Current News

2019 AAPG Reception in San Antonio

If you will be at the AAPG Annual Meeting in San Antonio, please join us for a U of I Geology reception:

Monday, May 20th, 2019
6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Yard House
849 E. Commerce St. Suite #409
(one block north of convention center, on the riverwalk)

JON GOLLA RECEIVES NSF GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWSHIP!

New Ph.D. student Jon Golla has been awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

JESS CONROY AWARDED NSF CAREER GRANT ON OCEAN-ATMOSPHERE INTERACTIONS

Jess Conroy has won a highly competitive NSF CAREER award that will allow her to pursue a 5-year research program to advance our understanding of the water cycle in the tropical Pacific.

WILLY GUENTHNER AWARDED NSF CAREER GRANT TO TACKLE THE GREAT UNCONFORMITY

Prestigious NSF award supports research on the formation of Great Unconformity.

Trish Gregg Awarded New NASA Grant To Study Aleutian Arc Volcanic Unrest

Professor Trish Gregg has been awarded a 3-year, $540k grant, from NASA’s Earth Surface and Interior program to investigate the unrest of several volcanoes along the Aleutian Arc of Alaska.

Lunar Regolith Derived From The Earth's Archean Crust?

Illini Geology alumnus Jeremy Bellucci (B.S. 2006) publishes research that sheds light on Apollo 14 lunar sample

Fang Huang Profiled by The Geochemical Society

Petroleum Experts donates software to Illinois for research and education

BIG ISSUES WITH BIG RIVERS

Professor Jim Best has published a major review paper in the January 2019 issue of Nature Geoscience that examines the major anthropogenic stresses faced by the world’s great rivers.

JENNY DRUHAN NAMED THEME LEADER IN NEW ENERGY RESEARCH FRONTIER CENTER

Assistant Professor Jenny Druhan has been named a Theme Leader for a new Department of Energy funded Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) that is focused on the structure and function of shales

THE GEOLOGY OF KIDNEY STONES HITS THE MEDICAL AIRWAVES

Listen to Professor Bruce Fouke discuss his groups work on the geology of kidney stones on NPR’s ‘The People’s Pharmacy’.

WILLY GUENTHNER’S DEEP-TIME HELIUM ANALYSIS LAB (HAL) FEATURED IN AGU EOS SPOTLIGHT

Prof. Willy Guenthner’s (U-Th)/He lab is featured in a new AGU EOS article.

Prof. Don Deere: 1922-2018

Prof. Don U. Deere, who taught Engineering Geology at Illinois from 1955 to 1972, passed away on January 14, 2018.  Don was a world-renowned engineering geologist and expert on tunneling, dam building and design, and the construction of large underground spaces.

TRISH GREGG NAMED A LEAP SCHOLAR

Professor Trish Gregg has been recognized as a Liberal Arts and Sciences LEAP Scholar for her contributions and potential in both teaching and research.

TOM JOHNSON RECEIVES GSA FELLOWSHIP AT INDY MEETING

Professor Tom Johnson receives his Geological Society of America Fellowship

Norb Cygan (B.S. ’54; Ph.D. ’62) Receives Geology Alumni Achievement Award

The Fluid Dynamics Of Colliding Dunes

Professor Jim Best and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame have used a unique refractive-index matching flume to gain new insights into how barchan dunes interact.

PhD Student Robby Goldman Chosen for AGU "Voices for Science" Program

Prof. Bruce Fouke Collaborates With Mayo Clinic For Kidney Stones Research

Prof. Bruce Fouke and collaborators at the Mayo Clinic have teamed up to use geological reasoning and high-end microscopy to learn fundamentally new and medically important things about human kidney stones!

Students, Faculty, And Staff Of SESE Enjoy Annual "First Day Of Class" Barbecue

Students, staff and faculty of all three departments of the School of Earth Society and Environment (Geology, Atmospheric Science, and Geography and GIS) enjoyed warm, breezy weather for the annual "First Day of Class” Barbecue, August 27th, 2018.

Adjunct Prof. Sam Heads: New Oligocene Insect Collection

Adjunct Professor Sam Heads, an internationally known insect paleontologist, recently brought a rare and valuable collection of Oligocene insect fossils to campus.  The story of the collection can be found at:
http://storied.illinois.edu/a-donation-for-the-ages/

Dispatch from Wasatch-Uinta Field Camp 2018!

Prof. Michael Stewart and the Illinois students attending the Wasatch-Uinta Summer Field Course based out of Park City, Utah have been working hard and observing some of the best Geology the west has to offer.

Trish Gregg Wins Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Trish Gregg has been awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award for her proposal Investigating the unrest and eruption potential of caldera forming volcanoes in the Aleutians.

