2025-01-07 - Martin Karplus, professor of chemistry emeritus at Harvard University and professeur conventionné at the University of Strasbourg, died Dec. 28 at the age of 94. A recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013, Karplus was a researcher and instructor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 1955 to 1960. During that time, he carried out important theoretical work...

2024-12-16 - More than 450 people attended two showings of the Holiday Magic Chemistry Demonstration Show that was revived in the 2024 holiday season thanks to staff members and teaching faculty members in the Department of Chemistry. Assistant Director of Teaching Labs Serenity Desmond spearheaded the effort to revive the popular family-friendly holiday-themed community event that demonstrates...

2024-12-10 - Hee-Sun Han, assistant professor of chemistry and Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) member and assistant professor of chemistry has developed an Intracellular Spatial Transcriptomic Analysis Toolkit (InSTAnT) that allows researchers to look at subcellular patterns, which could have many applications, including studying cancer. The...

2024-12-10 - One of the most momentous events in the history of life involved endosymbiosis — a process by which one organism engulfed another and, instead of ingesting it, incorporated its DNA and functions into itself. Scientific consensus is that this happened twice over the course of evolution, resulting in the energy-generating organelles known as mitochondria and, much later, their photosynthetic...

2024-11-22 - A former staff member in the Department of Chemistry, Evelyn Carlier, 92, of Champaign, died on Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. Carlier worked in the physical chemistry area office in the Department of Chemistry from 1976 until her retirement in 1996 as head secretary. She retired around the time that...

2024-12-06 - In a special ceremony on Nov. 16, 2024, the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, one of the premier research institutions in the world, awarded Professor Scott E. Denmark an honorary doctorate in recognition of outstanding achievements throughout his scientific career. The honorary doctorate certificate mentions his specific work developing new catalytic...

2024-10-31 - The Electrochemical Society awarded the 2024 Electrodeposition Division Research Award to Professor Andrew A. Gewirth, Peter C. and Gretchen Miller Markunas Professor in Analytical Chemistry. The Electrochemical Society seeks to advance solid state and electrochemical science and technology. The...

2024-12-04 - Markita Landry (PhD, ’12) is an associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a 2024 Blavatnik National Award winner and 2020 University of Illinois Young Aluma Awardee who recently returned to the University of Illinois...

2024-12-02 - A tiny, four-fingered “hand” folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed to interact with other viruses or to recognize cell...

2024-11-25 - In honor of the 80th birthday of chemistry Prof. John Katzenellenbogen, several alumni of his research group organized a scientific symposium that was held Nov. 8-9 on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus where he has been a faculty member for over 50 years. More than 70 alumni of the Katzenellenbogen research group returned for the event that included a one-day symposium featuring...

2024-11-20 - Scott E. Denmark, Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry, has been elected a Center for Advanced Study professor. Prof. Denmark is one of seven new CAS professors elected in November. The others are Lisa Ainsworth, Plant Biology; Jodi Flaws, Comparative Biosciences; Peter Fritzsche, History; Bill Gropp, Siebel School of...

2024-11-18 - Nicholas E. Jackson has won the 2024 Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum's Young Investigator Award.  Jackson, assistant professor of chemistry and Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Scholar, was cited for "the development and application of scalable quantum mechanical approaches to soft materials at...

2024-11-14 - The American Chemical Society's Board of Directors has awarded Petroleum Research Fund grants to 126 researchers, including chemistry professor Liviu M. Mirica, in the second application round of 2024. Mirica said this award from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund will allow his research group to develop functional model systems of the carbon...

2024-10-16 - By combining visible light and electrochemistry, researchers have enhanced the conversion of carbon dioxide into valuable products and stumbled upon a surprising discovery. The team found that visible light significantly improved an important chemical attribute called selectivity, opening new avenues not only for CO2 conversion but also for many other chemical reactions used in catalysis research...

2024-10-02 - For typical illnesses, the body’s immune system is a robust, pathogen-killing machine. It provides a general defense against harmful germs while also adapting and producing antibodies that target specific bacteria or viruses. After fighting off an infection like the flu, the body produces regulatory T cells, also known as Tregs. These cells send signals to slow down the immune system, usually an...