Awards

URBANA, Ill. — A total of 12 academic professionals at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were honored this week with the Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence award, encompassing the 2020 and 2021 award cycles. The recipients, six from each year, received their awards remotely due to the pandemic. Jean Drasgow, director of ACES career services, and Brenda Koester, associate director of the Family Resiliency Center, are CAPE award recipients this year.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Ryan Dilger, associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences, has been named one of five University Scholars at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. The honor recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service.

URBANA, Ill.  - Each year, the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) Alumni Association recognizes outstanding ACES alumni who have made a significant impact in their careers and their communities. The ACES Alumni Association announces the recipients of the Career Achievement and Outstanding Young Alumni Awards.

URBANA, Ill. – The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has awarded $1.12 million to support University of Illinois-led research to clean agricultural drainage water through saturated buffers and denitrifying bioreactors. The investment, part of NRCS’s Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) program, was matched by numerous stakeholder partners in Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, for a total of nearly $2.25 million. 

URBANA, Ill. - Each year the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences recognizes faculty, staff, and graduate students who have demonstrated outstanding achievements or exceptional service to the college.

The awards program was established in 1970 by the Paul A. Funk Foundation of Bloomington, as a memorial to the late Paul A. Funk, who attended the college as a member of the class of 1929 and devoted his life to agriculture.

URBANA, Ill. – A University of Illinois research team, led by Agricultural and Consumer Economics Professor David Bullock, received a $4 million award from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to implement on-farm conservation practices.

URBANA, Ill. – The Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL) at the University of Illinois has been selected by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to lead a new $1 million project — Innovation to Impact (i2i), as part of Feed the Future, the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative. Efficient technology delivery for commercial uptake and economic sustainability requires a demand-driven industrial research framework.

URBANA, Ill. – On Wednesday, the National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes announced a $20 million award to the Center for Digital Agriculture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop a new Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS) institute.

URBANA, Ill. ­–The Division of Nutritional Sciences graduate training program at the University of Illinois received a $150,000 Higher Education Challenge Grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to jumpstart development of courses as part of a proposed new certificate program focused on food/ feed regulations and nutrition policy. The new program will prepare graduate students for leadership positions in industry and government.

URBANA, Ill. – Five University of Illinois faculty members received major awards at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) 2020 annual international meeting. The virtual event took place July 13 to 15. Illinois recipients include Paul Davidson, Vijay Singh, Richard Cooke, and Prasanta Kalita, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) and The Grainger College of Engineering, and Laura Christianson, Department of Crop Sciences, College of ACES.