News Bureau

This fall, U. of I. graduate students in the School of Architecture's recording historic buildings seminar will prepare drawings and other documentation on the historic Paul Schweikher House in Schaumburg, Illinois, for the Historic American Buildings Survey.

The American Society of Landscape Architects named a group of Illinois graduate students among its award recipients for 2016. Selected from 271 entries representing 71 schools, the ASLA student awards honor the top work of landscape architecture students in the U.S. and around the world.

Scientists at the University of Illinois may have unlocked the genetic code that determines why many patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer fail to respond to the widely used drug tamoxifen.

 A new exhibition at Krannert Art Museum looks at stories of migration, refugees and human rights as they relate to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – a region known as the Northern Triangle.

An eight-year study of soybeans grown outdoors in a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere like that expected by 2050 has yielded a new and worrisome finding: Higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations will boost plant growth under ideal growing conditions, but drought – expected to worsen as the climate warms and rainfall patterns change – will outweigh those benefits and cause yield losses much sooner than anticipated.

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts will soon see the difference in the facility’s energy bills. Every light fixture in the Foellinger Great Hall – other than those over the stage – has been changed from an incandescent to an LED light fixture. That’s well over 1,000 light bulbs.

Ernest M. Feiler

Childhood bullying inflicts the same long-term psychological trauma on girls as severe physical or sexual abuse, suggests a new survey of nearly 500 college students.

Mani Golparvar-Fard, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, won the 2016 Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Golparvar-Fard was cited for his “cutting-edge research focused on creating new knowledge in computer vision sensing and analytics to formalize simple yet effective project monitoring and control techniques for construction teams, as well as for his active engagement teaching philosophy.”
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Choreographer John Heginbotham was at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts recently for a two-week residency with his New York-based company Dance Heginbotham, during which he was developing a new production that will integrate dance with the work of visual artist Maira Kalman.

A brown-bag session, “Still Too Slow: The Advancement of Women,” will be held Wednesday, Sept. 7 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana, Room 314A.

The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is celebrating the opening night of its 2016-17 season with a party at the center on Friday, Sept. 9, at 500 S. Goodwin Ave., Urbana.

The University of Illinois has developed a repository that stores the data of Illinois researchers and provides access to it for other researchers who want to use the data in their own analyses.

Dr. King Li, a renowned researcher, educator, inventor and clinician in molecular imaging and radiology, will become the inaugural dean and chief academic officer of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine effective Oct. 1. 

Thomas J. Hanratty  ... Rembert T. (Jack) Gladin ... Bob I. Eisenstein 

On Aug. 26, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on the future of atmospheric chemistry research in the U.S. Illinois civil and environmental engineering professor Tami Bond was among the contributors

When an important bridge collapsed on Interstate 5 near Mount Vernon, Washington, in 2013, questions were raised about how such a catastrophic failure could occur. A new analysis by a team of civil engineering faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign outlines the many factors that led to the collapse, as well as steps that transportation departments can take to prevent such accidents on other bridges of similar design.

Kofusion will hold the grand opening of its Illini Union Food Court location Thursday, Aug. 25, at 10 a.m., with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. A limited number of free sushi samples will be available during remarks from Illini Union Board President Sophie Ruiz-Gehrt, KoFusion owner Janet Bubin and Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and the Director of Auxiliary Services Lowa Mwilambwe. 

Today, the National Science Foundation  announced a $110 million, five-year award to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois and 18 partner institutions to continue and expand the activities undertaken through the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, a cornerstone of the nation’s cyberinfrastructure ecosystem.

Guaranteed-tuition laws, touted by lawmakers as protecting college affordability and ensuring access to higher education for low-income students, have received failing grades from two University of Illinois experts in higher education finance.

A new study by University of Illinois researchers and collaborators in China has demonstrated that external mechanical force can directly regulate gene expression.

With popularly elected judges, political influence pervades and taints Illinois courts, said U. of I. legal expert Michael LeRoy.

Willard Charles Cekander

Chosen for their academic excellence and leadership potential, 131 freshmen and sophomores at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been designated Chancellor’s Scholars in the Campus Honors Program this fall. The Campus Honors Program admits up to 125 freshmen each year and up to 20 additional students join the program at the beginning of their sophomore year.

With its easy-to-miss symptoms and link to birth defects, the Zika virus is very similar to German measles (rubella), according to history professor Leslie Reagan

The Flatlands Dance Film Festival will present the feature film “A Ballerina’s Tale,” about American Ballet Theater principal dancer Misty Copeland, as well as short films created for Snapchat and the winners of the Flatlands film competition.

Women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer have long complained of lingering cognitive impairments after treatment. These effects are referred to as "chemobrain," a feeling of mental fogginess. A new study from the University of Illinois reports long-lasting cognitive impairments in mice when they are administered a chemotherapy regimen used to treat breast cancer in humans.

Japan House's Matsuri festival celebrating Japanese culture will be from 2 to 7 p.m. Aug. 28 at Japan House, 2000 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana.

