News

2008-12-31 - Wilfred van der Donk has won the 2008 SCS Teaching Excellence Award. Only three awards were granted this year throughout SCS. The award recognizes the entire scope of SCS educational efforts, from course development to in-class instruction.

2008-12-31 - Solving the equations of quantum mechanics for complicated systems becomes exponentially more difficult with each added particle, making simulations impossible because there simply isn't enough computing power to run the calculations.

2008-12-31 - The innovative course "The Chemistry and Biology of Everyday Life" developed by Yi Lu, Brandy Russell, and Lauren Denofrio is spiking interest. Lu has a recently published article in Science discussing the class. Click here to see the C&E News Article.

2008-12-31 - Dr. Yi Lu's research and Science paper (Science, 318, 1872-1873 (2007)) has been highlighted in a recent article in C&E News. Click here to read more.

2008-12-31 - The latest computer technology has buttressed a revolutionary look at how life evolved, while offering new potential for medicines. Carl Woese startled the scientific world in 1977 by positing that there are three essential domains, or types of life. Before, there were thought to be two, bacteria and everything else: eukaryotes, whose cells contain membrane-coated parts, such as the nucleus....

2008-12-31 - Todd Martinez and Ivan Ufimtsev demonstrated that quantum chemistry calculations on graphics cards can be completed over 100 times faster than on conventional CPUs. Read the J. Chem. Theory Comput., ASAP article here.

2008-12-31 - Dr. Jeff Moore's research, reviewed in numerous publications and selected for one of the Scientific American Top 50 Finest Awards, has recently been reviewed in The Economist. Read the article here.

2008-12-31 - Jeffrey Moore and colleagues at Illinois are working to develop composite materials such as reinforced plastics that will heal themselves if they are damaged. Their work was recently featured in an Economist Technology Monitor article.

2008-12-31 - Richard Herman, the chancellor of the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, and Jeffrey Moore, the Murchison-Mallory Professor of Chemistry at Illinois, have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced today.

2008-12-31 - A new study of the ribosome, the cell’s protein-building machinery, sheds light on the oldest branches of the evolutionary tree of life and suggests that differences in ribosomal structure among the three main branches of that tree are “molecular fossils” of the early evolution of protein synthesis.

2008-12-31 - John Katzenellenbogen, the Swanlund Professor of Chemistry, has received the Leading Edge in Basic Science Award from the Society for Toxicology (SOT). From the award website: The Leading Edge Award recognizes a scientist who has made a recent (within the last 5 years) seminal scientific research contribution/advance to understanding fundamental mechanisms of toxicity. The...

2008-12-31 - Martin Gruebele has been elected to membership in the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. The German National Academy of Science (the Leopoldina) is highly selective and the world's oldest academy for medicine and natural sciences having been created 355 years ago. Currently it has more than 1250 members spread across many different countries. Only 21 members were elected worldwide...

2008-12-31 - Martin Gruebele, the James R. Eiszner Endowed Professor of Chemistry has been awarded the 2008 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences.

2008-12-31 - Researchers report this week that they are the first to observe the dynamic, ratchet-like movements of single ribosomal molecules in the act of building proteins from genetic blueprints.

2008-12-31 - Martin Gruebele and collaborators have proven that protein folding modifies water molecules in the environment. Gruebele is presently at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany as a result of receiving the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize. To read the Innovations Report article, click here.