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IT Excellence at Illinois: News
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  • $1.75M Grant Boosts Ioptics Lab's Ultrafast Bioimgaging Research

    Jan 4, 2019 8:00 am1 views

    ECE ILLINOIS Assistant Professor Liang Gao's research is improving microscopic imaging, and a new $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will give his team a boost as they pursue ultrafast bioimaging and the promise of several fundamental scientific discoveries.

  • Headshot of Sheldon H. Jacobson in front of autumn trees

    Models predict optimal airplane seating for reduced viral transmission

    Jan 5, 2022 10:00 am0 views

    CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — As airline ticket sales have soared during the holiday season and the omicron variant causes surges of COVID-19 cases, a new University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study may help passengers and airlines reduce risk of COVID-19 transmission by optimally seating passengers to minimize potential virus spread.

  • It displays the photo of Illinois ECE Professor Naresh R Shanbhag

    Making AI Robust and Bringing It to the Edge

    Jan 6, 2021 12:00 pm0 views

    Enhancing so-called edge devices, such as cell phones, smart watches, and other IoT devices, with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities is a major goal for researchers in both industry and academia. These devices generate huge volumes of sensory data from their built-in sensors in the form of cameras, microphones, gyroscopes, and other technology. Processing all this data is challenging due to the limited computational resources and constrained energy supply of edge devices. A team led by Illinois ECE Professor Naresh R Shanbhag, Jack S. Kilby Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is working to improve the energy efficiency and functionality of these devices.

  • John Rogers talks about biosensors

    Jan 7, 2011 8:00 am0 views

    Professor John Rogers discusses his research in the field of biosensors. Rogers illustrates his work in creating ultra-thin and flexible biological monitoring devices

  • The informational history of international diplomacy

    Jan 7, 2011 8:00 am0 views

    In the wake of the recent WikiLeaks revelation, Professor Alistair Black explores the information and communication history of international diplomacy

  • Copiers: A Playful Look at How They Work

    Jan 7, 2011 8:00 am0 views

    Professor Bill Hammack uses power tools to take apart a photocopier. He shows how it works...

  • Heat Map images of mice brain activity. Three images side by side labeled "Wakefulness", "NREM", and "REM" for both Mouse 1 and Mouse 2. For both mice, "Wakefulness" and "NREM" are bright along a diagonal from the upper left to lower right. "REM" image is dark along that diagonal and bright everywhere else.

    New sleep state classification method combines deep learning with WFCI

    Jan 7, 2022 1:00 pm0 views

    Innovation can come from curiosity. Other times, it comes from necessity. This time, new sleep study research from the Computational Imaging Science Laboratory, led by bioengineering department head and HCESC researcher Mark A. Anastasio, came from a mix of both. A paper on that research, in collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis, was recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

  • iBioFAB: Reimagining our Approach to Synthetic Biology

    Jan 8, 2020 10:30 am0 views

    Across the University of Illinois campus — and at countless other research universities and institutes — biologists toil away at their lab benches, working on tedious tasks such as DNA assembly and microbe engineering.

  • New aircraft-scheduling models may ease air travel frustrations

    Jan 9, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    Flight schedules that allow for a little carefully designed wiggle room could prevent the frustration of cascading airport delays and cancellations. By focusing on the early phases of flight schedule planning and delays at various scales, researchers have developed models to help create schedules that are less susceptible to delays and easier to fix once disrupted.

  • Headshot of Al Bovik in front of blurred home office background

    ECE alumnus wins prestigious IEEE Edison Medal

    Jan 10, 2022 10:15 am0 views

    Illinois ECE alumnus Alan Bovik (BS CompE '80, MSEE '82, PhD '84) was recently honored with the IEEE Edison Medal "for pioneering high-impact scientific and engineering contributions leading to the perceptually optimized global streaming and sharing of visual media.”

  • Liberzon receives two NSF grants for hybrid systems research

    Jan 11, 2013 8:00 am0 views

    ECE Professor Daniel M. Liberzon recently won two, 3-year research grants from the National Science Foundation, both related to hybrid systems.

