Illini Center

10/27/2023

The Illini Center welcomes Dean Rashid Bashir and The Grainger College of Engineering for the inaugural Conversations with Grainger Engineering Faculty event featuring Dr. Gang Wang!

The Conversations with Grainger Engineering Faculty series will bring faculty members to Chicago to share their research and engage in focused discussions with Grainger Engineering constituents during a lunch hour at the Illini Center. For the inaugural event, lunch will be provided.

The first event features Dr. Gang Wang of the Computer Science Department presenting Understanding Deepfake-based Social Engineering: from Users' Perspectives

Deepfake techniques (or broadly, deep generative models) have significantly improved our ability to synthesize media content such as images, videos, audio, and text. However, there is an increasing concern that this ability is also abused by adversaries to generate deceptive content for manipulating public opinions and running social engineering attacks. In this talk, Dr. Wang will discuss his recent collaborative work to investigate this deepfake threat, from users’ perspectives. The goal is to better understand how likely online users would be persuaded by deepfake content in social engineering scenarios and whether and how users’ behaviors change when they are made aware of this threat. They are also exploring what defenses can help to prevent or mitigate harms from deepfake-based attacks.

For information on future events and the College of Engineering, visit: https://grainger.illinois.edu/news/calendars/special

09/11/2023

The Illini Center welcomes The Chicago Farmers and speaker Dr. Gary Schnitkey, Soybean Industry Endowed Chair in Agricultural Strategy within the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Schnitkey will discuss Farmland Returns and Prices in the "New Normal”: After high prices in 2021 and 2022, commodity prices appear to be approaching lower, more historical levels. Production costs are declining somewhat after reaching record levels. Moreover, interest rates will be higher than in recent years. How will this impact farmland returns and prices? Schnitkey will share his views.

For more information on The Chicago Farmers and upcoming events, visit: https://chicagofarmers.org/meetinginfo.php?id=121&ts=1692379132

04/03/2023

The Illini Center welcomes back The Chicago Farmers for their April luncheon on Land Values!

Russell Hiatt, President of the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, and Luke Worrell, President of the Realtors Land Institute will present findings as shared at the recent ISPMRA annual meeting in Bloomington, IL. They will also take a look at what next year may bring.

For more information on The Chicago Farmers and their future events, visit chicagofarmers.org.

03/13/2023

The Illini Center welcomes The Chicago Farmers for the March Luncheon, where Pat Dumstorff will be discussing sustainability through soil!

Trace Genomics has pioneered and productized the analysis of the soil microbiome using high definition genomic sequencing. Actionable insights Trace delivers to farmers and agronomists include guidance on optimal pathogen management as well as advanced management of phosphorus and nitrogen. Farmers are using these insights to only place products where they are needed to maximize yield and minimize waste and the negative environmental impact that comes with it. Pat Dumstorff, Trace Genomics' VP of Product Management and Marketing, will explain how it all works and walk through a few real-world examples.
Trace Genomics website: www.tracegenomics.com

03/03/2023

The Illini Center and Illinois College of Law would like to thank Illinois Supreme Court Justice Mary Kay O'Brien for her keynote address at the Women Lead WITH Illinois Law 2023 Summit!

The Women Lead WITH Illinois Law Summit aims to gather the members of our community for a day of content intended to inspire and empower women to embrace positions of leadership in the law, to create meaningful connections, and to support each other's personal and professional goals.

For more information on the Illinois College of Law, and upcoming events, please visit https://law.illinois.edu/ .

02/13/2023

Welcome back Chicago Farmers! We are excited to host your February luncheon with Bill Jackson, Executive Director of the Discovery Partners Institute.

For information on the Chicago Farmers and future meetings, visit:
https://chicagofarmers.org/meetinginfo.php?id=118&ts=1673836699

01/19/2023

The Illini Center welcomes Director Josep Torrellas and his team from the ACE Center for Evolvable Computing for the ACE Center Kickoff Meeting!

The goal of the ACE Center is to devise novel technologies for scalable distributed computing that will improve the performance and the energy efficiency of diverse applications by 100x over the expected computer systems of 2030. For more information, visit https://acecenter.grainger.illinois.edu/ .

01/09/2023

The Illini Center welcomes The Chicago Farmers!

Eliza Fournier, Urban Farm Director of the College of Lake County's Lakeshore campus, will discuss her personal experiences over the past two decades in urban agriculture in Chicago, and facilitate a discussion on future opportunities in the city and beyond!

For more information on The Chicago Farmers and their future events, visit https://chicagofarmers.org/ .

11/30/2022

The holiday season is upon us!

From all of us at the Illini Center, we wish you peace, joy, and a wonderful holiday season! We are so thankful for you, Illini! 🧡💙

11/03/2022

The Illini Center welcomes the Grainger College of Engineering Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center for the QLA Meets QIT II Workshop!

This year's workshop focuses on current trends in quantum information theory. In particular, on quantum channels and decoherence, quantum error correction, and Hamiltonian complexity. For more information, visit

Over many decades various mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and engineers have made amazing connections and links between quantitative linear algebra (QLA) and quantum information theory (QIT). Quantitative linear algebra lies at the intersection of topics such as discrepancy

10/18/2022

The Illini Center welcomes back Shield ILLINOIS this week! Shield ILLINOIS is a screening testing program infrastructure that deploys the University of Illinois' innovative saliva test across the state. To find out more, visit https://www.uillinois.edu/shield.

SHIELD Illinois is the University of Illinois System’s initiative to make our innovative covidSHIELD saliva-based COVID-19 test available to K-12 schools, colleges and universities, companies and the public across the state of Illinois.

10/12/2022

The Illini Center Welcomes LCPC 2022!

The Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing (LCPC) has been, since its founding in 1988, a leading venue for research on parallel languages and compilers and many related topics related to parallel computing, including parallelizing compilers, parallel programming models, runtime systems, and tools with a diverse domain of application. The wide scope of the workshop is unique in that it spans the spectrum from foundational principles to practical experience and from early ideas to polished results. LCPC encourages submissions that go outside its original scope of scientific computing to diverse areas that are enabled or enhanced by the power of parallel systems such as mobile computing, big data, relevant aspects of machine learning, data centers, cognitive computing, etc.

For more information, visit publish.illinois.edu/lcpc2022atillinois/.