New Atlas, March 24, 2020 - Scrunching graphene up into a wrinkled mess rather than a neat, flat sheet is a technique being explored by researchers pursuing a number of new technologies. These have included using crumpled balls as components for better batteries, combining them with rubber to form artificial muscles, or bunching crumpled graphene balls together for next-generation energy storage. What excites the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team is crumpled graphene’s potential in biosensing applications where it could spot disease when other diagnostic tools cannot. The scientists see particular promise when it comes to finding subtle biomarkers for cancer that can hide in nucleic acids like DNA and RNA, as our current methods of detecting them have plenty of room for improvement.
COVID-19 MEASURES
SWHR 30th Aniversary Awards Dinner
NSP faculty Monica Fabiani and Gabriele Gratton
Brain Imaging and Tinnitus: International Interdisciplinary Conference
Brain Awareness Day
Extracellular Vesicle Biology and Technology Workshop
The Wildlife Society, March 20, 2020: "We always wanted to know, how does a host start to recognize a new threat?” said Matt Louder, lead author of the study published in Scientific Reports, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois. Louder, who is now an ecologist at the environmental consulting firm H.T. Harvey and Associates, said they already knew some red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) don’t attack the cowbirds when they are unfamiliar because they don’t share the same habitat or geographic area.
More Department News
- blog posts CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A diet including daily avocado consumption improves the ability to focus attention in adults whose measurements of height and weight are categorized as overweight or obese, a new randomized control trial found. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted the 12-week study, published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology. “Previous work has shown that individuals with overweight and obesity are at higher risk for cognitive decline and dementia in older age,” said kinesiology and community health professor Naiman Khan, who led the study. “We are interested in whether dietary approaches may have benefits for cognitive health, especially in midlife.”
- Nutrition, Wellness, and the Brain is a free 6-part series taught by Corinne Cannavale, a graduate student in the Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois. Attend all 6 sessions, or simply drop in on the sessions that fit your schedule. This program will be hosted at Lodgic, if you are in need of daycare or lunch, please check out their services. They do offer Kids Camp which is a DCFS licensed care center. Therefore they are able to accommodate children/families who have registered and completed the necessary paperwork. Families can find enrollment information by visiting their website at www.lodgic.org/kids-camp-membership-plans or by stopping by the center to get a first-hand look and speak with a member of their Kids Camp team.
- CSL Assistant Professor Lav R Varshney is featured in a new YouTube Originals series “The Age of A.I.” Varshney shares his expertise as the episode explores using artificial intelligence to build a better human. Hosted by Robert Downey Jr., the episode investigates augmenting human abilities with A.I. and our reliance on A.I. to make decisions for us.
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Faculty Spotlight
How would you describe your background? (I.E. where you are from? How did you first get interested in your area of research? Etc.) At the end of high school, I was trying to choose between psychology and chemistry. What convinced me to go to psychology was my aunt, who was a neurologist. I was having conversations with her and realized I really liked it. I started psychology as an undergraduate with an interest in physiology. From the get-go I started doing what was then called biopsychology, now it’s called cognitive neuroscience. At the end of my undergraduate studies, I applied for grad school at UIUC and came here as a graduate student. My graduate education is from Illinois. Then I left for 10 years. I had a position as a research scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute for four years, then I got a tenure track position at the University of Missouri, in Columbia. Illinois out of the blue called me asking whether I would be interested in coming back as faculty, so I came back here in 2001.
Alumni Spotlight
Career Development What field in Neuroscience did you study? What about the research process did you enjoy? Did you prefer gathering the data, brainstorming its meaning, the writing process, defending your research, presenting your research, etc. I studied circadian rhythms and the biological clock in the hypothalamus in the lab of Dr. Martha Gillette. We used a slice-in-a-dish model and I conducted electrophysiology in rat brain slices. I used this method to examine the signal transduction pathway of the hormone melatonin as it influenced the biological clock. I always enjoyed the actual experiments and the hands-on experience of working in the lab. As far as reporting results, I was more interested in the big picture and eventual clinical application to human medicine. I just never could get that excited about experimental results in my lab work (which was an indicator I was not in exactly the right career for me). I did enjoy synthesizing my work and giving presentations – eventually. As a grad student that first conference presentation was pretty scary. I also remember making all my slides by hand with CorelDRAW and Adobe Photoshop, before PowerPoint was standard.