2019-01-16 -     Assistant Professor Jenny Druhan has been named a Theme Leader for a new Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) that is focused on the structure and function of shales. The EFRC is a collaborative research program led by Stanford University, with partners from the universities of Illinois, Southern California, and Wyoming as well as the SLAC National...

2019-01-15 - Professor Bruce Fouke was featured last weekend on NPR’s ‘The People’s Pharmacy’ talking about his group’s research on the deposits of kidney stones. This interview follows hot on the heels of publications in Scientific Reports and Earth...

2019-01-14 - Prof. Willy Guenthner’s (U-Th)/He lab is featured in a new AGU EOS article highlighting NSF support to geochronology and thermochronology labs that serve the broad geoscience community. As a part of this initiative, the lab will have a new full-time research scientist and manager, Linda Angeloni, who...

2019-01-02 -   Prof. Don U. Deere, who taught Engineering Geology at Illinois from 1955 to 1972, passed away on January 14, 2018, in Gainesville, FL at the age of 95.  A world-renowned engineering geologist and expert on tunneling, dam building and design, and the construction of large underground spaces, he received numerous distinctions throughout his career including being elected to...

2018-12-02 - Trish Gregg has been named as one of six LAS LEAP (Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors) Scholars for this year. The LEAP Award is granted to faculty early in their career based on scholarly productivity and contributions to the educational mission of their departments and the College of LAS. LEAP Scholars retain the title for two years and each scholar receives $5,000 in discretionary...

2018-11-28 - Professor Tom Johnson received his Fellowship from the Geological Society of America at its Annual Meeting in Indianapolis last week. Tom’s citation was ‘for his fundamental contributions to the analysis of chromium, selenium, mercury, and uranium isotopes in groundwater, in the context of environmental hydrogeology. In addition, he serves as the Head of the geology department at a Research I...

2018-10-17 - On October 4th, 2018, the department’s Alumni Achievement Award was presented to Dr. Norbert E. Cygan (B.S. ’54; Ph.D. ’62). Norb returned to campus with his wife, Royann, and enjoyed a day of catching up with old friends in the department, meeting new faculty and graduate students, touring the renovated Natural History Building, and presenting a talk about his career and one of his most...

2018-10-16 - In a paper just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Earth Surface, and led by graduate student Nate Bristow at the University of Notre Dame, Jim Best and colleagues Ken Christensen and Gianluca Blois, detail the fluid dynamics of colliding barchan dunes. These experiments, conducted in a unique flume facility that matches the refractive index of the working fluid and bed models and...

2018-10-08 - Geology Ph.D. student Robby Goldman was chosen by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) from a competitive applicant pool to take part in the AGU Voices for Science program. Robby has been very active in the UIUC Science Policy Group and as a result...

2018-09-14 -   Prof. Bruce Fouke and collaborators at the Mayo Clinic have teamed up to use geological reasoning and high-end microscopy to learn fundamentally new and medically important things about human kidney stones! The project involves both advanced petrography of the stones and research into the role of microbes in their deposition- a unique combination of approaches honed by the Fouke group...

2018-08-31 - Students, staff and faculty of all three departments of the School of Earth Society and Environment (Geology, Atmospheric Science, and Geography and GIS) enjoyed warm, breezy weather for the annual "First Day of Class” Barbecue, August 27th, 2018.

2018-08-07 - Adjunct Professor Sam Heads, an internationally known insect paleontologist, recently brought a rare and valuable collection of Oligocene insect fossils to campus.  The story of the collection can be found at: http://storied.illinois.edu/a-donation-for-the-ages/

2018-07-12 - Prof. Michael Stewart and the Illinois students attending the Wasatch-Uinta Summer Field Course based out of Park City, Utah have been working hard and observing some of the best Geology the west has to offer. Prof. Stewart and Lecturer Max Christie drove with most of the students from Urbana to Utah, and made several stops in the Rocky Mountains on the way. They were treated to a special tour at...

2018-06-20 -   The NASA ESS fellowship is highly competitive, awarded to ~10% of applicants, and provides funding for up to 3 years to support graduate research. Yan's NASA ESS Fellowship will support the remainder of his PhD work, which is focused on applying the High Performance Computing data assimilation approaches that he has developed to investigate the 2006 eruption of Korovin Volcano in the...

2018-06-20 -   The prestigious NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. The 5-year CAREER award will support the research Trish and her students are conducting using sophisticated geodynamic models to investigate catastrophic caldera eruptions and forecast volcanic unrest and the...