News Bureau

A Minute With...™ Brant  Houston, expert on investigative journalism and co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network

An open letter from Interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson and Interim Provost Edward Feser on the strike organized by the Non-Tenure Faculty Coalition.

Children’s genetic risks for obesity may be reduced by interventions that strengthen family communication and help children manage their emotions and feelings of satiety, according to a new review of research on the problem by University of Illinois scholars Barbara H. Fiese and Kelly K. Bost.

Juan Felipe Herrera, the U.S. poet laureate and the first Latino to receive the country’s highest honor in poetry, will speak at the University of Illinois on April 28.

Analysis of a first-ever campuswide survey of recent Illinois graduates provides extensive information on where those students ended up after college. Released today, the Illini Success initiative invited 7,701 bachelor’s degree recipients in 2014-15 from nine Urbana campus academic schools or colleges to participate.

A Minute With...™ Charles J. Tabb, expert in bankruptcy, contracts and commercial law

Researchers have uncovered the existence of a dwarf “dark galaxy” lurking nearly 4 billion light-years away from Earth. The discovery was made when a team of researchers, including astronomers at the University of Illinois, using the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, noticed subtle distortions in the image of gravitational lens SDP.81. The discovery paves the way to spot many more such objects, which could help astronomers address important questions on the true nature of dark matter.

The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has awarded its inaugural 2016-18 IPRH-Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Bio-Humanities and its 2016–17 IPRH-Andrew W. Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowships in Bio-Humanities.

You may not win friends, but a new study finds that you can influence people simply by lowering the pitch of your voice in the first moments of a conversation.

Repeated voter contact across multiple election cycles can eventually lead to “mobilization fatigue,” says new research from U. of I. labor professor Ryan Lamare.

Krannert Art Museum will act on its multiyear commitment to transform galleries and other public spaces by renovating four main-floor galleries this summer. As a result, the museum will close to the public after the final day of its spring semester exhibition calendar, May 15.

A Minute With...™ Theo Malekin, a lecturer in Scandinavian studies

Advancing the University of Illinois educational mission to foster a “culture of discovery” and its commitment to innovative research and scholarship with global impact, Undergraduate Research Week, April 17-23, showcases the best of undergraduate research and creative inquiry at the University of Illinois.

Activities for Earth Week 2016 on the U. of I. campus are being organized by Students for Environmental Concerns. The U. of I. will host several other events leading up to and following the official dates, which are April 18-22.

A report on honors, awards, appointments and other outstanding achievements of faculty and staff members.

Margaret R. Henry … Clarence Lee "Pete" Phillips … Daniel Keith Slack

When anthrax became a household name in 2011, even curators of some herbaria were unaware that samples of Bacillus anthracis, the source of anthrax, had been housed in their microfungal collections for more than a hundred years. Recently, a digitization project at the Illinois Natural History Survey at the Prairie Research Institute unearthed the whereabouts of historical samples, including one at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Thirty-six University of Illinois students have won National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, including 31 graduate students and five undergraduates. An additional 52 students were accorded honorable mention.

Six academic professionals were honored with 2016 Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence awards at a reception April 12.

Finding a home for the bones of Tam Pa Ling here in the capital city of Laos has special meaning for me.

The University of Illinois Flash Index, which tracks economic activity in the state, fell for the second consecutive month in April, dropping to its lowest level since December 2012.

Garry Wills, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and historian, will examine the role of human beings on the planet when he delivers the Marjorie Hall Thulin Lecture in Religion on April 21.

University of Illinois has a history of Fulbright success, ranking as a Top Producer of Fulbright students nationally for the past six years. To capitalize on this momentum, the National and International Scholarships Program is partnering with several campus units to create the first Illinois Fulbright Week, offering a range of programming that both celebrates Illinois’ Fulbright tradition and seeks to continue it by recruiting the next crop of Fulbrighters.

The Sonified Sustainability Festival will celebrate sustainable practices in the arts with a concert by musicians playing instruments made from recycled or repurposed materials.

Scientists have finalized a five-year study of newborn and fetal dolphins found stranded on beaches in the northern Gulf of Mexico between 2010 and 2013. Their study, reported in the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, identified substantial differences between fetal and newborn dolphins found stranded inside and outside the areas affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

A Minute With...™ Brian Fields, expert on near-Earth supernovas

Three University of Illinois students have been nationally recognized for their potential to contribute to the advancement of research in the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering.  Two of the students were awarded Barry M. Goldwater scholarships for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years, and a third earned honorable mention.

