Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Achievements

IN THIS ISSUE: FAA | LAW | LAS

fine and applied arts

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers recently selected three UI professors of music as ASCAP Special Award recipients: Zack Browning, Erik Lund and Kazimierz W. Machala. The awards are made to assist and encourage ASCAP composers. Awards are granted by an independent panel and are given based on the quality of performances and recordings of compositions in a given year. The awards are given to those writers who earn less than $20,000 in annual domestic performance royalties.

Browning also received a Chamber Music America Commission to write a new composition for the Bang On A Can All-Stars. The group, based in New York City, will perform the work several times in 2003, including at Lincoln Center. Browning also has a solo CD, “Banjaxed,” out that features eight of his original compositions for live performers and computer-generated tape. It was released by Capstone records last year.

law

Richard L. Kaplan, professor of law, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. The academy comprises experts on social policy who have made distinctive contributions to the field of social insurance in a variety of disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, law, medicine, social work, and actuarial science.

Peter B. Maggs has become the first holder of the Clifford M. and Bette A. Carney Chair in Law. An expert in Soviet and post-Soviet law as well as international intellectual property law, Maggs joined the UI law faculty in 1964. His chair was endowed through a gift by Clifford M. Carney, a DuPage County lawyer and 1952 graduate of the law school, and his wife.

liberal arts and sciences

For the first time, the Fondation Hardt of Vandoeuvres-Geneve, Switzerland, is honoring an individual scholar. A celebration took place Sept. 9-14 with a series of lectures by scholars from the United States and Europe. The organization, the worlds foremost think-tank devoted exclusively to the study of classical antiquity, is celebrating the 70th birthday of a prominent classicist, William M. Calder III, the William Abbot Oldfather Professor of Classics at UI.

Yi Lu, professor of chemistry, of biochemistry and of biophysics, is one of 20 researchers selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Each researcher will receive $1 million during the next four years to “bring the creativity they have shown in the lab to the undergraduate classroom.” According to Lu, he wants “to capture the natural curiosity freshmen hold about the world and nurture it.” The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a private philanthropy dedicated to biomedical research and science education.

Jonathan V. Sweedler, a William H. and Janet Lycan Professor of Chemistry, will receive the 2002 Heinrich-Emanual-Merck prize for Analytical Chemistry. The award is given by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt (Germany), and recognizes chemists whose work provides solutions to analytical problems in the areas of life sciences, material sciences or the environment.

In addition, the American Chemical Society awarded Sweedler the Analytical Division Award for instrumentation.

Andrzej Wieckowski, professor of chemistry, received the David C. Grahame Award of the Physical Electrochemistry Division of the Electrochemical Society. The biennual award seeks to recognize active members of the society who have made outstanding contributions to the field of physical electrochemistry and enhanced the scientific stature of the society by the presentation of well-recognized papers in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society and at society meetings.

TOP

Read Next

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010