  • Karahalios Brings Social Computing Expertise To DARPA Group Focused On Techs Future

    Jan 11, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    Professor Karrie Karahalios has been invited to become part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys Information Science and Technology Study Group, joining Professor Sarita Adve to give Illinois Computer Science two researchers on the prestigious 30-member panel.

  • Two men in a room of early broadcasting equipment. One sitting holding a script near a microphone and the other standing near a machine adjusting dials.

    WILL at 100: Looking Back on A Century of Broadcasting

    Jan 12, 2022 10:00 am0 views

    URBANA – 2022 marks the 100-year anniversary of WILL-AM, the oldest component of Illinois Public Media. The University of Illinois launched the station at a time when the idea of using radio to reach a mass audience was new and cutting edge. There was no FM radio or TV, no internet or social media. The first trans-Atlantic telephone call was five years away.

  • Browser Boss

    Jan 13, 2020 2:15 pm0 views

    As a senior engineering director overseeing Google Chrome, Parisa Tabriz—aka the “Security Princess”—helps keep your computer safe against assaults by bedroom hackers, hostile nation states and everything in between.

  • Illinois ECE Graduate Student Wins Prestigious IEEE Awards

    Jan 13, 2021 6:45 pm0 views

    Illinois ECE graduate student Megan Culler recently won the 2019 IEEE-USA Jim Watson Student Professional Awareness Achievement Award, recognizing IEEE members who volunteer to share their professional experiences with students and encourage active, lifelong IEEE membership. This award was first established in 2011, but this is the first year that a student has been selected as the recipient. 

  • Graduate Student, Alumna Win At 2018 Midwest Machine Learning Symposium

    Jan 14, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    A team of researchers, including ECE ILLINOIS graduate student Cesar Augusto Uribe Meneses, recently won one of three Best Poster Awards at the 2018 Midwest Machine Learning Symposium in Chicago.

  • Varun Kelkar (left) and Sayantan Bhadra (middle), who are co-first authors of this work, pictured with principle investigator Mark Anastasio (right).

    Investigating Medical Imaging Hallucinations

    Jan 14, 2022 11:00 am0 views

    Researchers at the Beckman Institute developed a framework for understanding errors that can arise due to algorithmic bias in computed imaging systems, like MRI or CT, and may contribute to patient misdiagnosis. Their work provides insight into the factors that cause these so-called hallucinations.

  • These bots were made for walking: Cells power biological machines

    Jan 15, 2013 8:00 am0 views

    Designing non-electronic biological machines has been a riddle that scientists at the interface of biology and engineering have struggled to solve. The walking bio-bots demonstrate the Illinois teams ability to forward-engineer functional machines using only hydrogel, heart cells and a 3-D printer. With an altered design, the bio-bots could be customized for specific applications in medicine, energy or the environment. The research team, led by Rashid Bashir, published its results in the journal Scientific Reports.

  • The Power of Big Data

    Jan 15, 2014 8:00 am0 views

    As one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, Blue Waters became fully operational last spring. Although Blue Waters is the fastest supercomputer on a university campus, it is just one piece of the computing puzzle. As a world leader in computing and information technology, Illinois traces its computational roots back to the original vacuum-tube Illiac, generations of mainframe supercomputers, as well as world-changing innovations such as PLATO and Mosaic.

  • CSL Professors Research Group Testing, Statistical Analysis of Covid-19

    Jan 15, 2021 9:00 pm2 views

    Most of the United States has become fairly intimately acquainted with COVID-19 testing – be it by spit, nasal swab, or blood. While this type of individual work has been effective in identifying cases, CSL professors Venugopal Veeravalli and Lav Varshney are seeking to improve the efficiency of these tests and determine how to quickly detect changes in the distribution of disease prevalence data through their research project, "Efficient Strategies for Pandemic Monitoring and Recovery."

  • You Can Run, But Can You Hide?