The widespread use of the color red to signal danger can actually be counterproductive for certain people, says research co-written by Ravi Mehta, a professor of business administration at Illinois.

For gene-editing proteins to be useful in clinical applications, they need to be able to find the specific site they’re supposed to edit among billions of DNA sequences. Using advanced imaging techniques, University of Illinois researchers have found that one class of genome-editing proteins rapidly travels along a strand of DNA like a rider on a zip line – a unique behavior among documented DNA-binding proteins.

Despite the outcry from employers over the dearth of job-ready workers, three-quarters of U.S. manufacturing plants show no sign of hiring difficulties for job vacancies, says new research from Andrew Weaver, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

Virginia Marie Garth ... Robert Lee "Bobby" Sarver ... Wilson Miles Zaring ... William Paul "Bill" Manning

Wynne Korr, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois, discusses the challenges of diagnosing and providing treatment for this vulnerable population in light of the state's financial problems

James D. Anderson, the head of the department of education policy, organization and leadership and the executive associate dean for the College of Education, will become the interim dean of the College of Education effective Aug. 16.

Spiraling tuition rates at U.S. colleges and universities, and mounting concern about student loan debt, have made college affordability a key policy objective for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

An analysis of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults reveals that access to healthy foods in a supermarket does not hinder Americans’ consumption of empty calories. In fact, the study found, U.S. adults buy the bulk of their sugar-sweetened beverages and nutrient-poor discretionary foods at supermarkets and grocery stores. The findings challenge the "food desert" hypothesis.

The state superintendent of education said providing the SAT for free would promote equity in higher education. Education professor Eboni Zamani-Gallaher isn't so sure.

Braj B. Kachru ... Plessa Edward Mast ... Rebecca Ann Schweighart

Dozens of people buried in mass graves in an ancient mound in Cahokia, a pre-Columbian city in Illinois near present-day St. Louis, likely lived in or near Cahokia most of their lives, researchers report in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 

A new study challenges earlier interpretations of an important burial mound at Cahokia, a pre-Columbian city in Illinois near present-day St. Louis. The study reveals that a central feature of the mound, a plot known as the “beaded burial,” is not a monument to male power, as was previously thought, but includes both males and females of high status.

The University YMCA is seeking volunteers in Champaign County to join the 15th annual Dump & Run community recycling event to help divert reusable items from the landfill. Volunteers are needed beginning Aug. 8 and up to Aug. 21 to help collect, sort, price and sell household items at the garage sale on Aug. 20-21. Volunteers at last year’s event were able to divert approximately 27 tons of reusable items from the landfill.

Car companies can either “design for satisfaction” by investing in function and ergonomics or “design for delight” by investing in form, says new research from Raj Echambadi, a professor of business administration at Illinois.

Batteries that charge faster and have greater capacity could boost portable electronic devices and electric cars. A new method to simultaneously test stress and strain in battery electrodes gives researchers a window into the mechanical, electrical and chemical forces within lithium-ion batteries. The method revealed an unexpected point of stress in the charging cycle, which could guide development of better batteries.

For medicinal chemists, making tweaks to peptide structures is key to developing new drug candidates. Now, researchers have demonstrated that two iron-containing small-molecule catalysts can help turn certain types of amino acids – the building blocks of peptides and proteins – into an array of potential new forms, even when part of a larger peptide, while preserving a crucial aspect of their chemistry: chirality, or “handedness.”

In early 2014, months before the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and shortly after the Black Lives Matter movement got its start, Michael Schlosser, the director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, began offering police recruits classes that challenged their views about race and racism, introduced them to critical race theory and instructed them in methods to de-escalate potentially volatile encounters with members of minority groups.

Think Brazil and you might think beaches, rain forest, the 2016 Olympics – all far removed from central Illinois. Yet the University of Illinois is perhaps the most comprehensive center of Brazilian studies in the U.S.

A seed grant, along with some hard work by U. of I. student volunteers and museum staff, has grown a butterfly garden at the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum in Champaign. The “Growing Prairies and Growing Minds” butterfly garden and an archaeology exhibit will open to the public on Saturday, July 30, from 1-5 p.m. at the museum, 346 N. Neil St., Champaign. Guest speakers at the beginning of the event include Illinois state Sen. Scott Bennett and Deb Frank Feinen, the mayor of Champaign. 

A Minute With...™ Marc Hertzman, expert on the history of samba

The U. of I. is represented in the 2016 List of Most Cited Researchers in Materials Science and Engineering by Elsevier Scopus Data. Faculty researchers from several different disciplines were represented: Prashant K. Jain, Jeffrey S. Moore, Catherine Jones Murphy and Ralph G. Nuzzo (chemistry); Tami C. Bond, Wen-Tso Liu and Billie F. Spencer Jr. (civil and environmental engineering); Minh Do, Pramod Viswanath and Daniel Liberzon (electrical and computer engineering); and John A. Rogers (materials science and engineering).

David William Naive ... Iona M. Scheiwe