation as part of its Early Career Research Program. The effort, now in its tenth year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years. Flaherty’s research project is entitled, “The Role of Cooperative Interactions Among Surfaces, Solvents, and Reactive Intermediates on Catalysis at Liquid-Solid Interfaces.” 

  • Francina Dominguez

    Atmospheric science professor Francina Dominguez has received an Ascent Award in Atmospheric Sciences from the American Geophysical Union (AGU). According to the AGU, this prestigious honor is awarded for "sustained and unique contributions to advancing our understanding of Earth, its atmosphere and oceans, and planets and astral bodies beyond our own."

July 2019

  • Wendy Heller

    Wendy Heller (pictured, head of the Department of Psychology) and Mariselle Melendez (head of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese) have been named as University of Illinois System 2019-20 President’s Executive Leadership Program (PELP) Fellows. PELP is a professional development program designed to broaden participants’ understanding of higher education issues and strengthen leadership skills related to overseeing a public institution at the university or system level.

  • Prashant Jain

    Prashant Jain of chemistry (pictured) and Daniel Llano of molecular and integrative physiology have been named recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. The young scientists and engineers receive up to a five-year research grant to further their study in support of critical government missions.