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Chemistry News

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Stephan Link named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Chemistry Professor Stephan Link is one of three faculty members at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who have been named 2024 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. Link...
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Two postdoctoral researchers awarded the Anuj Khandelwal Memorial Travel Award
Two postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Chemistry have been awarded the 2025 Anuj Khandelwal Memorial Travel Award: Dr. Chieh-Kai Chan, a postdoctoral researcher in Martin D. Burke’s group, and Dr. Josseline Ramos Figueroa, a postdoctoral researcher in Wilfred van der Donk’s group. The...
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Chemistry postdoctoral researcher wins back-to-back Science Image Challenge titles
For the second consecutive year, Xiaolin Liu, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry, submitted a science image that has been selected the winner of the Main Category in the School of Chemical Sciences Image Challenge.  Liu conducts research in chemistry professor...
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Charles Schroeder, Jeffrey Moore, and collaborators receive $1.8 M NSF grant to develop self-replicating materials
Abiotic, or nonliving, self-replicating materials are often a topic of science fiction — but researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are working to synthetize materials that self-replicate, the same way...
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Mikael Backlund receives NSF CAREER Award for proposal exploring spectroscopy and quantum information
Mikael Backlund, assistant professor of chemistry, has received a 2025 National Science Foundation CAREER Award for a research proposal combining theory and experiments to determine the quantum information limits of single-molecule spectroscopy which could lead to advancements in the areas of...

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Roger Adams

Spotlight: Adams, Roger (1889-1971)

Roger Adams arrived at the University of Illinois in 1916 and enjoyed an illustrious long association with the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Beginning as an Assistant Professor, his career at Illinois spanned fifty-six years, until his death in 1971. "The Chief" served as Department Head from 1926-1954. He served as personal research director for 198 Illinois PhD recipients and many more postdoctoral research associates and fellows. While the education and training of these chemists were his primary concern, he selected their research problems for interest and potential...