News Bureau

The paintings by Shozo Sato, the founder of Japan House and an emeritus professor of theatre and of art at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explore American landscapes, floral motifs and memories of postwar Japan.

The International Criminal Court’s recent issuance of arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin effectively means any country cooperating with Russia is now cooperating with an accused war criminal, says Illinois law professor Patrick Keenan, an expert in human rights law and international criminal law.

Revenue from collegiate sports TV networks may decrease cross-subsidization of athletic programs by other units at these colleges, but athletic programs' spending also seemed to increase, scholars Jennifer Delaney and Tyler Kearney found.

Six-time Olympic medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee will serve as the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s commencement speaker May 13 in Memorial Stadium.

The Illinois Neurodiversity Initiative at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is accepting applications from neurodiverse students who will be incoming freshmen in the 2023 fall semester.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been chosen to lead the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago – a new biomedical hub – along with the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. The three-university team was selected to lead the new biomedical hub as part of a competitive application process for a research initiative explicitly focused on measuring human biology.

One year into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the most likely outcome is a stalemate, despite the mounting cost in blood and treasure, said Edward A. Kolodziej, Emeritus Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an expert in international relations and global politics.

There’s nothing sacrosanct about the five-day workweek, which is long overdue for an overhaul, says Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

The 2023 Insect Fear Film Festival celebrates 40 years of entertaining and educating people about insects and their close relatives. This year’s festival features living fossil organisms.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign announced Dean’s List honorees and graduates for the fall semester 2022, as well as those who graduated in August 2022. 

Chemistry professor Mei Shen is among 126 early-career researchers receiving the 2023 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awards “honor extraordinary U.S. and Canadian researchers whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders.” Awardees receive a two-year $75,000 fellowship to advance their research.

A new exhibition at Krannert Art Museum, “Pattern and Process,” examines how artists use pattern to understand natural, physical and personal realms.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is among the U.S. colleges and universities that produced the highest number of applicants selected for the 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Student and Fulbright U.S. Scholar programs, as announced today by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

A memorial service for University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor emeritus Nick Holonyak Jr. will be open to the news media. The event takes place Thursday, Feb. 9, at 4:30 p.m. at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building, 306 N. Wright St., Urbana.

Very tall buildings are attractive options in cities where land is at a premium, but they come with construction challenges, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign architecture professor Abbas Aminmansour.

Starting in 2023, all police recruits in the state of Illinois must take a Wrongful Conviction Awareness and Avoidance course as part of their training. This course was first developed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Police Training Institute director Michael Schlosser with leaders of the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield.

The course impresses upon new recruits the importance of carefully gathering and analyzing evidence in investigations and not jumping to conclusions about potential suspects. It offers real-world examples of the harm that accrues from wrongful convictions, including a presentation from an exoneree.

Seven professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been elected 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are chosen by their peers for outstanding contribution to the field.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumna Brittney Nadler recently was awarded a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by Howard University, the Pickering Fellowship supports individuals who seek careers in the State Department’s Foreign Service.

Four women choreographers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign dance department will present their work at Studiodance 2023.

The Jan. 8 insurrection in Brazil’s seat of government was styled after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, says Jerry Dávila, the Lemann Chair in Brazilian History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and executive director of the Illinois Global Institute.

The bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act requires states to recognize same-sex marriages while balancing the interests of religious groups, says Robin Fretwell Wilson, the director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and the Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Chair in Law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Using the term “fake news” does not help audiences distinguish false information or sources and may be doing more harm than good, according to resarch by U. of I. communication professor Emily Van Duyn.

The Cline Center for Advanced Social Research’s Coup d’État Project initially categorized the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as an “attempted dissident coup.” But that classification has evolved to include the additional classification “attempted auto-coup d’état,” said Scott Althaus, the center’s director and a professor of both political science and communication at Illinois.

Thomas O’Rourke, a professor emeritus of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about how previous efforts to institute public health measures succeeded and how the same approaches can be employed to reduce the scourge of gun violence in the U.S.

Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations has awarded a grant of $34 million to the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project, an international research effort led by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In its 10-year history, RIPE has demonstrated large increases in crop productivity in replicated field trials on the university farm.

Krannert Art Museum has reinstalled its Moore Gallery of Decorative Arts to highlight new acquisitions and tell the stories of diverse artists, as well as examine the history of decorative arts collecting.

Mental health outreach programs for farmers also need to provide services for their teens, who have similar rates of anxiety and depression, said agricultural and biological engineering professor Josie Rudolphi. 

