The Technology Entrepreneur Center is inviting faculty members and staff to judge student startup teams participating in the Cozad New Venture Challenge. The program helps students with new business venture creation. Nearly 140 teams will pitch their ideas at the Demo Day on April 11 at the I-Hotel and Conference Center. As a judge, our guidance can help students refine startup ideas. Join us.

McKinley Health Center has launched a new website. Please make sure you check and update any links you may have to our website. 

The College of Applied Health Sciences has announced its Department of Kinesiology and Community Health is changing its name to Health and Kinesiology as of July 1. Health and Kinesiology allows for a broader, more inclusive representation of the department and honors a legacy as leaders in the field of health and kinesiology. For more information, contact Mary Jones at mkjones@illinois.edu.

On behalf of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics will conduct our third campuswide assessment of research climate. Faculty members and selected staff and graduate students will be invited to participate by email from ethicsctr@illinois.edu on April 1.

The draft Fall 2023 list is now available at go.illinois.edu/lotrae. If your course is missing, check your instructor report against the criteria in the draft list. At least five students must have completed the relevant item(s) and you must have released your sections for inclusion on the list. For questions or corrections, email ices@illinois.edu or call 217-244-3846. 

As part of its ongoing celebration of Black and African American communities in the C-U area, The Black Joy Project is gathering recipes for a community cookbook. Beginning March 26, stop by the Museum to pick up a packet or visit https://go.las.illinois.edu/ItsBakedIn to find options to record yourself or submit your dish online along with helpful hints and instructions.

Moms Weekend takes place April 12 - 14, 2024! Invite your family to enjoy a beautiful spring weekend in Champaign-Urbana full of fun events for everyone! Major events include the IUB craft fair, a puzzling competition, "Just Desserts" culinary event, the annual Moms brunch, yoga and more! Check out the complete calendar for Moms Weekend and keep checking back for more events being added! 

Every spring, nature reminds us of the beauty of the wild spaces that surround us. Wildflowers bloom in the forest understory. Mushrooms pop up overnight in your front yard. The sun sets slowly over a lake. Explore tips to manage the threat of invasive plants, explore the fungus among us and learn about microplastic pollution with the Everyday Environment webinar series.

Join us for an exciting opportunity to discover how AI is reshaping education and empowering learners. This monthly online and in-person event will spark inspiration for educators, technologists, students, or those just curious about the future of education. Come chat and see real-world examples. Use the link to register and feel free to sign up to share a 5-minute presentation.

On Thursday, March 28, Harvard Law School professor and Chemistry at Illinois alum Richard Lazarus will present "The Making of Environmental Law: The Challenge of Climate Change." The lecture covers the story of environmental law from its emergence in the United States to the present day. Light refreshments provided.

Join the Center for Social & Behavioral Science (CSBS) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) for the Data Science for Social and Behavioral Science Kickoff Event, a half-day event on data science in social and behavioral science research! Click here to learn more and register.

David Takacs (professor at Harry & Lillian Hasting Research Chair UC Law, San Francisco) on "'We Are the River': Rights of Nature in a Climate Changed World" in held at Coble 306 and on Zoom. Discussing recent rights for nature laws, including the recent granting of a river and mountain ecosystem rights as legal persons by the New Zealand Parliament. Part of the CGS Event Series: Climate Change.

The Chancellor’s Call to Action to Address Racism and Social Injustice Research Symposium on Friday, April 5 will feature 25 presentations and a poster session of the Year Two 2022-2023 Call to Action projects. Register by March 29.

This workshop introduces citation as a practice that interacts with wider systems of power, privilege and prejudice, and considers possibilities for citational justice within those systems. This event will be hybrid on Zoom and in the Main Library, Room 106, and is open to all U. of I. affiliates. Please register by March 28, and you'll receive a reminder email the morning of the event.

No Agenda, Just Conversation! Come out and enjoy some coffee on us while getting some of your questions and concerns answered. We look forward to chatting with you! 

New campus networking group for Public Engagement and Outreach! Connect, share best practices, build partnerships! First meeting: April 4, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Illini Union, Room 104. Lunch provided! Register by April 1!

The workshop's content is suitable for researchers actively using Apptainer and university staff supporting systems or deploying Apptainer-based solutions. Register by March 28 and find more information with the link in the title.

The workshop outlines some key principles for graduate student mentoring, with case studies to explore what those principles look like in practice. We will touch on establishing and maintaining boundaries, navigating the relationship between mentoring and your own research program, considering student wellbeing and more. This interactive workshop is open to all faculty. Registration required.

