blog posts

• Entrepreneurs

  Aug 11, 2015 12:45 pm4 views

  Chicago Tribune (Aug. 6) -- Illinois boasts three of the universities that produce the most female entrepreneurs, with the U. of I. at No. 18.

• Drones

  Aug 28, 2015 9:30 am3 views

  Mashable (Aug. 27) -- The workers building a lavish new downtown stadium for the Sacramento Kings in California are being monitored by aerial drones and software that can automatically flag slow progress. "We highlight at-risk locations on a site, where the probability of having an issue is really high," says Mani Golparvar-Fard, a professor of civil engineering at Illinois, who developed the software with several colleagues.

• Emmett Till

  Aug 31, 2015 11:30 am3 views

  The New York Times (Opinion, Aug. 31) -- In an interview published earlier this month, a University of Illinois professor, Christopher Benson, co-author of the 2003 book “Death of Innocence,” about the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till, made a more direct comparison with recent police shootings of unarmed black men: “Before Trayvon Martin, before Michael Brown, before Tamir Rice, there was Emmett Till. This was the first ‘Black Lives Matter’ story.” 

• Fit Kids

  Sep 1, 2015 12:30 pm11 views

  CNN (Aug. 31) -- Kids who are physically fit actually have differences in their brain structures that might allow them to do better in math, according to a new Illinois study.

• Olga's brain

  Sep 3, 2015 4:00 pm0 views

  The New York Times (Sept. 2) -- At the age of 93, Olga Kotelko – one of the most successful and acclaimed nonagenarian track-and-field athletes in history – traveled to Illinois to let scientists study her brain. A new experiment by Illinois researchers who scanned Kotelko’s brain, however, bolsters the idea that exercise makes a difference in aging brains.

• Edible Insects

  Sep 4, 2015 3:00 pm0 views

  Los Angeles Times (Sept. 4) -- Compared with cows, crickets are way more efficient eaters. Feedlot cattle require at least 6 pounds of food to put on 1 pound of weight, and only about half of that weight is actual meat, said Dan Shike, an animal sciences researcher at Illinois.

• Cybersecurity

  Sep 4, 2015 3:15 pm0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Sept. 4) -- Local university IT folks were interviewed to see what advice they have for incoming freshmen, and what sort of things they're doing to protect student and university data. Brian Mertz is chief communications officer for the technical services department at Illinois. His office changes passwords on potentially compromised staff and student accounts every day.

• Origami Structures

  Sep 8, 2015 3:30 pm0 views

  The Daily Mail (London, Sept. 8) -- Origami structures would be useful in many engineering and everyday applications, such as a construction crane that could fold to pick up or deliver a load, or pop-up furniture, say researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo.

• Scientist Award

  Sep 9, 2015 1:00 pm0 views

  The Boston Globe (Sept. 8) -- On Tuesday, Illinois alumnus Stephen Elledge, 59, received the highest American honor for a scientist. He will share the $250,000 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award with Evelyn Witkin, 94, of Rutgers University. Elledge majored in chemistry at Illinois and was the first member of his family to go to college.

• College Rankings

  Sep 10, 2015 11:30 am0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Sept. 10) – The U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges Rankings for 2016 were released Wednesday. The U. of I. ranked No. 41, in a six-way tie with rival University of Wisconsin at Madison, Boston University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Rensselaer, N.Y., University of California at Davis, and Tulane University in New Orleans.

• Diet Soda

  Sep 11, 2015 2:15 pm0 views

  Daily Mail (United Kingdom, Sept. 11) -- Do you opt for a Diet Coke only to undo your good work by having a chocolate bar with it? You're not alone. A new study found people who drink diet drinks may compensate for the lack of calories by eating unhealthy foods. The team, led by professor Ruopeng An of the U. of I., looked at data on the dietary habits of more than 22,000 U.S. adults.

• Cubit

  Sep 14, 2015 3:30 pm0 views

  ESPN (Sept. 12) -- Turmoil at Illinois? What turmoil? Fifteen days after the Tim Beckman era abruptly ended at Illinois, the Bill Cubit era is off to an excellent start. The Illini haven't flinched despite the coaching change, taking care of business against weaker opponents in dominant fashion. They outscored Kent State and Western Illinois 82-3 in the first six quarters with Cubit at the helm.

