2026-01-08
- Professor Mei Shen was recently featured as a 2025 Rising Star in Measurement Science in a special issue of ACS Measurement Science Au.The Rising Stars annual issue celebrates early-career researchers who are breaking new ground in the chemical sciences. Shen's research was featured in the special edition:...
Posted: 2026-01-08
2025-02-11 - The National Academy of Sciences has announced the selection of eighty-seven of the nation’s brightest young scientists from industry, academia, and government, including chemistry faculty member Mei Shen, to take part in the National Academy of Sciences’ U.S. and international Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia for 2025. These three-day events bring together scientists who are 45 or...Posted: 2026-01-08
2026-01-08 - For centuries, viruses have been one of mankind’s most lethal enemies. From smallpox to COVID-19, these tiny protein capsules have been responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. Vaccines, though crucial, are not always enough; vaccines need time to be maximally effective, and don’t work equally well in everyone.Antiviral medication can help fill the gaps but often fall short. Traditionally...Posted: 2026-01-08
2026-01-08 - Illinois faculty member Liviu Mirica, William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor of Chemistry, has recently been selected through three distinguished university programs to focus on developing collaborations toward his research group's interests in developing metal-containing imaging agents for biological applications.Last year, he was...Posted: 2026-01-08
2025-12-17 - Research led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Hyunjoon Kong and chemistry professor Hee-Sun Han, and performed by Ryan Miller, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, has unveiled a breakthrough technology that could transform the way scientists build and study lab-grown brain...Posted: 2025-12-17
2025-12-11 - Teaching faculty, staff and student volunteers entertained more than 300 adults and children who attended two Holiday Magic Chemistry Demonstration Shows on Dec. 6-7 in Noyes Laboratory on the Illinois campus. The popular holiday-themed chemistry show was revived in December 2024 after the pandemic and Noyes building projects forced the event into a temporary hiatus. Following up on...Posted: 2025-12-11
2025-11-25 - A new study marks a significant step forward in positioning synthetic polymers as an alternative for expensive, unsustainable minerals used in the manufacture of devices such as conductors, transistors and diodes.These newly tweaked polymers — developed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professors Ying Diao and...Posted: 2025-11-25
2025-11-17 - For nearly 30 years, scientists studying light-driven palladium-catalyzed reactions have suspected that a fleeting species of palladium plays a key role in the process. Leveraging their expertise with special ligands that stabilize intermediates so they can be seen and characterized, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers led by chemistry professor Liviu Mirica have successfully...Posted: 2025-11-17
2025-10-29 - A team of chemists led by M. Christina White, William H. and Janet G. Lycan Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has unveiled a breakthrough in selective oxidation chemistry that could significantly advance drug development with natural products. In a recently published paper in...Posted: 2025-10-29
2025-10-20 - Chirality, a property where structures have a distinct left- or right- “handedness,” allows natural semiconductors to move charge and convert energy with high efficiency by controlling electron spin and the angular momentum of light. A new study has revealed that many conjugated polymers, long considered structurally neutral, can spontaneously twist into chiral shapes. This surprising...Posted: 2025-10-20
2025-10-20 - Inspired by an artist’s stencils, researchers have developed atomic-level precision patterning on nanoparticle surfaces, allowing them to “paint” gold nanoparticles with polymers to give them an array of new shapes and functions. The “patchy nanoparticles” developed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers and collaborators at the University of Michigan and Penn State University can...Posted: 2025-10-20
2025-10-20 - CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Benjamin Snyder, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been named a 2025 Packard Fellow by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.The foundation cites Snyder’s work “developing new methods to define and...Posted: 2025-10-20
2025-10-10 - Scientists are exploring many ways to use light rather than heat to drive chemical reactions more efficiently, which could significantly reduce waste, energy consumption, and reliance on non-renewable resources.A team of chemistry researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been studying plasmon-induced resonance energy transfer (PIRET) — conveying energy from a...Posted: 2025-10-10
2025-10-09 - Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is a chronic autoimmune disease affecting more than 2.9 million people worldwide. It occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin sheath, the protective insulation around nerve fibers, causing disruption of nerve signals between the brain and body. Symptoms can include...Posted: 2025-10-09
2025-10-08 - When Nobel laureate Omar M. Yaghi (PhD, '90) was recently asked how he made the choice as a young scientist to pursue the idea of creating porous materials, he talked about two people in his life — his father and Walter Klemperer, his PhD advisor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In different ways, both inspired him to follow his own path."I had two people in my life who...Posted: 2025-10-08