Conversations about expectations provide an opportunity for mentors and mentees to reflect on and voice their goals and needs in the mentoring relationship and create paths for successful outcomes. We will touch on types of expectations, tools for communicating these (and reassessing over time) and strategies for handling difficult conversations. Registration required.

The Intensive Language Instruction Program (ILIP) offers classes in 13 different languages. ILIP classes combine language and culture via engaging activities led by skilled instructors. No grade, just for fun! Students receive 30 hours of enjoyable language instruction which maximizes exposure to the target language to help them meet their own personal learning goals. Register for ILIP today!

Ben Lerner is the author of eight books of poetry and prose as well as several collaborations with visual artists. His new book of poetry, The Lights, was just published by FSG. His most recent novel, The Topeka School, won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received many fellowships, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. 

This presentation seeks to motivate Western audiences towards a deeper understanding of Middle Eastern music. Participants will gain new insights into the beauty and expression of Arabic maqams and traditional rhythmic structures. The workshop incorporates music listening and live music demonstration to help increase awareness of this seminal musical genre.

Presenting Alia El-Bermani's "Alia El-Bermani: Evolution of a Painter."

Presenting Dwayne Tomah's "Language and Land." 

Learn how to conduct an effective literature search using PubMed, a free database home to millions of citations for biomedical literature. Practice basic search skills, such as boolean operators and applying filters, and learn techniques and tips for navigating PubMed, finding and saving relevant publications. All are welcome!

Learn about techniques for extending your video productions beyond the physical studio! In this workshop, we will utilize the HTC Vive tracking system at SCIM to bring live cameras into Unreal Engine for real time green screen compositing with a 3D environment instead of the more traditional 2D image/video. Additionally, we will demonstrate the control of our color adaptive lighting system.

Registration is now open for the Electric Utility Chemistry Workshop. This comprehensive program features state-of-the-art information on controlling corrosion, improving operation efficiency and meeting environmental challenges in fossil and nuclear-fueled power plants. The program for this interactive workshop can be found here.

Students who are undocumented, DACA or TPS experience unique challenges in higher education. Join university staff, administration and faculty to learn to better support undocumented students at the University of Illinois. This training is an opportunity to hear from undocumented students and join a network of campus allies. Light breakfast provided. Register to attend at the link above.  

The University of Illinois System and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem have launched the fourth round of funding for the Joint Research and Innovation Seed Grants Program with focus areas of all STEM topics and life sciences in general. Four interdisciplinary teams will receive awards of up to $50,000. The program will host an informational webinar on from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Wednesday, April 3.

Join us for a reading and Q&A with Professor Emma Pérez, author of the new book Testimony of a Shifter. Testimony of a Shifter is a queer, feminist dystopian novel that is perfect for fans of Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood. Pérez is a Research Social Scientist at the University of Arizona's Southwest Center as well as a Professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies. 

Michael V. Roberts, JD, is Chairman and CEO of The Roberts Companies. Throughout his rise in business, he maintained a strong commitment to the African American community. He will discuss the present status of emerging opportunities. A panel of entrepreneurs will discuss their experiences, and a Black Business Expo follows.

Learn about one of the most incredible and important pollinators at Bees in Your Garden from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 6, in The Studio. Master beekeeper Maggie Wachter will provide an overview of the most common bees native to Illinois, including bumblebees, mason bees and carpenter bees. $15 per person. Register here by April 3.

Monica Rickert-Bolter, an Afro-Indigenous visual artist, will be the next speaker in Allerton Park’s Olive Spannaus Education Series from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, in the Mansion Library. Rickert-Bolter will share her experience in developing her artistic practices, social justice work and building a native artistic community through the Center for Native Futures. $5/person. Register here.

Help celebrate the renovation of John Gregg Allerton’s former room (No. 4) on Saturday, April 20 in the Allerton Mansion! Thanks to gifts in memory of Jane Gregg Schowalter, John’s niece, his room has been beautifully restored to reflect its historic past. Open house, format with short program at 11 a.m. Free, but registration is appreciated for planning purposes. Register here by April 19.

Join Allerton Natural Areas staff on a unique bird-focused hike each Friday in April and May. Hikes are open to anyone and are free for Allerton Park Bird Club members. Registration is required to participate. Each week the hike will leave from the Allerton Main Parking Lot at 9 a.m. $5 per person, free for Allerton Bird Club members. Register here. Become a Bird Club member here.

How was food used as a weapon against African Americans during the civil rights movement in Mississippi? How did they fight back? Dr. Smith (Assistant Professor of African American Studies) and Monica M. Scott (Manager of Community Engagement and Programs at the Spurlock Museum) discuss his book, Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.