• Whew!

  Sep 16, 2015 4:15 pm0 views

  WLS-7 TV (ABC; Chicago, Sept. 15) -- A quick-thinking cop risked his own life to protect a child in traffic. It happened on the U. of I. campus.

• Beckman Institute

  Sep 17, 2015 12:30 pm0 views

  Nature (London, Sept. 16) -- Asking for $40 million is never easy, but Theodore Brown knew his pitch would be a particularly tough sell. As vice chancellor for research at Illinois in the early 1980s, Brown had been tasked with soliciting a major donation from wealthy chemist and entrepreneur Arnold Beckman, a graduate of the university.

• 3-D Fabrication

  Sep 18, 2015 11:00 am0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Sept. 18) -- It might be the next big breakthrough in high-tech, 3-D fabrication, and it got its inspiration in part from a pop-up Christmas card. Researchers at Northwestern University and Illinois say they have developed a way to create complex 3-D structures from flat surfaces, which could revolutionize a host of areas such as semiconductor manufacturing, building construction and tissue regeneration.

• Football Broadcasts

  Sep 21, 2015 12:15 pm0 views

  The Japan Times (from The Associated Press; Sept. 19) -- Standing in a small, sterile booth high above the turf at Memorial Stadium, David He’s voice reaches a near-shout any time Illinois’ football team makes a big play against Kent State. He is a Chinese student at Illinois, and with partner Bruce Lu, part of a new and very experimental online Mandarin Chinese-language broadcast team for Illini football.

• Startups

  Sep 23, 2015 3:00 pm0 views

  Forbes (Sept. 23) -- By the end of 2015, investors are expected to commit more than $1 billion to wearable technology startup companies, according to a recent market research report. A company called VitalConnect has developed a low-profile plastic patch that can monitor vital signs, while researchers at Illinois have patented a stick on tattoo-like sensor, in which the electronics have been designed to bend, fold and stretch like normal skin.

• Falcon Search

  Sep 25, 2015 1:00 pm0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Sept. 24) -- Illinois is asking the public for help in finding a falcon that escaped from the school's Wildlife Clinic, which was caring for the bird because it is missing one eye and not considered able to survive in the wild.

• Viral

  Sep 28, 2015 12:30 pm0 views

  Discovery News (Sept. 25) -- Viruses have been difficult to classify, with some scientists arguing that they are just nonliving bits of DNA and RNA, yet new Illinois research not only finds that they are very much alive, but that they also emerged before the first modern cells.

• Scientist

  Sep 30, 2015 2:15 pm0 views

  The Washington Post (Sept. 29) -- Fred Kummerow, the 100-year-old Illinois scientist whose decades of warnings helped compel the federal government to eliminate artificial trans fat in U.S. food supply, has a birthday coming up Sunday.

• Mandarin

  Oct 1, 2015 2:45 pm2 views

  Chicago Tribune (Sept. 30) -- Illinois student Liaohan He and his broadcast partner Yekai Lu are the first to call an NCAA football game in Mandarin. They are broadcasting all Illini home games online through a free audio link on the team's website and a mobile app.

• Budget

  Oct 2, 2015 11:45 am0 views

  WUIS-91.9 FM (NPR; Springfield, Ill., Oct. 1) -- Collectively, Illinois' public universities educate some 200,000 students a year. Now, the campuses are "on the brink of serious operational damage." So says a letter all nine state public university presidents sent to the governor and legislative leaders. The letter says requiring the schools to operate without state funding is "unsustainable."

• Supreme Court

  Oct 5, 2015 11:45 am0 views

  The New York Times (Oct. 4) -- The new term’s biggest Supreme Court rulings will land in June, as the 2016 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, and they will help shape the political debate.“Constitutional law and politics are certainly not the same thing, but they are interrelated, never more so than in a presidential election year that will likely determine who gets to appoint the next justice or two or three,” says Vikram D. Amar, dean of Illinois' College of Law.

• Orange Edible Fruit

  Oct 6, 2015 11:30 am0 views

  St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Oct. 6) -- Many pumpkin growers were able to replant their fields in July, potentially preventing what could have been a pumpkin catastrophe. As a result, the year should produce a somewhat average yield, said Mohammad Babadoost, a professor of plant pathology and extension specialist at Illinois.

