A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AND CARLE HEALTH
April 26, 2021

Carle Illinois faculty member wins Beckman Institute’s 2021 Vision and Spirit Award

  • By Beth Hart

Martha Gillette, director of the Neuroscience Program, Alumni Professor of cell and developmental biology, and Carle Illinois professor, has been named the Beckman Institute’s 2021 winner of the Vision and Spirit Award. The annual award, which includes $150,000 in research funding, was created to honor Beckman Institute Founder Arnold Beckman by recognizing a faculty member who has fostered collaboration in their research and exemplifies Beckman’s vision. Beckman and his wife, Mabel, gave $40 million to […]

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April 20, 2021

IDEA Symposium highlights Carle Illinois students’ innovative solutions

  • By Ryann Monahan

The Carle Illinois College of Medicine IDEA Symposium features students’ innovative ideas to combine medicine and engineering to find solutions to problems in and transform healthcare. Carle Illinois’ IDEA Projects allow medical students to harness their peak creativity through Innovation, Design, Engineering, and Analysis (IDEA) projects. The students generate new ideas to improve health care challenges during each clinical clerkship. The first annual IDEA Symposium was held April 15, 2021. A recap of the event […]

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Rohit Bhargava and Georgina Cheng at CCIL view images of cancer cells
April 20, 2021

CCIL and Carle Collaborate on Cancer Management Project

  • By Beth Hart

Traditionally, someone in a lab will embed tissue in paraffin, pour dye and view it under a microscope to determine if cancer cells are present. However, researchers in bioengineering and medicine at Carle Health are going further and looking at the microenvironment, or molecular chemistry of the cancer cells to understand cancer progression. By measuring the molecular makeup of cancer cells and their effect on the surrounding cells and tissues, that information can provide insight […]

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April 16, 2021

Vaccine Advocacy PSA from Carle Illinois College of Medicine

  • By Ryann Monahan

 Carle Illinois College of Medicine students are helping answer questions about and advocate for the COVID-19 vaccine through a new vaccine public service announcement (PSA). A Spanish version of the vaccine advocacy PSA can be found on YouTube and Illinois Media Space.

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Shield Playbook Feature Image
April 14, 2021

K-12 Shield Playbook offers guidance for reopening schools amid ongoing pandemic

  • By Beth Hart

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new resource is available to help guide teachers and school administrators as they reopen schools amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, assembled by researchers and experts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As vaccines for the virus that causes COVID-19 become more accessible, more communities and schools are reopening. However, no vaccines have been approved for children under 16 to date, leaving school districts with many questions to navigate as they reopen […]

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April 5, 2021

Microscope that detects individual viruses could power rapid diagnostics, according to study led by Carle Illinois professor

  • By Beth Hart

A fast, low-cost technique to see and count viruses or proteins from a sample in real time, without any chemicals or dyes, could underpin a new class of devices for rapid diagnostics and viral load monitoring, including HIV and the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign described the technique, called Photonic Resonator Interferometric Scattering Microscopy, or PRISM, in the journal Nature Communications. “We have developed a new form of microscopy […]

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March 18, 2021

Health experts address rise in attacks against Asians in the U.S.

  • By Beth Hart

The alarming rise in racism, violence, and harassment against Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs), exacerbated this past year by the COVID-19 pandemic, is leaving short- and long-term impacts on public health in its wake. Over 3,000 cases of COVID-19-related hate and violence against individuals of Asian descent have been reported in the United States since March 2020, according to Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Los Angeles. Carle Illinois College of Medicine explores the recent discrimination and attacks, […]

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March 12, 2021

‘Hunker down’ stress genes boosted in women who live in violent neighborhoods

  • By Ryann Monahan

The chronic stress of living in neighborhoods with high rates of violence and poverty alters gene activity in immune cells, according to a new study of low-income single Black mothers on the South Side of Chicago. The changes in stress-related gene expression reflect the body’s “hunker down” response to long-term threat, a physiological strategy for lying low and considering new actions rather than launching an immediate “fight-or-flight” response. This has implications for health outcomes in […]

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March 12, 2021

New technique brings the study of molecular configuration into the microscopic domain

  • By Beth Hart

Researchers at the Beckman Institute have developed a new variation of an infrared microscope with analytical capabilities, allowing researchers to image biological samples at the microscopic level more quickly and accurately. The new instrument is based on the discrete frequency infrared spectroscopic imaging technique developed by researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The novel measurement technique is effective for probing the chemical conformations of biomolecules. “This […]

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March 10, 2021

Cheap, nontoxic carbon nanodots poised to be quantum dots of the future

  • By Ryann Monahan

Tiny fluorescent semiconductor dots, called quantum dots, are useful in a variety of health and electronic technologies but are made of toxic, expensive metals. Nontoxic and economic carbon-based dots are easy to produce, but they emit less light. A new study that uses ultrafast nanometric imaging found good and bad emitters among populations of carbon dots. This observation suggests that by selecting only super-emitters, carbon nanodots can be purified to replace toxic metal quantum dots […]

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