LAS professors bring honor and recognition to the college.

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January 2024

  • Chadly Stern

    Chadly Stern, an associate professor in the Department of psychology, conducts research on motivations and belief systems and how they affect people’s interpretation of the world. A key part of his work considers political belief systems and how they shape people’s assessment and categorization of others based on group membership.

  • Kate Clancy

    Kathryn Clancy, a professor in the Department of anthropology, received the W.W. Howells Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association and a recommendation from the Scientific American for her book, PERIOD: The True Story of Menstruation (2023). The W.W. Howells Book Prize honors books in the realm of biological anthropology that represent the highest standard of scholarship and readability.

     

  • Helga Varden

    Helga Varden, professor of philosophy, was awarded the NAKS Senior Scholar Prize for her book Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Account. The NAKS Senior Scholar Prize is given annually to an excellent article or book that discusses any aspect of Kant’s philosophy.

  • Chunyuan Diao

    Chunyuan Diao, professor of geography & geographic information science, has been named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association of Geographer. Her nomination materials note her effective teaching and leadership. Diao's award brings the total number of AAG fellows from the Department of Geography & Geographic Information Science to five. 

  • Paul Hergenrother

    Paul Hergenrother, the Deputy Director of Cancer Center at Illinois, is the first University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researcher to receive the NCI Outstanding Investigator Award (OIA). The award recognizes significant research accomplishments and supports investigators for 7 years with up to $600,000 annually in direct costs. Hergenrother’s lab is credited with discovering multiple anticancer compounds like PAC-1 and TEQ103.

  • Professor Ghassan Moussawi

    Ghassan Moussawi, professor of sociology and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois, is the winner of the 2024 SWS Distinguished Feminist Lecturer Award. His nomination materials note his outstanding mentorship, his fight against injustice, and his advocation for his students.

December 2023

  • Kimberly Mack

    Professor Kimberly Mack of the English department has been awarded a prestigious Public Scholar Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH fellowship is a highly competitive grant program that supports authors in their research and writing of nonfiction books in the humanities for the broad public. 

November 2023

  • József Balogh

    The American Mathematical Society recently announced the winners of the 2024 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. Five people were awarded the prestigious prize; among them was University of Illinois mathematics professor József Balogh. Balogh, along with his co-authors Robert Morris (Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada), and Wojciech Samotij (Tel Aviv University) received the award for their 2015 paper “Independent sets in hypergraphs,” published in the Journal of the American Mathematical Society.

  • Justine S. Murison

    Justine S. Murison, professor of English, has received the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA)'s 2023 Book Award for "Faith in Exposure: Privacy and Secularism in the Nineteenth-Century United States." The Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA) is a non-profit organization of teachers and scholars of literature, language, and culture. 

  • Silvina Montrul

    Spanish and linguistics professor Silvina Montrul recently received two major honors. Her book "Native Speakers, Interrupted" (Cambridge University Press, 2023) has been selected as the winner of this year’s Leonard Bloomfield Book Award from the Linguistics Society of America. Montrul was also ranked in the top two percent of the world's scientists, according to Stanford University. This prestigious ranking is based on the bibliometric information in the Scopus database and includes more than 190,000 researchers from all over the world out of about 9 million scientists. Montrul is listed at number 94, out of a sublist of 399 for linguistics.

October 2023

  • Harriet Murav

    Professor Harriet Murav has won a prestigious NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations Award for her collaborative translation of “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union.” She will work on an annotated English translation of ten Yiddish and Russian short stories written in the Soviet Union about the Soviet Jewish experience of World War II and the Holocaust. Murav is a professor in the Departments of Slavic Languages & Literatures and Comparative & World Literature, the Program in Jewish Culture & Society, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the Center for Advanced Study.

  • Charles E. Sing

    Professor Charles E. Sing of chemical and biomolecular engineering has been awarded the 2024 John H. Dillon Medal by the American Physical Society. Sing was recognized for "pioneering advances in polyelectrolyte phase behavior and polymer dynamics using theory and computational modeling."

  • Mithilesh Mishra

    Mithilesh Mishra, director of the Hindi and South Asian languages program in the Department of Linguistics, has received the Service to Hindi Award from the International Hindi Association, whose focus is on fostering the cultural heritage of India through promotion and propagation of Hindi and its literature. 

  • Christy F. Landes

    The Biophysical Society has announced that Christy F. Landes, Jerry A. Walker Endowed Chair and professor of chemistry, will receive the 2024 Kazuhiko Kinosita Award in Single-Molecule Biophysics. Landes is being recognized for her exciting developments of single molecule measurement techniques, and their application to chemical and biological systems such as polymers and ion channels 

  • Trina Wright-Dixon

    Communication professor Trina Wright-Dixon was honored as one of this year’s inductees into the Oracles Council for the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender (OSCLG). According to OSCLG’s website, this designation "honors its members who have made significant contributions to the organization and makes available to the membership their experiences as leaders, scholars, and mentors."