In a study of U.S. adults’ social media activity and polarization of their views on the Black Lives Matter movement, communication professor Stewart Coles found that people low in racial resentment who expressed themselves more frequently on these media were less supportive of BLM.

Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will visit the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as part of the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government, presented by the University of Illinois System’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs to recognize public officials who promote or demonstrate the highest standards of public service.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign senior Grace Mitchell, of Dixon, Illinois, was named a Schwarzman Scholar, one of 151 recipients selected from an international pool of 3,000 applicants. Schwarzman Scholars are awarded to students who seek a better understanding of China’s role in the world and have potential as future leaders. Mitchell is the fourth U. of I. student to win the award since the program’s inception in 2016.

The 27th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference concluded Nov. 18 at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, after two weeks of deliberations. Ashish Sharma, an atmospheric sciences professor and climate and urban sustainability lead at the University of Illinois System’s Discovery Partners Institute, spoke with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about the key takeaways from this year’s meeting and how academia can help implement those lessons.

The message sent by voters this midterm election? Candidates matter, since most voters assess candidates in multiple ways, not only according to party label, says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political science professor Brian Gaines.

The metaverse’s potential for transformation means it should be on everyone’s radar, says Robert Brunner, the associate dean for innovation and chief disruption officer at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Nine U. of I. researchers have been named to the 2022 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes research scientists and social scientists who have demonstrated exceptional influence – reflected through their publication of multiple papers frequently cited by their peers during the last decade. This year’s list includes 6,938 individuals from around the world whose papers rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science.

The Global Carbon Project published the Global Carbon Budget 2022 today, giving world leaders access to data on atmospheric carbon concentrations, emissions and trends for the 2022 United Nations Climate Summit – or COP27 – in Egypt. Illinois atmospheric scientist Atul Jain was among the many scientists worldwide who contributed data to the report. Jain talked about this year’s findings with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian.

Tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain and sitar player Niladri Kumar will perform together Nov. 16 at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts during their first tour as a duo.

Pianist Rochelle Sennet and Sinfonia da Camera will perform a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The debate surrounding the independent state legislature theory, which is at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court Moore v. Harper case, is ultimately a lopsided one that, under a principled originalist approach, should result in the court rejecting the theory, says Vikram Amar, the dean of the University of Illinois College of Law and a constitutional law scholar and expert on this theory.

The Biden administration’s new national security policy represents a shift to compete with China’s growing power, particularly to make strategic public investments in key industrial areas such as semiconductors, says Illinois law professor Patrick Keenan, an expert in counterterrorism law and international criminal law.

Horror films let us “choose the shape of our fears and then to face up to those fears,” said English professor Jim Hansen.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemistry professor Dr. Martin D. Burke has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine for his work in chemical synthesis, molecular prosthetics and COVID-19 testing.

October Dance – the dance department’s fall performance – will feature premieres of dances by choreographers from diverse backgrounds.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll states that roughly half of registered voters say climate change is either “very important” or “one of the most important issues” in their vote for Congress this year. However, many citizens struggle to understand their place in this global issue. Applied Research Institute senior research scientist Ann-Perry Witmer, also a lecturer in agricultural and biological engineering, spoke with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about a more digestible approach to the climate crisis and encouraged readers to participate in a public panel discussion this week.

The documentary “Jimmy in Saigon,” by Champaign native and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumnus Peter McDowell, explores the life and death of McDowell’s older brother Jimmy in Vietnam in the early 1970s.

It can be challenging to distinguish between a paid political ad and one that is not in today’s media environment, especially on social media. News Bureau editor Lois Yoksoulian spoke with advertising professor Michelle Nelson about the topic. New research from Nelson and her colleagues found that most adults – even those who are politically engaged and educated – do not fully understand online targeting, sources and funding for political ads, or the unique regulatory environment for political speech that is different from commercial speech.

Two University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign juniors are among 100 students nationwide awarded the inaugural Obama-Chesky Scholarship for Public Service, also known as Voyager Scholarships.

Homecoming Week at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign takes place Oct. 9-15, featuring an appearance by Illinois alumnus and Chicago sports announcer Gene Honda as the parade grand marshal.

The EU Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will host political scientist and author Ivan Krastev for a lecture on how the Russian invasion of Ukraine is reshaping the political imagination of Europe.

David Rosenboom, a pioneer in experimental music, will lecture, perform and conduct workshops with students during a two-week series of events beginning Oct. 3. “Experimental Arts & Sciences at UIUC” is hosted by the School of Music.

The “Black on Black on Black on Black” exhibition at Krannert Art Museum showcases the work of Black art and design faculty members in a new approach to the annual faculty art event.