2025-07-01 - From flunking physics to commanding sailors and scanning the stars, Illinois alumnus Grant Miller’s journey is anything but ordinary. What started as a childhood fascination with the cosmos and a rocky freshman year at the U of I eventually led to a thriving dual career as an astronomy professor...
2025-06-24 - It began with a problem of scale. Modern telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, set to begin operations in October 2025, are poised to revolutionize astronomy by capturing unprecedented volumes of data—millions of time-variable astrophysical events across the sky each night. But with...
2025-06-24 - The Department of Astronomy sadly announces the passing of our friend and colleague, Icko Iben, Jr., distinguished professor emeritus of astronomy and physics. Professor Iben's research made an indelible mark on astrophysics and on this campus. He pioneered the theory of how stars work and how...
2025-05-02 - The astronomy department is proud to announce its Spring 2025 Academic Awards. The winners were recognized in an online ceremony on May 2nd, 2025. The ceremony was led by Department Chair Tony Wong and Director of Undergraduate...
2025-04-29 - The University of Illinois Department of Astronomy welcomed students, faculty, and alumni to its annual Astrofest event on April 25. Hosted at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the day-long celebration of research and discovery featured a mix of poster sessions, lightning talks,...
2025-04-22 - NASA has awarded $1 million to DeepDISC-Euclid, a groundbreaking interdisciplinary research project spearheaded by the Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This innovative project was significantly driven by graduate student Grant Merz, whose leadership and key...
2025-04-04 - Beneath its weathered dome, the Campus Observatory has housed groundbreaking discoveries and served as a gathering place where generations of students have explored the cosmos and built lasting bonds. But...
2025-02-10 - Congratulations to Prof. Leslie Looney, one of this year's recipients of the Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching! Leslie is not just a captivating and popular teacher, but has long been the driving force behind innovation in our curriculum. He will be honored at a...
2024-10-02 - The following passage is an except from an article about the proposed Hop-Enabled Real-time Observatory Information and Coordination (HEROIC) service from NCSA: "With hundreds of observatories scattered throughout the world, there has never been a better time for astronomers to observe the...
2024-09-19 - The following except below is from a recent article. Please follow the link for more information. Funded by a five-year, $20 million grant from the U.S. National Science...
2024-08-30 - New research by Prof. Xin Liu and graduate student Grant Merz is highlighted in an LAS News article (see link below). The project, known as Detection, Instance Segmentation, and Classification with Deep Learning, or DeepDISC, leverages machine learning—a branch of AI intertwined with computer...
2024-08-30 - One of the largest ever allocations of competitive telescope time on the James Webb Space Telescope will go to Prof. Shen's group for the North ecliptic pole EXtragalactic Unified Survey (NEXUS). NEXUS will address a range of topics from the evolution of galaxies and supermassive...
2024-08-29 - We want to congratulate the successful thesis defense of the newly minted Dr. Frankie Encalada on August 23, 2024. He is pictured with his committee members Professor Leslie Looney, Professor Tony Wong, and Professor Charles Gammie
2024-08-26 - Among the projects funded by a five-year agreement between the University of Illinois and Cardiff University in the United Kingdom is an inter-university collaboration on galaxy evolution led by Prof. Decker French (Illinois) and...
2024-08-02 - We want to congratulate the successful thesis defense of the newly minted Dr. Cail Daley. He is pictured during his thesis defense presentation. The committee members that joined the celebration are Professor Gilbert Holder, Professor Paul Ricker, Professor Jeffrey Filippini, and Professor Brian...