2023-11-13
- Ozone (O3) in the troposphere negatively impacts crop growth and development, causing significant decreases in crop yield worldwide. This airborne pollutant does not come directly from smokestacks or vehicles, but instead is formed when other pollutants, mainly nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, react in the presence of sunlight. In an increasingly polluted atmosphere, understanding...
2023-10-25 - CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that a single, simplified model can predict population fluctuations in three unrelated realms: urban employment, human gut microbiomes and tropical forests. The model will help economists, ecologists, public health authorities and others predict and respond to variability in multiple domains, the researchers say. The new findings are detailed in the...
2023-09-27 - Representatives from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign broke ground Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023, on a state-of-the-art greenhouse in the Research Park. The planned greenhouse will support the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), which is led by Illinois Professor Andrew Leakey and nearly 60 other investigators across the country. CABBI is a $252.5M U.S....
2023-08-31 - Four SIB professors are participating in the Team Science Leadership Program offered by the IGB this fall. The Team Science Leadership Program is a new program being offered by the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, consisting of a series of workshops that bring together faculty from all over campus. The workshops are tailored to mid-career faculty, and focus on leadership...
2023-08-31 - The College of LAS has announced 33 faculty promotions to take effect during the fall semester. The promotions include 15 faculty members who were promoted from associate professor to professor; 13 who were promoted from assistant professor to associate professor; and five who received specialized faculty promotions. “We are proud to grant these well-deserved promotions to our faculty members,”...
2023-08-31 - A five-year study at the University of Illinois Energy Farm found applying ground-up silicate rock to Midwestern farm fields can capture significant amounts of carbon dioxide and prevent it from accumulating in the atmosphere. Working with Eion Corp., researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) developed a new method...
2023-08-25 - Paleobotanists at the University of Illinois understand one thing better than perhaps anyone in the world: Studying coal balls is a long-term commitment. The late plant biologist Tom Phillips began hauling the prehistoric objects out of the ground more than a half-century ago and filled a warehouse with tens of thousands of them. He passed away in 2018, but the coal balls have revealed only a...
2023-06-28 - The University of Illinois hosted the special event “Feeding a Heating Planet” — the third and final edition of the PBS NewsHour series “Tipping Point: Agriculture on the Brink” on May 24, 2023. During the 90-minute livestreamed event, Emmy-award-winning science journalist and...
2023-06-27 - More than four decades ago, field ecologists set out to quantify the diversity of trees on a forested plot on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, one of the most intensively studied tracts of forest on the planet. They began counting every tree with a trunk wider than a centimeter. They identified the species, measured the trunks and calculated the biomass of each individual. They put ladders up...
2023-06-08 - Like many ecological scientists, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James O’Dwyer has spent much of his career searching for ways to measure and predict how specific plant communities will fare over time. Which species in a diverse population will persist and coexist? Which will decline? What factors...
2023-05-25 - Anyone near campus with a green thumb—or at least an appreciation for it—has likely heard of the Plant Biology Greenhouse, including its popular 2,000 square-foot conservatory. As noteworthy as the local attraction has become in the past 30-plus years, efforts are underway to make the space even more educational and interactive. “We’ve done a lot of changes,” said Heather Lash, coordinator of...
2023-04-17 - Andrew Leakey, professor and head of plant biology, was featured in a weeklong "Science is for Everyone" promotion on social media by The Science Coalition, which kicked off with a short video featuring 17 questions. It covered everything from his daily bike commute to CABBI's interdisciplinary work developing technologies to grow next-generation bioenergy crops to produce clean bioenergy and...
2023-03-10 - Lexi Gomez is knee-deep in a pond when I first see her in the U. of I. Plant Biology Greenhouse and Conservatory. A fifth-year senior who will graduate this semester, Gomez dips a net in the dark water to clear the pond of debris fallen from the lush jungle of tropical plants that looms above. She attacks the work with gusto. As a greenhouse assistant, Gomez is involved in many of the activities...
2022-11-15 - Nine researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2022 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes research scientists and social scientists who have demonstrated exceptional influence – reflected through their publication of multiple papers frequently cited by their peers during the last decade. This year’s list includes 6,938...
2022-11-04 - Miscanthus is one of the most promising perennial crops for bioenergy production since it is able to produce high yields with a small environmental footprint. This versatile grass has great potential to perform even better, as much less effort has been put into improving it through breeding relative to established commodity crops such as maize or soybean.