Profiles & Podcasts

2026-03-31 - LIKE MILLIONS of other kids, Charlie Young, CS+astronomy & statistics ’20, dreamed of being a big-league baseball player—and never made it past high school ball. "Fortunately, I was better at computer science." And by the time he reached Illinois in 2016, there happened to be an analytics revolution going on in the national pastime.Less than a year out of Naperville North High School, the young Young was thrilled when the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series. Poring over books on sabermetrics—the study of baseball data...

2026-02-10 - Astronomy professor Leslie Looney recently appeared on The UIUC  Talkshow for a wide-ranging conversation about what astronomy really is—and what it means to explore a universe that’s often difficult to even imagine. In the episode, he reflects on how astronomers turn faint signals into evidence, where our understanding of the universe comes from, and what he sees as one of humanity’s next great scientific questions: whether we are truly alone.The discussion also touches on...

2025-11-04 -  Patrick Aleo (PhD, astronomy ’24) still remembers the first time he looked through a telescope. He was in elementary school when his parents bought one for his brother, and one night, he took a turn at the eyepiece.“I looked at the full moon and I was transfixed,” he recalled. “Before that, things in space never felt real or tangible. From then on, whenever someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d say an astrophysicist.”That early glimpse of the moon set Aleo on a path that eventually led to a PhD in astronomy from the...

2025-08-26 -  When Jiayin Dong walks across the University of Illinois campus this fall, it will feel familiar and entirely new.Dong, an incoming assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy, is returning to Illinois as a faculty member, where she earned her undergraduate degrees in Engineering Physics and Astronomy. Previously a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for...

2025-07-29 - When Decker French learned she had been named a Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Scholar, it was a complete surprise.“I didn’t know that I was nominated,” she said. “So it was a very pleasant surprise! It is incredibly rewarding to have this kind of recognition for work that’s been evolving since I first joined the department.” The LEAP Scholar award is one of the campus’s most competitive honors for early-career faculty. For French, who joined the Department of Astronomy in 2020, the timing felt especially...

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 and a commissioned U.S. Navy intelligence officer.In this inspiring story from the Illinois Alumni Association, Miller reflects on second chances, stubborn perseverance, and the people who believed in him when he didn’t believe in himself. It’s a powerful reminder that setbacks don’t define your...

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 this scale comes a new challenge: How do you process, classify, and interpret this firehose of information when human analysis alone can’t keep up with the hundreds of new events being reported by Rubin every second? That’s the frontier being navigated by Gautham Narayan, professor of astronomy...

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, demonstrations, and plenary lectures.Astrofest started with a morning poster session, where students showcased their research across various topics from galaxy formation to virtual reality applications in astronomy. Throughout the day, participants heard from leading faculty members about their work...

2024-05-02 - The UIUC Talkshow recently interview Professor Charles Gammie, who was recently endowed the Ikenberry Chair.

2022-03-03 - Join astronomy student Shreya as she interviews professor Leslie Looney on the Main Quad at the University of Illinois.This video is part of the 940 Feet series, where College of LAS students and professors give a sneak peek of one of the UIUC's most beloved spots.Watch the full interview