Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Two Illinois faculty members elected AAAS Fellows

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2017 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Animal biology professor Carla E. Caceres and statistics professor Douglas G. Simpson are among 396 people to be awarded the distinction of AAAS Fellow this year.

Caceres studies factors that promote and support biodiversity, including genetics, reproductive and feeding strategies, individual variation and the structure of ecological communities. According to a statement from AAAS, Caceres is recognized for her “contributions to our understanding of the role of parasites in defining plankton community structure.” Caceres directs the School of Integrative Biology at Illinois.

Simpson’s expertise is in applied and computational statistics, with a focus on bioinformatics and biostatistics. He uses statistics to support the study of complex systems and to advance medical imaging diagnostics and risk assessment. He is honored “for distinguished contributions to the field of robust statistics, emphasizing generalized regression modeling and functional data, and for translational innovations in risk analysis.” He heads his department.

Founded in 1848, AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society. Fellows are chosen by their peers for their outstanding contributions to the field. The new Fellows will be honored at the 2018 AAAS annual meeting in Austin, Texas.                                  

Read Next

Life sciences Photo of Michael Ward standing in tall grass on a riverbank.

How are migrating wild birds affected by H5N1 infection in the U.S.?

Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects, distributing plant seeds and providing a variety of other ecosystem services to stopping sites along the way. Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. […]

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 […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

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

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010