News

2016-08-01 - Illinois professors Nancy Sottos and Andrew Gerwith developed a method to comprehensively measure the mechanical stress and strain in lithium-ion batteries. It revealed a point of stress in charging that, if addressed through new methods or materials, could lead to faster-charging batteries.  Batteries that charge faster and have greater capacity could boost portable electronic devices and...

2016-08-01 - Chemists led by University of Illinois professor M. Christina White and graduate student Thomas Osberger found that two small-molecule iron catalysts can oxidize chiral amino acids and peptides to an array of unnatural forms, giving researchers more options for developing drug candidates.

2016-08-01 - Four University of Illinois chemists, Prashant K. Jain, Jeffrey S. Moore, Catherine Jones Murphy and Ralph G. Nuzzo were among the most highly cited authors as determined by Elsevier Scopus Data. They were among the top 300 of all researchers cited. Professor Jain was among the most highly cited in Chemical Engineering. Professors Moore, Murphy and Nuzzo were cited in the Materials Science and...

2016-07-01 - Elena Montoto was awarded a Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowship.

2016-06-30 - Three ILLINOIS students won the Judges Choice global innovation award with novel coating process to decrease greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Shell Ideas360. The Illinois team is one of five teams and the only team from the United States. As winners they received the Shell Ideas360 trophy and a National Geographic...

2016-06-01 - Alumnus, Mary-Dell Chilton, a genetic scientist, is a recipient of this year's University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award. She is founding director and vice president of Syngenta, a global biotech giant. Dr. Chilton received her PhD with Professor Lowell Hager, in 1967. During her years at Syngenta, Chilton has carried on the tradition of scientific mentorship that she learned at Illinois....

2016-05-01 - Clinical trials of the anti-cancer agent PAC-1 are continuing to expand, thanks to a $7 million angel investment from an anonymous contributor who originally invested $4 million to help get the compound this far in the drug-approval pipeline.

2016-05-01 - Paul Hergenrother is the recipient of this year's UCB-Ehrlich Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry. He was cited for outstanding contributions to chemical biology and anticancer drug discovery. He is a co-founder of the anticancer drug development company Vanquish Oncology. The “UCB-Ehrlich Award for...

2016-04-01 - Suslick's sensors monitored pollutant exposure of Disney original artwork, like this 1928 'Steamboat Willie' celluloid, during a trip to China © Disney Enterprises, Inc., Courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Research Library.

2016-04-01 - Prof. Catherine Murphy presents Melinda Sindoro the 2016 Klemperer Award.

2016-04-01 - Jeffrey Moore, the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and engineering, has been named interim director of the Beckman Institute , effective April 16.

2016-04-01 - Thirty-six University of Illinois students have won National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships including 11 students from the Department of Chemistry. Thirteen of the additional 51 accorded honorable mention are Chemistry students. “Thirty-six awardees places us tenth nationally among all institutions of higher education, and fourth among public universities,” says Ken...

2016-02-28 - Kami Hull and Josh Vura-Weis have both been selected to receive Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards and grants from the National Science Foundation to support their research program.

2016-02-17 - Members of the laboratory of Prof. Scott Silverman have identified synthetic DNA enzymes that cleave amide bonds, which are fundamental components of proteins. These DNA enzymes were identified by in vitro selection, using modified DNA nucleotides that have protein-like functional groups. The finding opens the door to synthetic DNA enzymes as novel proteases, with applications in fields such as...

2016-02-01 - Douglas Mitchell is the recipient of the 2016 National Fresenius Award. He was cited for his contributions toward the mechanistic understanding and reengineering of natural product biosynthesis. The award is given to a chemist, biochemist or chemical engineer under 35 years of age for...