Illinois in the News

The Guardian (London, July 20) — Nuclear physics professor Anne Sickles on how President Donald Trump’s assault on science has led to unprecedented funding cuts and staff layoffs across federally funded agencies and programs, threatening to derail research tackling the most pressing issues facing Americans and humanity more broadly.

HuffPost (New York City, July 18) — Forecasted warnings are only valuable if you can see and understand them in time to make life-saving decisions to stay home or evacuate, says Joseph Trujillo-Falcón, a professor of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences.

Fortune (New York City, July 17) — Agricultural and consumer economics professor Scott Irwin says Coca-Cola’s change to using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup wouldn’t have an outsized impact on the industry as a whole.

Bloomberg (New York City, July 16) — Nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering professor Kathryn Huff on Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup leasing data center capacity in Saudi Arabia.

Chicago Sun-Times (July 16) — U.S. Senator Dick Durbin discusses how the Trump administration’s closure of U.S. Agency for International Development-funded labs, like the U. of I.’s Soybean Innovation Lab, puts the U.S. behind China.

The New York Times (July 14) — Whether tighter screening and delays will cut into the number of international students at the U. of I. in the coming academic year won’t be clear until September, says Robin Kaler, an associate chancellor.

Interesting Engineering (New York City, July 13) — Engineers at Illinois have developed the first room-temperature, eye-safe, photo-pumped photonic-crystal surface-emitting laser, which can be incorporated into optical communication and sensing systems used in autonomous vehicles and defense gadgets.

The Washington Post (July 11) — Online sleuthing led computer science professor Talia Ringer to suspect that an online artificial intelligence chatbot personality shift could have been a “soft launch” of the new Grok 4 version, which Elon Musk introduced in a live stream late Thursday.

WTTW-TV (Chicago, July 11) — Nationally, construction and agriculture workforces had the highest shares of undocumented workers as of 2022, according to the American Immigration Council. “If they don’t show up, the production of that industry will drop significantly, and we’ll see real damage done to these industrial sectors,” says Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations.

The Washington Post (July 10) — An array of influencers, media personalities, elected officials and other prominent figures have publicly raised the possibility that cloud-seeding operations might have caused or at least exacerbated deadly floods. But that’s impossible, says Bob Rauber, an emeritus professor in atmospheric sciences.

The Hill (Washington, D.C., July 9) — Computer scientist Sheldon Jacobson breaks down who is paying for President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Associated Press (New York City, July 9) — Computer science professor Talia Ringer on a Grok update that caused the chatbot to spew antisemitic messages.