• Nutrition

  Oct 7, 2015 1:00 pm0 views

  United Press International (Washington, D.C., Oct. 6) -- Financial incentives for purchasing fruit and vegetables offered to households that participate in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, encouraged a greater increase in healthy foods being bought and consumed than other similar efforts, a new study found.

• iMBA

  Oct 8, 2015 12:00 pm8 views

  The Washington Post (Oct. 7) -- Coursera, a major site with free online courses, in May announced a new online way to earn a graduate degree in business. “Illinois' College of Business is developing the first open online MBA offered in part through Coursera,” says Coursera co-founder and President Daphne Koller. “This ‘iMBA’ program opens a number of pathways towards gaining a high quality education from a top business school.” 

• Engineering

  Oct 13, 2015 12:30 pm0 views

  Crain's Chicago Business (Oct. 12) -- Illinois, the state's flagship institution for STEM education, says its College of Engineering has seen record numbers of applications, which have doubled since 2010.

• Google Books

  Oct 14, 2015 1:00 pm0 views

  Slate (Oct. 13) -- Is Google Books leading researchers astray? Ted Underwood, an English professor at Illinois who has published and blogged about these issues for years, takes a moderate approach. He pointed to one study that used Google Books to make broad claims about the changing nature of childhood in the mid-20th century, a study that failed to acknowledge that parenting manuals emerged as a genre during that era.

• Textbooks

  Oct 15, 2015 12:00 pm0 views

  The Christian Science Monitor (Oct. 14) -- A bill introduced in the Senate last week could soften the blow of college textbook prices. This approach already works, says Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who sponsored the bill. An open source textbook, created at the U. of I. with federal funds, is currently used by more than 60,000 students from various colleges.

• Mandarin

  Oct 19, 2015 11:00 am0 views

  NPR (Oct. 16) -- For the first time, Illinois football has a Mandarin play-by-play and color team calling the game for streaming in China. Illinois has a huge number of Chinese students, and the activity has been getting the community more involved in campus culture.

• Dickerson

  Oct 20, 2015 11:15 am0 views

  Runner’s World (Emmaus, Pa., Oct. 19) -- Illinois alumna Marianne Dickerson, who won a historic silver medal for the United States in the first world championship marathon for women in 1983, died Oct. 14 at age 54.

• Global Warming

  Oct 21, 2015 1:15 pm0 views

  The Washington Post (Oct. 20) -- A new study in Nature Climate Change reaffirms concerns about the emissions of northern fires. The study, led by Ryan Kelly of Illinois, looked at a particular Alaskan region that has seen intensive burning of late – the remote Yukon Flats.

• Agriculture

  Oct 22, 2015 1:30 pm0 views

  Newsweek (Oct. 22) -- Right now – at this very moment – there are over 7 billion humans on Earth. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. K.C. Ting, head of Illinois' department of agricultural and biological engineering, works with farmers to increase yield while keeping the costs of things like water and fertilizer flat – or reduced.

• Administration

  Oct 23, 2015 11:45 am0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Oct. 23) -- The University of Illinois is on track to remove lucrative perks from the president and chancellor's compensation packages. President Timothy Killeen would no longer be eligible for a $225,000 retention bonus after five years in the job. Also, new University of Illinois at Chicago Chancellor Michael Amiridis will give up a $50,000 annual housing allowance because he has decided to live in a university-owned house.

• Comics

  Oct 26, 2015 4:15 pm0 views

  The New York Times (Oct. 25) -- Two years ago, Illinois professor Carol Tilley concluded in a research paper that psychiatrist Frederick Wertham had “manipulated, overstated, compromised and fabricated evidence” when it came to his assertions that comic books caused violent behavior. But back in the ’50s, he held sway, with negative consequences felt for decades.

• Research Park

  Oct 27, 2015 1:15 pm0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Oct. 26) -- Capital One has opened a digital lab at Illinois, joining Yahoo, Anheuser-Busch InBev and John Deere as companies with innovation centers on campus.

• Pumpkins

  Oct 29, 2015 11:15 am0 views

  Bloomberg (Oct. 28) -- Weird-looking or unusually big pumpkins fetch a hefty premium for growers, and seed companies like W. Atlee Burpee & Co. and Rispens Seeds Inc. have responded by developing hundreds of new varieties in recent years. The quirkier ones are winning a bigger share of the increasing market for decorative pumpkins in the U.S., said Mohammad Babadoost, a professor of plant pathology at Illinois.