Studiodance Extended 2024 features work by third year MFA candidate Oluwadamilare (Dare) Ayorinde. The work focuses on Ayorinde’s time spent on deepening his understanding of the body while diving into the well of Black diasporic dance and their related worldviews. [Re-Re] is the performative aspect of Ayorinde’s thesis that reflects on the journey of that research.

Just four days away from the Illini Career and Internship Fair! Explore and connect with 90+ employers eager to engage with talent like you. Open to all majors and class levels. This is the last career fair of the school year, so don't miss it. Registration is encouraged but not required. Visit Handshake to view the list of employers and to register.

How are scholars of Black Britain addressing the erasure that Black people across the U.K. have faced? Caroline Bressey (Geography, University College London), Kennetta Hammond Perry (Black Studies, Northwestern University) and Rochelle Sennet (Music and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, College of Fine and Applied Arts) share research on Black Britons in a variety of media.

Join the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Women in Aerospace for a free screening of the film Fly Girls: Breaking Barriers in the Sky and learn more about the more than 1,000 World War II female pilots. Following the film, panelists will share their experiences as women in aerospace and aviation.

Saturday Engineering for Everyone is a free lecture series open to anyone interested in learning more about engineering. On March 30, artificial intelligence expert Saurabh Gupta will talk about research in computer vision, robotics and machine learning in "Instilling Common Sense into Robots." 

Learn about the concept of share tables, an innovation in school cafeterias for reducing milk waste. These tables offer a simple solution to prevent the unnecessary disposal of unopened milk cartons. Explore the potential of share tables in transforming school cafeteria programs and delve into ongoing research on the microbial spoilage potential of milk in these settings. Presenter: Gabby Pinto.

Join Songsu Son of Liberty University as he presents in person at the Spring 2024 Kent Seminar Series from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, March 28. Food and soft drinks will be provided beginning at 1:30 p.m. in the ICT Classroom. 

Join us for a screening of Mstyslav Chernov's award-winning documentary 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL. This documentary tells the story of an AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol as they struggle to continue their work documenting the atrocities of the Russian invasion. The screening is free and open to the public. 

The Center for Social and Behavioral Science invites social and behavioral scientists to learn about how they can use the Illinois Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) to answer important questions relevant to their research. The Illinois FSRDC on our campus provides access to restricted-use microdata from various federal agencies.

Juliana Freire, Institute Professor at the Tandon School of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Data Science at NYU, will present "Dataset Search for Data Discovery, Augmentation, and Explanation." CIRSS' Trustworthy Computational Science Speaker Series addresses the challenges of enabling researchers to build on prior computational research with confidence.

Web of Science is the widest-scoping, multidisciplinary platform of abstract databases for full-text articles, books and conference proceedings. We will highlight how to search for literature/authors and where to find citation tracking data and grant information. Additional strategies: advanced search builder, refining and managing search results, analyzing citations and unpacking item records. 

This session will give you strategies for getting the most out of Scopus, the largest interdisciplinary database of peer-reviewed literature, including journals, books and conference proceedings, particularly in the sciences. We will highlight how to find literature, reviewing author details, citation chasing and evaluating sources. Attendees will have time to ask individuals questions at the end.

There are lots of ways citations can go wrong. We will discuss inaccurate citation, citation cartels, fake citations and citation of retracted papers as well as current developments from two ongoing research projects: Natural Language Processing to Assess and Improve Citation Integrity in Biomedical Publications (ORI) and Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (Alfred P. Sloan).

This workshop will focus on advanced ways Illinois REDCap can be used to collect research data, including how to build or edit projects with a Data Dictionary, collecting data with repeatable instruments and collecting longitudinal data with defined events. Attending the “Introduction to REDCap” or having a working knowledge of REDCap is recommended before attending this workshop.

A manuscript should be evaluated by reviewers based on its quality and scientific merit. However, peer review has been pointed out in literature as a biased system comprised of biased people. This workshop will discuss types of bias in the peer review process - gender, race, nationality, prestige - the reputation of authors and share some recommendations to deal with reviewers and their biases.

Are you preparing for an upcoming conference? Need to design a poster for your class? This workshop will give you tools for communicating your research for academic conferences and professional meetings in a concise and visually effective poster presentation. This event is co-sponsored by Teaching, Learning, and Academic Support, the Writers Workshop and the Office of Undergraduate Research. 

The “Managing Digital Resources in Global and Area Studies” webinar will present valuable information and essential tools for students and scholars who need to manage and organize their personal digital archives, including photographs, primary sources and online texts. Register here: https://illinois.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_H15Gn-rXQYqI_QkL0uKLNA#/registration

Join We CU and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on March 26 at noon for an interactive workshop on addressing racism in service learning. Attendees will learn how to incorporate more equitable and just teaching practices in their service learning classrooms. This training is open to all instructors, including graduate teaching assistants. Register today!

