News Bureau

Sixteen civil service employees – eight this year and eight in 2020 – at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were recognized for exceptional performance with the Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has received the inaugural Research Response to Community Crisis Award from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities for its COVID-19 testing program.

Nine University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students and recent graduates were offered Fulbright grants to pursue international education, research and teaching experiences. The Fulbright student program will fund approximately 2,200 U.S. citizens to travel abroad for the 2021-22 academic year.

Architecture professor emerita T.F. Tierney will examine the role that federal lending practices played in maintaining racially segregated suburbs.

Five University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students and recent graduates were awarded U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships to study foreign languages this summer. A sixth student was offered a Boren Scholarship to continue her foreign language studies.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign senior Sriyankari Chitti is one of 76 students to be named a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, from more than 8,000 applicants around the world.

The Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction were awarded to faculty members, staff and graduate teaching assistants at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this spring for excellence in teaching, mentoring and advising.

Gillen D’Arcy Wood, whose work is in environmental humanities, has been awarded a 2021 Carnegie Fellowship.

Three University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest professional honors a scientist can receive. Physics professor Nadya Mason and chemistry professors Ralph Nuzzo and Wilfred van der Donk are among 120 newly elected U.S. members – 59 of whom are women, the most elected in a single year – and 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Education Dean James Anderson, physics professor Nadya Mason, chemistry professor Nancy Makri and materials science and engineering professor Kenneth Schweizer have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest honor societies in the nation.

Kolten Conklen, a junior at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from Sterling, Illinois, is among 16 students nationally awarded the Beinecke Scholarship. Illinois is one of 135 colleges and universities annually invited to nominate one junior for a Beinecke Scholarship.

A total of 12 academic professionals at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were honored this week with the Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence award, encompassing the 2020 and 2021 award cycles. The award recognizes academic professionals for their work, personal and professional contributions.

Bobby Smith II, a professor of African American studies; Retika Adhikari Desai, a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies; and Juliet Larkin-Gilmore, a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in American Indian Studies, are 2021 ACLS Fellows.

History professor Kevin Mumford has been awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship. Mumford studies race, politics and sexuality in America.

Four University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students were awarded Barry M. Goldwater scholarships for their potential to contribute to the advancement of research in the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering.

The projects aim to advance digital scholarship and find new ways of sharing culture.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign entomology professor Esther Ngumbi is the 2021 recipient of the Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science, an annual award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented to scientists and engineers in recognition of their contributions to public engagement with science.

Dance professor Cynthia Oliver has been selected as a 2021 United States Artists Fellow.

Nick Holonyak Jr., a renowned innovator of illumination, has been awarded the 2021 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering “for the creation and development of LED lighting, which forms the basis of all solid-state lighting technology.” Holonyak (pronounced huh-LON-yak) is credited with the development of the first practical visible-spectrum LED, now commonly used in light bulbs, device displays and lasers worldwide.

Illinois professors Bobby Smith II and Eduardo Ledesma have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships for 2021.

Five University of Illinois professors at the Urbana-Champaign campus have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship and service.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Six professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2020 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Evolution, ecology and behavior professor Alison Bell; plant biology professor Carl Bernacchi; bioengineering professor Rohit Bhargava; materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun; chemistry professor Prashant Jain; and materials science and engineering professor Nancy Sottos are among the 489 scientists to be awarded the distinction of AAAS Fellow this year.

Bill Hammack, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been awarded the Hoover Medal.

Seven University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign faculty members have been named Center for Advanced Study Professors, one of the highest forms of campus recognition.

The 2020 Campus Awards for Excellence in Public Engagement recognize outstanding individual and group outreach efforts.

Leanne Knobloch and Angharad Valdivia, both professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have been elected Fellows of the International Communication Association, in recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication. Two other Illinois faculty members received the same honor last year.

Eight University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign projects are among 26 to receive the first C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute awards for artificial intelligence techniques to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The institute will provide a total of $5.4 million over the next year to projects that examine the medical, social and economic impacts of the novel coronavirus and inspire researcher collaboration in advanced machine learning and other AI disciplines. 

Four University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty members were honored by the Office of the Provost with the Campus Awards for Excellence in Faculty Leadership.

Four students at the University of Illinois were selected to study languages in world regions critical to U.S. interests as recipients of David L. Boren Scholarships.

Four University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty members were honored by the Office of the Provost with the Campus Awards for Excellence in Faculty Leadership.

Fourteen University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students and recent alumni were offered Fulbright grants to pursue international education, research and teaching experiences across the globe this coming year.

Faculty and staff members and graduate teaching assistants this spring were honored with Campus Awards for Excellence in Instruction. The awards recognize excellence in teaching, mentoring and advising.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign computer science professor Sarita V. Adve and physics professor Philip W. Phillips have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest honor societies in the nation.

Illinois professors Janice N. Harrington, English, and David Sepkoski, history, received 2020 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships.

Illinois architecture professor Randy Deutsch has been elevated to the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows.

For the ninth time in the past 10 years, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is among the top producers of Fulbright U.S. Student Awards. Thirteen students from the Urbana campus received Fulbright awards for the 2019-20 academic year.

Two University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This honor is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers. 

Nancy Sottos, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She is one of 87 new members and 18 international members announced by the Academy on Feb. 6.

Music professor Christina Bashford was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for a project examining violin culture in Britain.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Eight professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2019 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Eight faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list, a global listing of scientists who produced the past decade’s most influential papers.

Tim Nugent, the visionary first director of a ground-breaking University of Illinois program for students with disabilities, is being inducted posthumously into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame.

Liliane Windsor, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois, has been named a Health Policy Fellow by the National Academy of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Six researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were 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. 

Two U. of I. students are among 244 students nationwide awarded David L. Boren Scholarships to study language in world regions critical to U.S. interests.

Thirteen University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students and young alumni accepted Fulbright grants for the upcoming academic year, providing opportunities for international educational, research and teaching experiences.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois freshman Ari Kelo, a graduate of Northside College Preparatory High School in Chicago, will join a three-week summer program at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London as part of the Fulbright Summer Institute, an initiative of the U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two University of Illinois undergraduates have been awarded U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarshipsto study critical languages during the summer of 2019.

Eleven faculty members were honored with the Provost’s Campus Distinguished PromotionAward for 2019.

Gabriel Wacks is the first University of Illinois student accepted into Peking University’s Yenching Academy. Along with about 125 scholars from more than 40 countries, he will enroll this fall in an interdisciplinary master’s degree program in China studies.