March 2016 was the 10th-warmest March on record with an average temperature of 46.5 degrees, 5.2 degrees above normal.

Two upcoming public forums will provide overviews of the process for updating the campus master plan and ask for ideas on the future of the Urbana campus.

The Faculty and Staff Emergency Fund is seeking donations to meet its goal of $50,000.

Former University of Illinois police chief Paul Dollins is being remembered as a leader in law enforcement, a community builder and a great friend.

Wendy Mathewson, from left, academic advisor in the history department; Juniper Lawrence, 5; and Dashiel Gaines, 3, view a gingerbread house created by the children's mother, Brianna Lawrence.

Stanford University Ecologist Christopher B. Field will deliver the 2016 Charles David Keeling Lecture – “Climate Change: The Road through Paris” – from 7-8:30 p.m. April 14 in Room 100 Noyes Laboratory. A reception will follow.

Benjamin Cashore, a professor of environmental governance and political science with the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, will speak on campus April 8. The Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy program is sponsoring the event.

The Staff Advisory Council seeks nominations for one representative from Equal Employment Opportunity Group 5 (clerical-secretarial) and one representative from Equal Employment Opportunity Groups 1 and 3 (executive-administrative-managerial). These representatives will serve a four-year term beginning July 1.

Michael Posner, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon and an adjunct professor at Weill Medical College, will present the 2016 SmithGroup Distinguished Lecture at noon April 15 in the auditorium of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. His talk is titled "Mechanisms of Brain Network and Brain State Training.”

Jeff Moore will serve as the interim director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology; Paul Ellinger became the new vice provost for budget and resource planning; Katherine Galvin will join the Office of the Chancellor as an associate chancellor.

The committee leading an effort to update the campus master plan has announced a new website and that it will host two upcoming public forums.

Werner Baer … Andrew Bendel … Paul Wayne Dollins … Jerry D. "Squirrel" Exum, … Betty June (Brooks) Smith Golladay … Bill Hawn … Donna Mae Menacher

Memorial services: Paul Clifton Jr. and Gail Scherba 

A report on honors, awards, appointments and other outstanding achievements of faculty and staff members.

The School of Art and Design Master of Fine Arts Exhibition will show the culmination of three years of work by 10 graduate students in art and design. The MFA Exhibition opens at Krannert Art Museum with a public reception from 5-7 p.m. Saturday, April 9.

The first message an audience member receives before a theatrical or music performance or dance is to turn off cellphones and refrain from texting or taking photos.

John Toenjes, music director for the University of Illinois dance department, is telling audiences the opposite: Leave your phones on, and use them to interact with and enhance what you are seeing onstage.

A Minute With...™ Carol Tilley, professor and one of six judges of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards

Scientists hoping to explain widespread declines in wild bumble bee populations have conducted the first long-term genetic study of Nosema bombi, a key fungal pathogen of honey bees and bumble bees. Their study found that Nosema infections in large-scale commercial bumble bee pollination operations coincided with infections and declines in wild bumble bees.

Tam Pa Ling cave sits at the top of Pa Hang Mountain, in Hua Phan Province, Laos. Every day, we climb the mountain and descend into the cave to dig. The view from outside the cave is spectacular, but its location means that the only equipment that we can use to dig through the wet clay of the cave floor is what we can carry up the mountain.

I am a paleoanthropologist, and with a team of researchers from France and Laos, I have explored the mountains of northern Laos since 2008. We have been looking for evidence of the earliest humans that migrated out of Africa and into Southeast Asia.

Since 2009, we have excavated at Tam Pa Ling (“Cave of the Monkeys”), where we discovered fossils of the earliest modern humans living in this part of the world. Since then, we have found the bones of at least three people who lived in this cave around 50,000 years ago. Today, these bones will find a permanent home in a new museum in Vientiane.

The U. of I. Flash Index declined in March to 105.1 from its 105.6 level in February.

Film-related panel discussions have been announced for the 18th annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, coming April 13-17 to Champaign-Urbana.

In celebration of the 18th Annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival, Illinois Public Media – in partnership with the College of Media at the University of Illinois – produced “Ebertfest 2016: Center of the Universe.” This 30-minute companion documentary covers the life and legacy of Roger Ebert as well as the history of the festival. It also includes a short preview of Ebertfest 2016.

Coursera, a leading online education company known for massive open online courses, announced March 30 a professional data science master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.