    Jan 16, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    Fitness enthusiasts have embraced mobile apps to track their workouts. Using GPS on a mobile phone, it is easier than ever to not only determine how far a run is, but also to log the exact route. Sharing workouts has also become popular, thanks to sites like Strava and Garmin Connect. It gives runners accountability and a sense of community, and the sites often include leaderboards. Like most social media outlets, its users have the option of who gets to see that information.

  • Illinois Professor Lane Martin Earns Presidential Early Career Award

    Jan 17, 2014 8:00 am0 views

    University of Illinois professor Lane Martin is among the 102 researchers to receive the 2013 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor the U.S. government confers upon young investigators establishing their independent research careers.

  • PhD Student Willis Receives NIH Funding for Expansion Models Research

    Jan 17, 2018 8:00 am0 views

    Doctoral student Craig Willis has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to work with the biomedical and healthCAre Data Discovery Index Ecosystem (bioCADDIE)/DataMED team on a pilot project.

  • Chemical Etching Method Helps Transistors Stand Tall

    Jan 18, 2017 8:00 am0 views

    University of Illinois researchers have developed a way to etch very tall, narrow finFETs, a type of transistor that forms a tall semiconductor "fin" for the current to travel over. The etching technique addresses many problems in trying to create 3-D devices, typically done now by stacking layers or carving out structures from a thicker semiconductor wafer.

  • Stevenson to Present App Authors Project at Children's Literature Symposium

    Jan 18, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    Deborah Stevenson, director of The Center for Children's Books at the iSchool, will present the App Authors research project at the Border-Crossing in Children's Literature: The Second International Symposium for Children's Literature, which will be held on June 14-15 at Princeton University. The symposium will facilitate an exchange of ideas on new issues in children’s literature research between scholars from the East and West.

  • Grant to Expand Data Capsule Service of the HathiTrust Digital Library

    Jan 19, 2018 8:00 am0 views

    The iSchool at Illinois is involved in a partnership that has received a research grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for an extension of the Data Capsule service, which enables remote access by the HathiTrust Digital Library to other collections managed by research libraries. The partnership is led by the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University.

  • Headshot of Associate Professor Jingrui He

    He receives grant to improve performance of deep learning models

    Jan 19, 2022 10:30 am3 views

    Associate Professor Jingrui He has been awarded a two-year, $149,921 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve the performance of deep learning models. For her project, "Weakly Supervised Graph Neural Networks," she will focus on the lack of labeled data in Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), a deep learning method designed to perform inference on data described by graphs.

  • Contest gives students chance to show how to reduce electronic waste

    Jan 20, 2011 8:00 am0 views

    Creative and environmentally conscious students will have the opportunity to showcase their ideas...

  • Lightweight Power Converter for Future Electric Aircrafts Garners Top Prize for ECE Researchers

    Jan 20, 2017 8:00 am2 views

    ECE ILLINOIS researchers are making advancements in inverter designs for light-weight mobile systems such as aircraft and electric vehicles. In addition to mobile systems their work has potential to enable light-weight utility inverters which will reduce the cost of renewable energy installations.

  • Fostering Geospatial Discovery and Innovation through a National CyberGIS Facility

    Jan 21, 2015 8:00 am0 views

    CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies receives a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation

  • Orange block letters "EEG" over an image of EEG signals

    Carle Illinois Machine Learning System for EEG Analysis Wins IEEE Honors

    Jan 21, 2022 12:00 pm3 views

    A new machine learning system developed by a Carle Illinois College of Medicine student could unlock the vast amounts of untapped data found in a common neurological test. The team recently won ‘best paper’ honors at the 2021 IEEE Signal Processing in Medicine and Biology Symposium for their publication describing the new system to analyze and classify data from patient EEG tests for use by both clinicians treating patients and researchers seeking out new discoveries.

