News

2020-06-01 - As an alumna and faculty member, Professor Cathy Murphy brings a rare perspective to her new role as head of the Department of Chemistry, and her role also marks a historic moment as the first woman to lead the department in its 152-year history.

2020-05-26 - A senior researcher with appointments in biomedical engineering, chemistry and cell and developmental biology at Northwestern University, Alumnus Milan Mrksich was serving as interim when he was officially named vice president of research on May 14, 2020.

2020-05-12 - A research team, including chemistry's Jonathan Sweedler, has developed a mass spectrometry-based screening technique to rapidly profile certain fatty acids and identified new genetically-engineered mutants of a certain yeast that produce higher levels of those acids as part of an overall goal to convert renewable plant biomass to fuels and chemicals.

2020-05-22 - Professor Prashant Jain receives special recognition in promotion to full professor and is named to Alumni Scholar position in the Department of Chemistry.

2020-05-21 - The Sweedler Research Group has developed a new technique to measure the amount and distribution of lipids in rat brain samples. The technique can have potential applications in determining how the lipids change as a result of exposure to drugs of abuse.

2020-05-10 - Namuunzul Otgontseren, a junior studying chemistry who also works in Professor Jefferson Chan’s research group, has been awarded a Beckman Institute Undergraduate Fellowship.

2020-05-09 - Three chemistry graduates, Elizabeth McDaniel, Elizabeth Murphy and Alayna Johnson are part of a select group, Senior 100 Honorary, which recognizes students who are academically successful, but more heavily focuses on campus involvement and service.

2020-05-11 - For demonstrating exceptional leadership on campus, chemistry senior Elizabeth Murphy has been awarded the Patricia E. Askew Leadership Award for 2020.

2020-05-11 - More than 60 years ago, Eunice S. Wu left her home in Taiwan for the United States to study chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, following in the footsteps of her father who had graduated from Illinois. Since 2015, a scholarship in her memory helps other women seeking a degree in chemistry.

2020-05-08 - Seven University of Illinois graduate students have been named 2020 Beckman Institute Graduate Fellows, including chemistry graduate student Amanda East. The program offers University of Illinois graduate students the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research at the institute.

2020-05-08 - When tested in brain cells and in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, a new compound significantly reduced the number of amyloid plaques in the brain, lessened brain inflammation and diminished other molecular markers of the disease.

2020-05-08 - Awards Committee in the Department of Chemistry recommends the appointment of Professor Douglas Mitchell, who is doing world-class work on lasso peptides and other medicinally important chemistry that could lead to development of stable peptides as drug leads.

2020-04-30 - In the next academic year, two new junior faculty members will be joining the Department of Chemistry. Mikael Backlund will start this fall after completing his post-doctoral work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Nicholas Jackson will join the department in the spring semester from Argonne National Laboratory.

2020-04-30 - Recently honored as an American Cancer Society Research Scholar, this award allows Professor David Sarlah to explore how to successfully acquire a naturally-occurring compound with cancer-fighting properties that's found in the Hawaiian spider lily.

2020-04-29 - Elizabeth P. Rogers, a former Department of Chemistry faculty member who retired in 1988 after 25 years of teaching general chemistry courses, has died at the age of 100.