• The south entrance to the Natural History Building has a new statue - a life size mammoth. Appropriate for Illinois, these magnificent creatures were native to the region until they went extinct about 13,000 years ago, around the same time as humans first came to the what is now Illinois. Photo by Rob Kanter. For more information, see ...
  • SESE Sophomore Sakshi Vaya was a finalist in the Reimagine Our Future Sustainability Competition - her project “Jeevatva – Bringing Waste into the Cycle of Use”. View her work and that of the other finalists at https://reimagine.web.illinois.edu/2022-competition-winners/
  • Two mounds on the Louisiana State University campus may be the oldest known structures in the Americas, with their oldest layers being 11,000 years old. Stratigraphic analysis and carbon dating of ash layers suggest that the mounds were built and used, at least intermittently, over thousands of years. As Prof. Brooks Ellwood notes: “There’s nothing known that is man-made and this old still in...
  • Professor Larry Di Girolamo is a co-Principle Investigator on the MAIA (Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols) NASA mission, working on the formulation and implementation of the mission, instrument design (particularly in its spectral, sampling, and orbital attributes), and cloud and aerosol algorithm development and validation. HIs group has lead responsibility for the operational cloud...
  • Warren Lavey and Holly Rosencranz describe the new Climate Change, Law & Health course at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This course is open to undergraduates across the university through the Campus Honors Program, and attempts to address one the greatest challenges facing the world today....
  • The New York Times just featured an article about the RELAMPAGO project in Argentina - a project run by our own Department of Atmospheric Science.  The project was lead by Professor Steve Nesbitt, with Professors Jeff Trapp, Francina Dominguez, and Deanna Hence as major participants with a large number of graduate and undergraduate students were also involved in Argentina.  Read...
  • Erinn Dady, a junior studying earth, society, and environmental sustainability, is working with Kevin Tan, an assistant professor of social work, Esther Ngumbi, an assistant professor of entomology, and Tracy Dace,...
  • Cloud seeding has become an increasingly popular practice in the western United States, where states grapple with growing demands for water. Measuring how much precipitation cloud seeding produces has been a longstanding challenge. Researchers have developed a way to use radar and other tools to more accurately measure the volume of snow produced through cloud seeding....
  • This past weekend in Washington, D.C, ESES major Erinn Dady presented her poster titled, "Soil Fertility and Arbuscular Mycorrhiza: Impact on Herbivore Induced Plant Volatiles in Tomato," at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Emerging National Researchers in STEM. Erinn was awarded 1st place in the sub-category: Ecology, grouped within the general category: Ecology,...
  • Clouds hold the key to understanding climate change - and University of Illinois are flying through storms to get the data we need to predict future change. See the article in verge magazine.
  • University of Illinois geologists Jack Albright, left, and professor Patricia Gregg are part of a team that has developed new computer models to help researchers better forecast volcanic eruptions. Volcanic eruptions and their ash clouds pose a significant hazard to population centers and air travel, especially those that show few to no signs of unrest beforehand. Geologists are now using a...
  • Professor Stephen Altaner led over 45 students and staff on the 2019 Annual SESE Field Trip. Participants were able to collect shattercones at the Kentland Impact Site, the site where U of I alumnus Robert Dietz showed that these structures were a result of meteorite impacts. They also visited Williamsport Falls, the highest free-falling waterfall in Indiana, and Portland Arch, a natural bridge...
  • A group of young scholars from Zhejiang University are participating in a summer school program in SESE for the next two weeks. Welcome to the University of Illinois!
  • Nidhi Shastri talks about the opportunities Illinois has provided to help her find her voice in the college newsletter  
  • Since 1892, the Natural History Building has been a landmark at the University of Illinois. Designed by the renowned Nathan Ricker—Illinois alumnus and first architectural graduate in the U.S.—the building underwent a $70 million renovation in 2014 to transform the interior into a modern learning environment while preserving the architectural details that led to its place on the National...