For years, employers, pundits and policymakers alike have bemoaned the lack of qualified workers available to fill vacant manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Despite the prominence of the skills-gap debate, a new paper co-written by a University of Illinois expert in labor economics and workforce policy finds that the demand for higher-level skills in U.S.…
Illinois Teams with Google to Develop More Secure Smartphones
Fingerprint identification, password protection and phone storage encryption are a few ways to make your smartphones more secure. But Google is looking to take the security measure one step further, using behavioral analysis of everything from typing habits to photo identifiers to authenticate people to their smartphones – with the goal of making passwords obsolete.…
Aerospace Engineering Students’ Startup Idea: Controlled Drones for Filmmaking
Three Aerospace Engineering at Illinois seniors have applied their penchant for entrepreneurship to develop FreeSkies, a startup company aimed at using drones in filmmaking. Working in AE Associate Prof. Tim Bretl’s laboratory, Jay Mulakala, Ankur Mehta, and Andrew Putch believe FreeSkies will provide directors an ease of control in filming difficult shots, while reducing the…
Software Teaches Computers to Translate Words to Math
If Johnny has five apples and seven oranges, and he wants to share them with three of his friends, can a computer understand the text to figure out how many pieces of fruit each person gets? Thanks to new software developed at the University of Illinois, machines now can learn to understand mathematical reasoning expressed…
NSF Grant to Turn Smartphones Into Biodetectors
When you go to the doctor to see if you have a sore throat, she’ll usually swab inside your mouth and then send a sample to the lab for analysis. This process generally takes a few days, by which time you’ll probably know whether you’re sick or not, anyway. Imagine that, instead, the doctor just…
From Air Traffic Controller to Grad Research in Fiber Optics
When ECE graduate student Janice Blane was still a prospective student, considering advisers and research programs, she did what anyone would do: she contacted faculty members who were doing innovative research, asking about opportunities in their labs. That seems normal, only, in 2012, when Blane emailed ECE Professor Kent D. Choquette, who is now her…
Cuprate Superconductors Defy Convention
To engineers, it’s a tale as old as time: Electrical current is carried through materials by flowing electrons. But physicists at the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania found that for copper-containing superconductors, known as cuprates, electrons are not enough to carry the current. “The story of electrical conduction in metals is told…
Researchers Strain to Improve Electrical Material
Like turning coal to diamond, adding pressure to an electrical material enhances its properties. Now, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have devised a method of making ferroelectric thin films with twice the strain, resulting in exceptional performance. Led by Lane Martin, a professor of materials science and engineering, the group published its results in…