  • NCSA Processes Data for the Dark Energy Survey in the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe

    Jan 22, 2018 8:00 am0 views

    New measurements from data processed by the Dark Energy Survey Data Management (DESDM) project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign verify the theory that 26 percent of the universe is in the form of mysterious dark matter and that space is filled with an also-unseen dark energy, which is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe and makes up 70 percent of the universe’s contents.

  • Scientists Develop Gentle, Microscopic Hands to Study Tiny, Soft Materials

    Jan 22, 2020 12:00 pm0 views

    Handling very soft, delicate items without damaging them is hard enough with human hands, let alone doing it at the microscopic scale with laboratory instruments. Three new studies show how scientists have honed a technique for handling tiny, soft particles using precisely controlled fluid flows that act as gentle microscopic hands. The technique allows researchers to test the physical limits of these soft particles and the things made from them – ranging from biological tissues to fabric softeners.

  • It displays the photo of Illinois ECE Professor Brian T Cunningham

    Cunningham Leads Team to Create Fast, Cheap, and Accessible Covid-19 Antibody Test

    Jan 22, 2021 1:45 pm8 views

    As the numbers of those infected with COVID-19 has continued to climb, the desperate need for a vaccine was apparent. Even now with the invention and administration of several COVID-19 vaccinations, the question remains: How effective are these vaccines? HMNTL students Congnyu Che, Weijing Wang, and Nantao Li, also members of the ECE Nanosensors Group, along with Postdoctoral Researcher Bin Zhao and Illinois ECE Professor Brian T Cunningham have recently been published in Talanta journal for the development of a cost efficient COVID-19 antibody test.

  • Beckman Team Places in Top Three in Alan Alda Flame Challenge

    Jan 23, 2015 8:00 am0 views

    A Beckman Institute team, comprised of ECE Associate Professor Scott Carney, as well as Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows Bradley Deutsch and David Mayerich, and Bioengineering Professor Rohit Bhargava (an ECE ILLINOIS affiliate), decided to enter the Flame Challenge, a competition from the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York—and were named one of the top three finalists in the visual category, out of hundreds of applicants.

  • ECE Alumni Lead Major Expansion of Epiworks In Champaign

    Jan 23, 2017 8:00 am5 views

    The II-VI EpiWorks Division of II‐VI Incorporated, founded by ECE ILLINOIS alumni Quesnell Hartmann (PhD '98) and David Ahmari (PhD '98), announced that it is breaking ground on a state-of-the-art production facility in Champaign, Illinois.

  • Novel Nanoparticle-Based Approach Detects and Treats Oral Plaque Without Drugs

    Jan 23, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    When the good and bad bacteria in our mouth become imbalanced, the bad bacteria form a biofilm (aka plaque), which can cause cavities, and if left untreated over time, can lead to cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases like diabetes and bacterial pneumonia.

  • Comberiate wins EPEPS Best Student Paper Award

    Jan 24, 2014 8:00 am6 views

    Thomas Comberiate won the Best Student Paper Award at EPEPS 2013, the conference on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems.

  • Huang and Hasegawa-Johnson's Team Investigates Health Literacy

    Jan 24, 2018 8:00 am0 views

    ECE ILLINOIS Professor Mark Hasegawa-Johnson and Swanlund Endowed Chair Emeritus Thomas S Huang are a part of a team of researchers led by Daniel Morrow investigating the connection between health literacy and advanced age. Both Huang and Hasegawa-Johnson are affiliated with the Coordinated Science Lab.

  • Illustration of Covid Particle above a row of receptors

    New label-free detection technique digitally counts intact SARS-CoV-2 virus particles in saliva or exhaled breath

    Jan 24, 2022 11:45 am1 views

    As health and research institutions continue to rapidly develop new methodologies for detecting SARS-CoV-2, researchers from the Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory have found themselves at both forefronts of discovery and featured on the cover of the Journal of the American Chemical Society with their paper: Label-free Digital Detection of Intact Virions by Enhanced Scattering Microscopy.