  • Xinzhu Yu

    Xinzhu Yu, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology, has been named a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award from the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. This award "supports investigators at each career stage who propose innovative research that, due to their inherent risk, may struggle in the traditional NIH peer-review process despite their transformative potential."

September 2023

  • Atul Jain

    Atul Jain, atmospheric sciences, was elected as an American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Fellow. This program recognizes AGU members who have made exceptional contributions to Earth and space science through a breakthrough, discovery, or innovation in their field. He is one of just 54 individuals elected in the 2023 Class of Fellows.

  • Jefferson Chan

    Chemistry professor Jefferson Chan recently received a 2024 ACS National Award—the Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry. He received this award, which recognizes outstanding graduate students and their preceptors in the field of chemistry, for his mentoring of alumna Melissa Lucero (PhD, '22).

     

  • Renee Trilling

    Renee Trilling, professor of English, recently received the Best Teaching Aid or Public Outreach award from the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England. The International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England has "over 500 active members from 20 different countries, ranging from graduate students just starting their careers to the most established scholars in the field."

  • Wendy Heller

    Wendy HellerExecutive Associate Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Area Centers for the College of LAS and a professor of psychologyhas been reappointed to the Presidential Fellowship program for Fall 2023. She will serve as an advisor to the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Nicholas Jones, and President Killeen on matters relating to system-wide strategic initiatives, with special emphasis on fostering leadership of women across our system.

  • Robert Morrissey

    History professor Robert Morrissey has won 2023 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize from the Western History Association for his recent book, "People of the Ecotone." This award is given annually for the best book in western environmental history defined in its broadest sense.

August 2023

  • Jane Desmond

    Jane Desmond, professor of anthropology and affiliate faculty with the College of Veterinary Medicine, has been selected for a 2023-2024 Fellowship in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, a program designed for a dozen thought leaders selected from among applicants from around the world who wish to deepen their work in bioethics. Fellows are chosen on the basis of their previous academic achievements and the contributions they will likely make to the field of bioethics. Desmond will also hold a semester-long international Visiting Fellow research award from the British Academy for fall 2023. During this time she will be in residence at the Institute for Science and Society at the University of Nottingham in the U.K.

July 2023

  • Prashant Jain

    The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences have announced three 2023 laureates of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists and the finalists for the award, which include Illinois chemistry professor Prashant Jain.

  • Alejandro Lleras

    Aaron Benjamin and Alejandro Lleras (pictured), both faculty members within the Department of Psychology, have received the 2023 Mid-Career Award from the Psychonomic Society. The purpose of the Mid-Career Award is to raise the visibility of psychology and of mid-career scientists who are making excellent scientific contributions to the field.

June 2023

  • Xiao Su

    Chemical & biomolecular engineering professor Xiao Su has been awarded the 2023 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Separations division FRI/John G. Kunesh Award. The recipient of the award is chosen on the basis of their significant discoveries, important research, development of new products and processes, their introduction of new educational concepts, service to the separation division and community.

  • University Scholars June 23

    Merle Bowen (pictured), professor of African American studies, and Ying Diao, professor of chemical & biomolecular engineering, have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. The award is presented by the University of Illinois System to faculty members from the Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana universities.

May 2023

  • Scott Althaus

    Scott Althaus, professor of political science and communication and director of the Cline Center, has received the 2023 IJPP Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award for "Building Theory in Political Communication."

April 2023

  • Charles Schroeder

    The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology has honored Charles Schroeder, professor of chemical & biomolecular engineering, with its 2023 Beckman Institute Vision and Spirit Award. The award honors Beckman Institute Founder Arnold Beckman by recognizing a faculty member who has fostered collaboration in their research and exemplifies his vision.

  • John Levi Barnard

    John Levi Barnard (pictured) and Julie Gaillard, faculty members from the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, have received a Prize for Research in the Humanities from the Humanities Research Institute. These prizes recognize outstanding humanities research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

  • Yuridia Ramírez

    History professor Yuridia Ramírez (pictured) and Latina/Latino studies professor José de la Garza Valenzuela have been awarded 2023 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships.

  • Bo Li

    Bo Li, a professor of statistics, has been awarded the ASA Section on Statistics and Environment (ENVR) Distinguished Achievement Award for 2022. 

March 2023

  • Carol Symes 

    Carol Symes (pictured), professor of history, and Prashant Jain, professor of chemistry, have been named University Scholars in recognition of their excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. The award is presented by the University of Illinois System to faculty members from the Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana universities.

February 2023

  • Kara Federmeier

    Psychology professor Kara Federmeier, atmospheric sciences professor Atul Jain, and chemistry professor Liviu Mirica will be awarded the distinction of 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fellows are chosen by their peers for outstanding contributions to the field.

January 2023

  • Antoinette Burton

    Humanities Research Institute director and history professor Antoinette Burton has been named to the Illinois Humanities board of directors. Illinois Humanities, the Illinois affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a statewide nonprofit organization that activates the humanities through free public programs, grants, and educational opportunities that foster reflection, spark conversation, build community, and strengthen civic engagement.

