News Bureau

World War II French Jewish spy Marthe Cohn will speak in Krannert Center’s Great Hall at 6 p.m. Feb. 13.

Dr. Mark S. Cohen will be the next dean of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and senior vice president and chief academic officer at Carle Health, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Cohen is currently a professor of surgery and pharmacology at the University of Michigan.

Illini Fest, a downtown festival planned for July 18 in Chicago’s Park Grill Plaza of Millennium Park, brings the university experience to the more than 150,000 Fighting Illini alumni living in Chicagoland.

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.

A new book, “An Illini Place – Building the University of Illinois Campus,” covers the history of the planning and building of the University of Illinois campus and why the campus looks the way it does.

John Coleman will be the next vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 

Students will be able to self-report their standardized test scores in new freshmen applications to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the fall 2019 semester, a change made to improve accessibility for students applying to college.

Tim Nugent, who died Wednesday at the age of 92 in Urbana, Illinois, was a visionary who changed the world for people with disabilities. Starting with a small program at the University of Illinois a few years after World War II – but for years with little support, and often outright opposition – Nugent sought to change both the opportunities for people with disabilities and public attitudes about them.

An app that provides personalized coronavirus information and testing status for University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign faculty members, staff and students who intend to enter university facilities this fall is available for download by iPhone and Android users.

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.

A new website celebrates the achievements women have made during the University of Illinois’ 150-year history.

One hundred forty freshmen and sophomores have been designated Chancellor’s Scholars, chosen for their academic excellence and leadership potential.

The Carle Illinois College of Medicine, a partnership between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Carle Health, has been granted provisional accreditation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.  Provisional accreditation affirms that a medical school meets nationally accepted standards of educational quality and can move forward with plans to build a sustainable medical education program.

Andreas Cangellaris has been selected by Chancellor Robert Jones to be the Urbana campus’s next vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost. Cangellaris, the dean of the College of Engineering, will start in his new role Jan. 16, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

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.

In the fall of 2020, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign welcomed students back for in-person instruction amid the powerful first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The university successfully maintained operations throughout the semester – with zero COVID-19-related deaths or hospitalizations in the campus community – thanks to its “SHIELD: Target, Test, Tell” program. In a sweeping report, the team behind the campuswide collaboration details the innovations in modeling, saliva testing and results reporting that helped mitigate the spread of the virus, and shares the data collected and lessons learned through the process.

The Illinois Neurodiversity Initiative, a pilot program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will provide autism-specific support to freshmen with autism.

Sixteen University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students and recent graduates were offered Fulbright grants to pursue international education, research and teaching experiences around the globe this coming year. Another six Illinois students were named Fulbright alternates.

Rachel Switzky has been selected as the inaugural director of the Siebel Center for Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Switzky, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial design at Illinois, will begin the new role June 18. 

Biochemistry professor Nicholas Wu has received a 2021 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. His project aims to understand how antibodies interact with their targets.

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

Alice Cary, currently the chief of police at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s next executive director of public safety and chief of police.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is introducing a revision to make its COVID-19-testing process faster and more efficient, with fewer invalid or inconclusive results and less plastic waste.

The fourth annual Illini Success report documents the exceptional success of graduates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s undergraduate programs in securing a “first destination” within six months of graduation.

Germán Bollero will be the next dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Bollero has served as the interim dean of ACES since September 2021.  

Three faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2020 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes leading researchers in the sciences and social sciences from around the world. It is based on an analysis of journal article publication and citation data, an objective measure of a researcher’s influence, from 2009-2019.

The highly cited Illinois researchers this year are: materials science and engineering professor Axel Hoffmann, crop sciences and plant biology professor Stephen Long, and plant biology professor Donald Ort.

Students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who have not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19 can enroll in a study to help understand the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. Participants will be paid and could receive the vaccine as soon as April 1.

Venetria K. Patton will become the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign effective Aug. 2, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Patton is currently the head of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University.

Eric Minor, a University of Illinois alumnus with more than two decades of experience in corporate brand marketing, will become the university’s first-ever chief marketing officer effective Jan. 31 pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Jawed Karim, an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a co-founder of YouTube, a popular video-sharing Web site, will be the speaker at the 136th U. of I. Commencement on May 13 (Sunday). He will speak at the 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. ceremonies at Assembly Hall, 1800 S. First St., Champaign.

The 2020 Insect Fear Film Festival will feature crustaceans, which share a common ancestor with insects.

This year’s Ebert Film Fest will include “Almost Famous” and “Sideways,” documentaries on Maya Angelou and Fred Rogers, and guest actresses Gina Gershon, Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Tilly.

The University Scholars program recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. Six Urbana campus faculty members have been named University Scholars and will be honored at a campus reception Jan. 31.

Eunice Santos will become the dean of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign effective Aug. 16, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. Andreas C. Cangellaris, the vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost, recommended the appointment to Chancellor Robert Jones after the conclusion of a yearlong national search.

Faculty and staff members, and graduate teaching assistants at the U. of I. were honored April 26 for excellence in teaching, mentoring and advising. Each was recognized during a reception at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center.

Thomas Dowling, a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is among 32 U.S. students selected as Rhodes Scholars. Dowling is the first Rhodes Scholar on the Urbana campus since 1998.

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

A search committee established to find the Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s inaugural dean will begin its work this month with the goal of naming the dean by spring 2016

Nina Baym, an internationally recognized scholar of American literature and a pioneer in the field of study of American women’s writing, has died.

Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell will join the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences effective Aug. 16, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Jamelle Sharpe has been named the 14th dean of the College of Law, pending approval by the U. of I. Board of Trustees.

The Chancellor’s Commission on Native Imagery: Healing and Reconciliation begins its work today.

Six professors at the University of Illinois have been named 2016 Guggenheim Fellows, bringing to 13 the number of U. of I. faculty members who have been honored with the fellowship over the last three years. This year’s fellows are Dennis Baron, Karin A. Dahmen, Craig Koslofsky, Mei-Po Kwan, Ralph W. Mathisen and Rebecca Stumpf.

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.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is among the U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2018-19 Fulbright U.S. Student Awards, as announced recently by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Internationally recognized architect and Illinois alumna Jeanne Gang will serve as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s 2024 commencement speaker.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign juniors Sriyankari Chitti and William Lyon were awarded Barry M. Goldwater scholarships for their potential to contribute to the advancement of research in the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering.

The Heavy Metals Project of the University Library will survey the 19th-century books in the Library’s collection and test those with their original cloth-covered bindings to determine if they contain traces of heavy metals in the pigments used for the covers.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’ upcoming season will include touring artists, rescheduled performances that were canceled due to COVID-19 and work from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s dance, music and theatre departments.

Illinois alumnus Josh Whitman has been named director of athletics by Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.