Yan Zhan Awarded NASA Earth and Space Sciences Graduate Fellowship

Yan Zhan, a 4th year Geology Ph.D. candidate in Prof. Trish Gregg's Volcano Geodynamics group, has been awarded a prestigious NASA Earth and Space Sciences Graduate Fellowship.

Jia Wang Receives Best Student Poster Award at CMWR Conference

Jia Wang received the Best Student Poster Award from among 135 student participants in the Computational Methods in Water Resources Conference

Tom Johnson Elected GSA Fellow

Professor Tom Johnson has been elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Julia Cisneros Awarded NSF Grow Grant

PhD graduate student Julia Cisneros has been awarded a Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) grant from the Division of Graduate Education at the National Science Foundation.

In Memorium: Prof. Emeritus George Devries Klein

Predicting Supervolcano Eruptions

PhD candidate Haley Cabaniss, Prof. Trish Gregg and collaborator Prof. Eric Grosfils publish a paper in Geophysical Research Letters that lifts the lid on the precursors to supervolcano eruptions.

Snow On The Great Sand Dunes Greets GEOL 593 Class In Colorado

Prof. Gregg's Very Successful Year as NCSA Faculty Fellow

Professor Trish Gregg was one of eight National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Faculty Fellowship awardees for 2017-18.  The Fellowship program provided $25,000 to support the development of a High Performance Computing method for combining large volcano monitoring data sets with sophisticated geodynamic models.  Gregg presented results from her NCSA Faculty Fellowship Project: "A Data Assimilation Framework for Forecasting Volcanic Unrest", Monday April 23rd, 2018. 

Professor Best Awarded The Lamarck Medal from EGU!

Prof. Jim Best was awarded the 2018 Jean Baptiste Lamarck Medal  by the European Geosciences Union at the EGU annual meeting in Vienna, April 9th, 2018. 

The Lamarck Medal was established by the EGU Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Paleontology Division, in recognition of the scientific achievement of Jean Baptiste Lamarck.  It is awarded to scientists for their exceptional contributions to stratigraphy, sedimentology or palaeontology.  The Medal is awarded to Prof. Best this year for "major contributions to our understanding of physical sedimentary processes and their products in the geological record."  

Jack Albright Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Spring 2018 Oil and Gas Short Course

Eryops Skeleton Being Repaired for Display

Stable Cratons May Not Be As Tectonically Stable As We Think

Leah Matchett '16 Named Knight-Hennessy Scholar

Leah Matchett, a Geology alumna from the class of 2016, is one of 49 students selected in the first year of the Knight-Hennessy Scholar program for postgraduate study at Stanford University.

See the Illinois News Bureau story about Leah here.

The Great Unconformity: Erosion linked to supercontinent cycles and snowball Earth?

Colorado Plateau Model Returns!

Fossil displays return to NHB

New Insights on Yellowstone Volcanism: Liu and Team

In a paper “Western US volcanism due to intruding oceanic mantle driven by ancient Farallon slabs” published in Nature Geoscience, Lijun Liu and graduate students Quan Zhou and Jiashun Hu have employed seismic tomography to reveal new insights into the origin of Yellowstone volcanism and challenge existing views on deep mantle plumes.

Cisneros Presents to Chancellor, President, and Board of Trustees

Julia Cisneros was invited as the sole student representative of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign to speak about her research and fieldwork in the Amazon and Yellow Rivers and showcase the importance of applied fieldwork and student research opportunities to the Chancellor, President, and Board of Trustees.

National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship: Julia Cisneros

Graduate student Julia Cisneros won a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship this fall for a project titled “Dune morphology and dynamics in fluvial channels." 

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship: Robert Goldman

Graduate student Robert Goldman won an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in fall 2017 based on his proposal "Developing a Comprehensive 3D Finite Element Model of Magma Plumbing Systems to Improve Forecasts of Eruption Timing, Location, and Destructive Potential."

R&D 100 Award for Crunchflow, Druhan

Crunchflow, a computer modeling package developed partially by Prof Jenny Druhan, has received a prestigious R&D 100 award from R&D Magazine.

2017 Alumni Achievement Award: Jim Kirkpatrick (Ph.D. '72)

Jessica Conroy: Thriving in Research

Saturday, Nov. 4th Natural History Building Re-dedication

 November 4th, 2017:  Please join us for a grand event to mark the re-dedication of the Natural History Building!  Geology alumni from all over will be converging on NHB for a re-dedication ceremony, tours, and plenty of socializing to celebrate the completion of this once-in-a-lifetime renewal of the traditional home of Geology, on the quad.

Jim Best to be awarded the Lamarck Medal from EGU

Prof. Jim Best will be awarded the 2018 Lamarck Medal from the Division on Stratigraphy, Sedimentology and Paleontology of the European Geosciences Union!

2018 Spring Field Course: Classic Localities of Scotland

Department of Geology Offices Return to NHB!