Research

URBANA, Ill. – Nearly a decade ago, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) developed a new index to assess protein quality in foods. The goal, writ large, was to address food security for the world’s most vulnerable populations, creating more accurate tools for food assistance programs seeking to provide balanced nutrition.

Hans H. Stein at the University of Illinois knew he could help.

CHICAGO — The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) and The Grainger College of Engineering are expanding the City Scholars program to now include the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech).

City Scholars also will pilot a food and agriculture-focused track in Spring 2021.

URBANA, Ill. – For many livestock species, artificial insemination (AI) is standard. But it can be tricky to achieve success the first time, thanks to variability in ovulation timing across the herd.

URBANA, Ill. – Amid one of the strangest back-to-school seasons in modern history, many teachers, parents, and caregivers are struggling to enrich their students’ experiences beyond screen-based learning. A new study from University of Illinois researchers suggests daily outdoor lessons in green spaces could boost self-regulation in young children, setting them up for greater academic and social-emotional success.

URBANA, Ill. – The University of Illinois has been awarded $4.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) through its “Systems for Monitoring and Analytics for Renewable Transportation Fuels from Agricultural Resources and Management” (SMARTFARM) program. The funding will be used to calculate farm-scale carbon credits, allowing individual farmers to understand the value of their land and practices towards carbon trading markets.

CHICAGO, Ill. -- The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) is launching eight world-class research teams from the University of Illinois System and partner universities with more than $1 million in seed funding.

The goal is to develop these multi-disciplinary teams into international centers of excellence that will achieve significant economic and societal impact. Each nascent team is receiving $125,000 as well as administrative and grant-writing support, access to corporate partners and DPI’s downtown Chicago office. 

URBANA, Ill. -- Biofuel and bioenergy systems are integral to scenarios for displacing fossil fuel use and producing negative emissions through carbon capture and storage. But the net greenhouse gas mitigation benefit of these systems has been controversial, due to concerns around carbon losses from changes in land use and foregone sequestration benefits from alternative land uses.

URBANA, Ill. – Representing some of the most troublesome agricultural weeds, waterhemp, smooth pigweed, and Palmer amaranth impact crop production systems across the U.S. and elsewhere with ripple effects felt by economies worldwide. In a landmark study, scientists have published the most comprehensive genome information to date for all three species, marking a new era of scientific discovery toward potential solutions.   

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. – Imagine a tropical forest and you might conjure up tall trees hung with vines, brightly colored birds, howling monkeys, and … rain. Indeed, precipitation patterns, along with temperature, dictate where tropical forests are distributed around the world, but surprisingly, scientists know very little about the direct effects of rainfall on animals.