• Meat

  Oct 30, 2015 12:00 pm0 views

  Chicago Tonight WTTW (Oct. 29) -- Hot dogs, bacon and other processed meats can cause cancer as well as red meats, according to a new report by the World Health Organization’s research division. How much is too much? We discuss the findings with Dustin Boler, an assistant professor in the department of animal sciences at Illinois and member of the American Meat Science Association.

• Chemistry

  Nov 2, 2015 11:00 am0 views

  Chemical & Engineering News (Washington, DC, Nov. 2) -- Illinois chemist Martin Burke has figured out a clever way to re-create nature’s gargantuan molecules by conceptually breaking them down into bite-sized pieces and then building them up synthetically. His start-up, Revolution Medicines, was selected as one of C&EN's "10 Start-Ups to Watch."

• Cowbirds

  Nov 4, 2015 12:00 pm0 views

  Nature World News (Nov. 3) -- Cowbirds are known for giving their young up for adoption by laying their eggs in a neighboring nest for other birds to raise. In a recent study, researchers from the U. of I. examined how young cowbirds grow up knowing they are different than their step sisters and brothers.

• Math

  Nov 5, 2015 2:15 pm0 views

  The Washington Post (Nov. 4) -- Sarah Lubienski, a professor of mathematics education at Illinois, writes about what the drop in math scores tells us about the Common Core State Standards, which have been implemented in most states for the past few years, and about the Core’s relationship to the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

• Athletics

  Nov 6, 2015 1:30 pm0 views

  Chicago Tribune (Nov. 5) -- After he served in a temporary role this summer, Illinois hired Dee Brown full-time as a special assistant to athletic director Mike Thomas. Brown, who retired in September from a professional playing career overseas, called the goodwill ambassador position a "dream job."

• Zero Net Growth

  Nov 9, 2015 11:00 am0 views

  St. Louis Post-Dispatch (from The Associated Press, Nov. 7) -- Illinois is trying to rein in expansion on its campus. The university approved a policy this past summer for “zero net growth” as part of an effort to reduce its carbon footprint. According to the policy, construction or leasing new space won’t be permitted if it increases total square footage the campus owns or uses.

• Relationships

  Nov 11, 2015 2:30 pm0 views

  Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 10) -- A new study from a researcher at Illinois has found there are four types of relationships, and they each last a different length of time.

• Tim Nugent

  Nov 13, 2015 11:30 am0 views

  WNPR-FM 88.5 (from NPR; Stamford, Conn., Nov. 12) -- Tim Nugent, known as “the father of accessibility” at Illinois, died Wednesday. Nugent is credited with fighting for people with disability laws and advocating for accessibility laws.

• Admissions

  Nov 16, 2015 1:00 pm0 views

  The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 16) -- Illinois, which has among the most Chinese undergraduates of any public university in the nation, is admitting state residents at the same clip as it was a decade ago, but fewer are enrolling because the school has sharply raised tuition.

• Student Experiences

  Nov 18, 2015 11:45 am0 views

  Today.com (Nov. 17) -- As part of a project called "Jason's List" where he helps grant people's wishes, Illinois student Jason Yue, a senior, decided to make flying a reality for Eric, who he'd been friends with since his freshman year at Presby Hall on campus, where Eric works.

• Professor of the Year

  Nov 19, 2015 1:00 pm0 views

  Inside Higher Ed (Nov. 19) -- The Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching announced today the four national and 35 state winners of their annual Professor of the Year Award. Mats Selen, a professor of physics at Illinois, was named Outstanding Doctoral and Research Universities Professor of the Year.

• Social Media

  Nov 20, 2015 11:45 am0 views

  The Washington Post (Nov. 20) -- A Facebook page ostensibly created for an audience at Illinois called “Illini White Students Union” has drawn fire after it characterized the national Black Lives Matter movement as “terrorism.”

• Labor

  Nov 24, 2015 11:30 am0 views

  Bloomberg (Nov. 23) -- While the new labor contracts only cover the more than 140,000 unionized employees at the so-called Big Three carmakers, they have the potential to lift pay standards for the nearly 1 million people who work in the U.S. auto industry and may also spur wage gains through the broader labor market, according to Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.