  • Koshy

    Susan Koshy, professor of English, is guest editor of the latest issue of PMLA (October 2022), the flagship journal in literary studies. The special issue focuses on “Monolingualism and Its Discontents” with essays covering a wide range of historical periods, languages, and geographies.

  • Amy Marshall-Colon

    Amy Marshall-Colon, associate professor plant biology, was selected by the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory from its annual Exploratory Call. Her project seeks to expand our understanding of stem cell types and the metabolic dynamics between them, thus creating a molecular atlas of sorghum stem development and increasing our understanding of grass stem biology.

November 2022

  • Brett Ashley Kaplan

    Brett Ashley Kaplan (pictured) and David Wright Faladé were featured authors at the Texas Book Festival, which took place November 5 and 6 in Austin, TX. The Texas Book Festival is one of the premiere literary gatherings in the nation.

October 2022

  • Chadly Daniel Stern

    Psychology professor Chadly Daniel Stern has been named the 2022-2023 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Provost Fellow. The Provost Fellows program was created to further develop leadership skills at the university level for some of our most accomplished tenured faculty. Each Provost Fellow focuses on a critical campus strategic initiative to ensure we are living up to our full potential in our scholarly missions.

  • Marty Burke

    Martin D. Burke, professor in the Department of Chemistry and in Carle Illinois College of Medicine has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. Burke is honored for creating a modular molecular synthesis platform with broad applications in health science and technology, including his pioneering research on molecular prosthetics for cystic fibrosis, and for helping mitigate the spread of COVID-19 with saliva-based testing.

  • Diwakar Shukla

    Diwakar Shukla, professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been named a Pivot Fellow by the Simons Foundation. The Pivot fellowship program supports researchers who have a strong track record of success and achievement in their current field, as well as a deep interest, curiosity, and drive to make contributions to a new discipline. 

September 2022

  • Jeff Trapp

    Atmospheric sciences department head and professor Jeff Trapp has been awarded the American Geophysical Union’s Gilbert F. White Distinguished Award and Lecture. The AGU Gilbert F. White Distinguished Award and Lecture is given annually to an individual in recognition of outstanding original contributions to the basic knowledge of natural hazards and risks. 

  • Govindjee

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor emeritus Govindjee has been named a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Photosynthesis Research. Govindjee made pivotal discoveries into the mechanisms that drive photosynthesis in plants and algae and has written dozens of books about the process of photosynthesis.

  • Venetria Patton

    Andrew Leakey, professor of plant biology; Venetria Patton (pictured), Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Eva Pomerantz, professor of psychology have been selected as 2022-23 President’s Executive Leadership Program (PELP) Fellows. PELP is a unique professional development program designed to broaden participants’ understanding of higher education issues and to strengthen their leadership skills related to overseeing a public institution at the university or system level.

August 2022

  • Erik McDuffie

    Three LAS faculty members have been chosen as Fellows within the OVCRI Faculty Fellows program. Susan Koshy, Erik McDuffie (pictured), and Shaowen Wang will play an important role informing OVCRI thinking and policymaking, developing strategic initiatives, and bringing disciplinary perspectives to OVCRI programs and services.

  • Tim Dean

    Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor in the Department of English, has been chosen to receive the Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator Award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. This award is bestowed for "outstanding contributions to psychoanalytic education [...] in clinical and academic settings,  representing the broadest possible array of psychoanalytic knowledge."

  • Sonia Lasher-Trapp

    Sonia Lasher-Trapp, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, has been named as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. Fellows of the AMS have "made outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial period of years."

June 2022

  • Lisa Olshansky

    Chemistry faculty member Lisa Olshansky has been selected to participate in the U.S Department of Energy's Early Career Research Program. This program supports "talented researchers early in their career, [which is] is key to fostering scientific creativity and ingenuity within the national research community," according to DOE Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.

April 2022

  • Maria Todorova

    History professor Maria Todorova has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest honor societies in the nation. Todorova specializes in Eastern Europe, specifically the Balkans in the modern period. Her research focuses on historical demography, nationalism, socialism, and post-communism. 

  • So Hirata

    Illinois chemistry professors So Hirata (pictured) and Prashant Jain have received 2022 Guggenheim Fellowships. Hirata and his research team push the limits of quantitative theories and computing technology to interpret and predict the properties of molecules, polymers, solids and liquids. Jain directs a research laboratory on nanoscale light-matter interactions, including using concentrated photons for artificial photosynthesis, inducing emergent chemical reactivity and probing the molecular-level functioning of catalysts.

March 2022

  • Alison Bell

    Alison Bell of the Department of Evolution, Ecology, & Behavior has been selected to receive the 2022 Quest Award for outstanding seminal contribution from the Animal Behavior Society. The Animal Behavior Society is dedicated to promoting and advancing the scientific study of animal behavior; Bell's research is focused on understanding why individual animals behave differently from each other.