NCSA and CIQ will offer the Intro to Apptainer workshop at 10 a.m. March 29. The content is suitable for researchers wanting to know more about containerization in HPC systems. Register by March 28 and find more information with the link in the title.

Presented by Dr. Jonathon Moir, Senior Program Manager at Beyond Benign for the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community platform, and Dr. Nimrat Obhi,  Program Manager for the Green Chemistry Teaching and Learning Community (GCTL). This presentation will provide an overview of Beyond Benign’s programs and a discussion of the newly launched GCTLC platform.

A special presentation by Ellen Swain, Celestina Savonius-Wroth, William Schlaack and Jessie Knoles. Join the Illinois Newspaper Project (INP) and the Student Life and Culture Archives to learn about the history of U. of I. student newspaper, The Daily Illini, and the Library’s efforts to preserve and make it digitally accessible!

This workshop elaborates on teaching practices useful for facilitating student engagement in collaborative problem-solving activities. We will also introduce assessment tools for evaluating student performance and learning during human-centered design challenges. 

Cybersecurity training helps you stay safer online, and your feedback is important. Please take the short Cybersecurity Training Survey at https://go.uillinois.edu/securitysurvey. All responses are confidential. We appreciate your participation as it helps us provide you with more engaging training opportunities! Please contact us at securitytraining@uillinois.edu if you have any questions.

Are you interested in XR? Join our research study "Impact of Computation Offloading on the End-User Experience in Extended Reality (XR)." Participants must be 18+, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and no known AR/VR aversion. Participation involves experiencing cutting-edge XR technologies and completing feedback questionnaires in a 1-to-2-hour session. Learn more and register here.

Is drinking causing problems in your relationship? The University of Illinois is conducting a research study for people with alcohol use disorder and their partners. Participants will receive 12 sessions of science-backed alcohol couples treatment and complete phone-based study assessments during their enrollment. Qualified individuals will be compensated for their time.

Participants needed for a study on health technology that supports BP medication adherence. Participants must be 65 years of age or older, take at least one medication for high BP and use an iPhone. Participants will receive compensation. Please spread the word to family and friends. (Study in partnership with the University of Arizona). Email bp-system@pharmacy.arizona.edu or call 520-477-9369.

To understand how personal experience is related to how people read, we invite adolescents (ages 14-17) who speak English at home for an in-person study. We will record the eye-movements while they read on a computer. We provide $15 per hour compensation and cover parking expenses. To learn more and schedule your appointment, please contact Dr. Anastasia Stoops, PI at: agusico2@illinois.edu 

We are exploring challenges encountered in daily activities for older adults (60+) with a history of stroke. If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulty with thinking, memory or concentration, we would like to learn from your experiences to develop solutions. The study will be conducted using videochat. Participants will be paid. Contact KCH-HFA-ENACT@illinois.edu or 217-265-0885.

Seeking women ages 18-40 with a 28-day menstrual cycle, who are not using hormonal contraceptives and have not been pregnant or breastfed a child in the past five years for an MRI study investigating how natural hormonal fluctuations influences brain structure and function. For more information, please contact zfl2@illinois.edu or call 847-504-9109. IRB #22738

The Alcohol Research Lab is looking for social drinkers to participate in our study. Participation involves attending one 6-to-9-hour laboratory session and completing cognitive, social and communicative tasks while EEG brain responses are recorded. A referral of at least one same-gender friend is required at the time of sign-up. Up to $100 in compensation.

Looking for adults aged 60-75 to participate in a study into prolonged sitting and how adults think. The study's aim is to test the feasibility of interrupting sitting with short bouts of high-intensity exercise in older adults and measure brain and cognitive functions before and after sitting. Compensation for participation is $280. If you are interested, please click here. 

Help make the Next Alcohol Fitbit! The Alcohol Research Lab is looking for frequent drinkers to participate in a validation study of transdermal biosensing bracelets. Participation involves attending three laboratory sessions, wearing a transdermal bracelet and filling out surveys for two weeks. Up to $300 in compensation for participation.

Are you a Latina woman who had a planned cesarean delivery in the past 12 months? We are looking for women (aged 18-45) to help us develop a mindfulness intervention for Latina women who plan to deliver by cesarean. Eligible participants will complete a brief online survey and receive a $10 electronic gift card. Contact us today at (217) 244-9363 or mamidappstudy@illinois.edu