Thaddeus Bergschneider, an undergraduate student in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been elected as the 2024-2025 National FFA President.

The Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS), housed within the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has established the “Sharon M. Donovan Pediatric Nutrition Seminar Fund.” With the inaugural seminar scheduled for the spring of 2026, this annual seminar will serve as a platform for bringing world-renowned experts in pediatric nutrition to campus.

Invasive silver carp have been spreading throughout the Mississippi River Basin since their introduction a half-century ago. Yet, try as they might, the fish have not advanced beyond a particular stretch of the Illinois River north of Kankakee. Research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign shows the fish are likely avoiding contaminants from the Chicago Area Waterway, which flows south before petering out around Kankakee. 

Many of the youth participatory action research projects that aim to empower young people to lead change in their schools or communities often fail to fully integrate them into the process, diminishing participants’ learning opportunities and the projects’ potential impact, a recent study found.

A new Learning Accelerator program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been selected for funding through the American Talent Initiative IDEAS Fund, in support of the university’s first campuswide, dual-credit program for prospective students leading to first-time entry into four-year degree programs. The program will serve students at lower-income Illinois public high schools.

Infant sleep patterns and emotional regulation are important for healthy development, but it is challenging to get real-time insights into infant behavior. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign received two major grants from the National Institutes of Health to study infant development with innovative technology.

Changing precipitation patterns in the Neotropics, one of Earth’s most biodiverse regions, could threaten two-thirds of the area’s bird species by the year 2100 if climate change goes unchecked, according to new research led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and George Mason University. This would represent a dramatic loss, as the region is home to 30% of all bird species globally. 

What happens to ibuprofen after it eases your throbbing headache? Like many pharmaceuticals, it can remain in an active form when our bodies flush it out. That’s a problem, because although wastewater treatment plants are good at reducing nutrient pollutants in water, they aren’t designed to remove pharmaceuticals and personal care products. So antibiotics, hormones, and other drugs are sent back into streams and onto crop fields.

The foundation for healthy eating behavior starts in infancy. Young children learn to regulate their appetite through a combination of biological, psychological, and sociological factors. In a new paper, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign propose a model that explores these factors and their interactions, providing guidelines for better understanding childhood appetite self-regulation.