  • COMPASS Method Points Researchers to Protein Structures

    Jan 25, 2016 8:00 am0 views

    University of Illinois researchers have developed a new approach, dubbed COMPASS, that points directly to a protein's likely structure using a combination of advanced molecular spectroscopy techniques, predictive protein-folding algorithms and image recognition software. Led by U. of I. chemistry professor Chad Rienstra, the team published its results in the journal Structure.

  • Harnessing the Power of the Data Revolution

    Jan 25, 2017 8:00 am0 views

    CS@ILLINOIS alumni have been helping drive the data science revolution. Advances have included Siebel Systems' customer relations management software and C3 Energy's smart energy platforms (Tom Siebel, BA History '75, MBA '83, MS CS '85, Honorary '06), YouTube's enormous online video archive (Steve Chen, attended, and Jawed Karim, BS CS '04), Yelp's authentic user-generated local reviews (Russel Simmons, BS CS '98), PayPal's online payment system (Max Levchin BS '97) and Informatica's enterprise data integration and management applications (Sohaib Abbasi, BS CS '78, MS '80)

  • New Informatics Tool Makes the Most Of Genomic data

    Jan 25, 2019 8:00 am0 views

    The rise of genomics, the shift from considering genes singly to collectively, is adding a new dimension to medical care; biomedical researchers hope to use the information contained in human genomes to make better predictions about individual health, including responses to therapeutic drugs. A new computational tool developed through a collaboration between the University of Illinois and Mayo Clinic combines multiple types of genomic information to make stronger predictions about what genomic features are associated with specific drug responses.

  • Popular Science showcases NCSA's Advanced Visualization Lab

    Jan 26, 2011 8:00 am0 views

    Featuring AVL's unique combination of science and art...

  • Software Teaches Computers to Translate Words to Math

    Jan 26, 2015 8:00 am0 views

    U. of I. computer sciences professor Dan Roth and graduate student Subhro Roy published their work in the journal Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, about software developed at the University of Illinois, which enables machines to learn to understand mathematical reasoning expressed in language which could greatly improve search engines and access to data as well as boost mathematics education.

  • Alumna's Dissertation Receives International Recognition

    Jan 26, 2018 8:00 am1 views

    ECE ILLINOIS alumna Homa Alemzadeh (PhD '16) was awarded the William C. Carter PhD Dissertation Award in Dependability, a prestigious award that is given annually by the IEEE Technical Committee and IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance to one new PhD graduate worldwide who has made significant contribution to the field of dependable computing through her PhD dissertation research.

  • HTRC Logo: white outline of an elephant head on an orange background with the words "Research Center" below.

    HathiTrust Research Center receives NEH support for open research tools

    Jan 26, 2022 10:45 am0 views

    The HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC), cohosted by the iSchool at Illinois and the Luddy School of Informatics at Indiana University, has received a $325,000 Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. One of 15 awarded nationwide, this grant will support the development of a new set of visualizations, analytical tools, and infrastructure to enable users to interact more directly with the rich data extracted from the HathiTrust Digital Library’s collection of more than 17.5 million digitized volumes.

  • ECE Receives Zedboard Donation for Research, Education

    Jan 27, 2014 8:00 am0 views

    Electrical and Computer Engineering students have started to use new design boards coupled with new design automation software in their classrooms and labs, and CSL and ECE Professor Deming Chen is one of the inventors of the algorithmic engine driving this software.

  • Genomics Among the Biggest of Big Data, Experts Say

    Jan 27, 2016 8:00 am0 views

    A new assessment from computational biologists and computer scientists at the University of Illinois and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory found that genomics is poised to be a leader in data acquisition, storage, distribution and analysis. The team’s assessment is published in the journal PLOS Biology."As genome-sequencing technologies improve and costs drop, we are expecting an explosion of genome sequencing that will cause a huge flood of data," said Gene Robinson, a professor of entomology and the director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

  • White Named SES Fellow

    Jan 27, 2017 8:00 am1 views

    Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Prof. Scott White has been selected as a Fellow of the international Society of Engineering Science.